Of corona, non-core staff Trump and cancelled weddings

Rosebella Ototo

On a lighter note, calling the Corona virus using its scientific name makes me feel very educated.

So Corvid-19 has all of us confused about a lot of things including how to feel, what to do, what time it is, what day it is and basically because for the first time we are more useful staying at home where we avoid contracting and spreading the disease.

Those who’ve been cursing every Monday morning and wishing we could work from home and still get paid or wishing we were rich enough to avoid work altogether.

Corvid-19 has led to some of us understanding that we are non-core staff, meaning our absence from work is more important than our presence. Some of us are appreciating our employers for not putting our already brittle pre-existing health situations at an even higher risk, be it chronic conditions or prenatal situations.

This disease has stopped the world on its tracks and we don’t know whether to blame China enough so they can give us the medicine that some of us assume they’re hiding in order to reverse the adverse effects of the disease, or to shout at the top of our lungs at Donald Trump and his political advisers for being too proud to beg for help from China, a country in recovery now or other Asian countries that for some reason were not as affected as China and the rest of the countries on the deadly list.

Clearly, the super power was caught off-guard just like the rest of the world and it suffers more than even the third world or what its president calls shithole countries.

Either way, we are all suffering and as calm as we are as Kenyans and praying and hoping for the best, we have always been that country that gives more leeway to non-Kenyans than they give us because of the money that changes hands under the tables to enrich a few of us in privileged power positions.

That is why it took us longer than other countries to take major pre-cautionary measures to keep the movement in and out of the country to a necessary minimum. With this in mind, we can only hope that the outcome does not reach the levels of Italy because we shall otherwise perish and perish fast.

What is expected as per my opinion is for the situation to get worse before it can get better but the sooner we follow the World Health Organization’s directives on how to handle, the sooner we shall overcome.

For now, business closures, job losses and other less fortunate outcomes are to be expected. If you think you’re having a bad day, think of those who had to cancel their weddings, those who can’t give their loved ones a befitting sendoff as in burials, those who’s employers had to leave the country and left them without a certain future, those who walk to and from industrial area at 3 a.m. every day and back at 8 p.m. just so they can make a mere Ksh.100 per day, with so much risk and no health insurance.

All in all, I pray that this disease ends like the nightmare that it is and we all get back on our feet.