Fear pervades the air, the future is not clear, we look on hoping like the rest of the world for a cure that will end the chapter of this horrific spate of COVID 19. Behaviors are being modified by this outbreak which forces on us a quick look at all things termed important.
Like the rest of the world blacks in Africa grapple with the necessary changes that must be made in our feeding, spending, relationships, and general outlook to life.
We are forced us to harness our strength; some we never knew we had to survive. Never had the strength of women been tested more than on this day.
With only a hazy picture of sufferings, many had to go through in the last civil war that ravaged Nigeria between 1967-1970 as told by my mother, I never envisaged that many nations could be brought down to the feet within weeks without the use of any ballistic missile.
Nations more prepared for eventualities are on bended knees seeking a way out of the grip of this wicked monster called COVID 19. Now imagine how Africans in Africa are far. A popular Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe wrote a book titled 'things fall apart'. stated that when the center cannot hold, all things fall apart.
This is the deplorable state of many African countries. And as this continues, women continue to suffer, yet they push on perform g multiple functions at the same time even in the face of the discomfort this pandemic presents.
Were we really asleep?
My homeland, Africa, records her first case of the Novel Corona Virus in Egypt in February 2020. Believing we will be spared in the face of our warmer climatic conditions, many continued in the usual routine and ignored the warnings of a rapid spread.
With a false sense of security that whatever disease this was, it would not survive in Africa. We go about oblivious of the pain of millions of others especially women like us until it hits us in that face that we are no different, if not worse off than our contemporaries around the world due to our regional economic realities.
Between February and May, the virus had found its way into Algiers, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria in the West, Kenya in not spared in the East and Cameroun suffers in Central Africa. Today, we all suffer the same fate as the rest of the world.
For most women across Africa, the stress of having to multitask has almost doubled within the apace of five months. We are told that the hope for a cure is nowhere in sight.
Everyone wakes up expecting to hear that somehow a miracle has happened and the numbers are reducing but we switch on the television only to hear of rising cases of the virus despite stringent measures put in by the government.
Obviously, it is no more business as usual. Here in this side of the world, most African women support their husbands in the family upkeep by going out daily to do their business and a prolonged absence from these businesses spells doom for the family.
The Impact takes it's toll
As mothers, we now have to take on the role of the teacher since homeschooling and helping the kids understand the different subjects falls on us. Even though I am a trained teacher, tutoring my four kids has proved to be quite challenging.
Two broken tablets are trophies I have collected this season.
To kids, this is a holiday period when they should just relax and play. Why then is mommy insisting on this learning? One tough task is convincing my sibling who lives with our parents in another city to sit at home and attend services online, considering the impact COVID 19 could have on our aging parents one of whom is both hypertensive and diabetic.
Beads of perspiration form on my face when I calculate that the likelihood of infection is high because another sibling has to go out every day to work.
Like the rest of the world, Africa and her women have not been spared financially.
The lockdown currently in force has put a blow to the financial strength of many businesses especially those owned by women. Taking tough financial decisions has never been easy. Sometimes, these decisions, for whatever reason they were taken affect our spending ability.
Thankfully, many women in Nigeria now have access to loans to kick start their businesses through a federal government intervention program which gives loans to Small and medium scale businesses and households heavily impacted by the COVID 19 pandemic.
It gets worse
Having a spouse who returned from another nation irrespective of whether that nation has only a few cases of COVID infection, no case at all or a large number of reported cases worsens the case for most women in Africa.
Most women like myself had to create isolation rooms, I check my spouse daily for any likely symptoms while ensuring that the kids keep their distance.
Guilt tugged my heart knowing the kids want nothing more than to hug their dad but cannot because I would not let them.
Much worse is the feeling of rejection I get from colleagues who treat like like I am already infected and should not be seen in public.
Those who laughed and played with me the previous day suddenly rejected me because I had a spouse in my house who just returned from another country.
The baffling point is that my own country Nigeria also has cases of the disease? This experience gave me a glimpse of the psychological trauma most women go through in the face of this pandemic.
I practically had to stop my business which involved the daily supply of pastries to shop owners even though that was a tough decision as I still needed this source of income.
What some who had already started spreading the word that I could likely be infected didn't know was that just like them I was afraid but unlike them, I chose to be brave and cautious and had drawn a plan of how I would carry out my daily routine of family and business without posing any harm to anyone.
Amidst the pain and rejection, I forge on but now without my source of income.
We will make it
Living off solely on my husband's wages has been a trying time and it comes with adjustments. Several weeks on, the same people who once avoided me now want to shake hands with my family.
If this could happen in a circle of learned people, one can only imagine what happens within the circles of the uneducated. What is in store for the many Gen X women around the world whose family members have already tested positive to COVID 19?
How will they cope with the rising number of job losses, business closure, the rejection is associated with this disease, loneliness, and the constant need for finance for family upkeep?
The hurdles, psychological emotional, and financial seem enormous, but I have felt and survived palpable pain, loss, and confusion in the past.
Yes, I have lost loved ones to death, even though that pales in the face of the carnage and death experienced in the civil war by my mother, a war that claimed the lives of many of our African heroes.
Many have witnessed natural disasters and kept faith only to rise stronger. With no one to look up to in this time, we must as women draw strength from our resilience and support each other to overcome the effects of this pandemic.
Whatever happens in the future I take pride in the fact that I am an African woman, wired for such a time as now. My environment has taught me tenacity. I will fight to get back on my feet like the warrior I was born to be.
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