What Next Africa

 It is almost impossible to measure the damage the pandemic has left, after millions of lives were lost at the onset of the virus. Good grief! Those numbers surged on TV screens across the globe. Everyone was behind doors, literally, a prison on its own. Not leaving the house for a month! I can barely stay in the house without taking a stroll for two days in a row. At the start, Wuhan seemed a town in space. Months turned into days and the race of the clock ticked and tocked. Evenings became cold as neighbours and friends disappeared behind closed doors, quite ironic! Death became a typical phrase to streets in most parts of the country. It was either a neighbour or a close relative that was nabbed by the strong jaws of covid-19. It is a sad revelation to us Africans that those who pretend to give aid to the mother country in the guise of foundations bit their own tongues as death stank in the Western part of the globe. Mellissa Gates claimed that African streets were to be filled with dead bodies. I shake my head to this day as I keep on looking for the imaginary beings that the super-rich purport to have sentenced to dismay.

Africa, what a wonder, we survived this hurricane of a disease. I could have bet that it is within African spirit to fight an enemy. It is with this notion and in fact, a confirmed theory that perhaps one day, Africa could become one, A United States of Africa. With the dynamics of world order and natural happenings, survival for the fittest was the ultimate game changer in this hell of a maze of not dying. Wearing a mask, sanitizing your hands, keeping social distance, and coughing as one covers the mouth were the puppets that held the globe at a standstill. I mean, that could be a rare chance for aliens to visit earth and leave without anyone noticing, except the superrich of course. With everyone working from home, and covering the respiratory system with a mask could be a way out of the orchestrators of the virus way to surge energies across large tracts of land.  I being a Kenyan have seen the benefits of the lockdowns. For one, families have united and cleaned dirty linen they hid in their closets for who knows how long. Better hygiene is now observed and common diseases like cholera, typhoid, and malaria have down surged in the number of cases reported at medical facilities. Malaria found a vaccine; this should continue.

Malaria has devoured children and missionaries during times of pre-colonial era. It was known to kill voyagers in ships not leaving treacherous pirates that ruled the Seven Seas. There being a vaccine for Malaria in 2021 is a revelation for most global stakeholders. One could wonder, is it the curiosity to cure Covid-19 that developed an interest to conduct studies relating to Malaria, or is it that they found an old file while salvaging through old medicinal doctrines they found a lead to a shelved Malaria project? One could really wonder what happens behind those laboratories. It is with a profound sinister line of thought that in deed, the Corona Virus was formulated behind med labs under dimly lit rooms with malice written all over the face of that one scientist who wanted to take the world with them. Post Covid.

Post Covid is post covid as virus is just another English word in the dictionary. The year 2020 is now tagged the year the movie Home Alone could have had the same impact as Obama’s The Promised Land had last year. However, us being typical Africans we adapted to the lifestyle and it became our everyday life; wearing a mask under your nose with a sole purpose of avoiding an arrest. Typical is used intentionally to show also that African is another name in the English dictionary. It is with such that it is a label, driving us into stereotype in the sense that once the word African enters our ears, we rather set our mindsets into extremism thus, throwing our heritage to the toilet. We either go into trance of achieving the American dream or think of becoming this awesome professor teaching philosophy in an Ivy League University, or even embracing root heritage; this I believe, is living in history, an attribute that is not African. However, what mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers have seen in the eyes of their sons, fathers, uncles, and grandfathers during that spited period of the Corona Virus is rich in African heritage. Mothers had sons at home before dusk, hot meals shared round tables, warm beds at night, and fresh bread in the morning.

What of the West? That gap is too huge for them to fill, especially with the broken linkages in generational gaps, the broken linkages in work places, the broken linkages in social settings. I believe the West is at a much advanced level as compared to us Africans. My personal extremist stereotype every time I hear African is a united front, A United States of Africa, but then, I think of becoming its first President, then I think, what of the varied Defense Forces, trouble to say the least if the continent became one. The West already done that, found a Malaria vaccine, and forged the US Army. Jumping from the African Powerhouse to the Reading Cube, I still ask, what is African? At least we know we are stronger in this Post Covid recovery. What else can an African person do apart from survive, adapt, and think of duplicating the West. What can an African person do in this 21^st Century? The quest continues…