“Fear, dread, angst, anxiety – some synonyms youths should avoid in their vocabulary.” Those were the words of Mensah to his mother as he prepared to leave home to start life as a young adult a year earlier. He had forced himself to agree with his mother on the influence of fear in his life. The one year on his own went well and he hoped in another year he would have conquered fear to enable his life to run like a train oblivious of tendrils, traps, and torpedoes.
But things took a different turn when the media announced the commencement of the journey of a deadly virus from the Wuhan Province of China. Each ‘breaking news’ came with different doses of fear-inducing stories. Mensah decided to wait and run things on his own to show he had become an adult. Doubt however crept in when Italy began to lose people to Coronavirus, the emerging enemy of the globe. By the time the United States announced her first fatality Mensah sat up to reality and decided his experiment with life without his parents needed a rethink or better, a break.
He threw few items into his carryall and left his base in Washington DC for ‘home’ which meant where his parents lived. He decided to make the journey by road although it would have taken less time by aircraft. With aircrafts pressurised inside, he believed infected droplets of the virus would float free and easy to be absorbed within the craft despite nose masks. He convinced himself a journey by air should best be seen as a suicide attempt. The fear of possible contact with the virus made him settle on the 12 hours and 18 minutes of road journey to Saint Louis in Missouri.
In the family residence at Edmundson, he met his parents who were excited to see him. His siblings, two young ladies with a child each arrived before him with their children. By good coincidence their spouses were in Ghana, one on sabbatical, the other on research engagement for his employer. Good enough early forecasters believed Africa may fare better in the pandemic for reasons of temperature rather than medical capacity.
With his arrival the situation in the family looked like a reunion though generated by adversity or fear of one. Everyone joined everyone to catch up on developments in the lives of each person for the one year they stayed separate.
When the excitement of the reunion waned, Mensah thought about survival strategies he should suggest to complement the ones his parents installed before he arrived. First, he considered the population which with his arrival stood at twelve. This included the Matron, a Mexican who lived in the house with her two children.
In line with government policy at the time, twelve implied the family numbered two in excess of the number allowed to gather in one space. Prime Minister Boris Johnson reduced the number to two in Britain which meant only man and his wife should live together. Mensah did wonder what would happen to under aged children, and well, children a little to the right of the legal age.
Social media made one of the world’s most widespread and deadly pandemics the most outrageous in history. Tons of information and misinformation were rolled out to the point they generated information fatigue. Some questions which in a scientific world should have no space gained traction. For instance, did China plan to use Coronavirus as a tool of economic warfare to overtake United States? What about the fifth generation cellular network technology (5G) as a possible cause of Coronavirus? Did few gung-ho researchers with the Nobel Prize on their minds miss something and by mistake unearthed something? Several issues with the slightest connection to the virus flooded the media and assumed the tag breaking news.
After he settled in Mensah decided to dare by way of a trip to places he knew. He made a responsible 30-minute drive to downtown St. Louis and navigated his way towards 100 Washington Avenue. The 630-foot tall stainless steel Gateway Arch stood a shouting distance away and curved its neck at the peak to look at dazed guests on the ground. Close by the Mississippi River flowed to complete the several attractions of the famed city.
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Mensah sighted The Arch from a distance but as he made a stop to take a call someone in front of the car sneezed twice and appeared to be ready for more. Time appeared to stand still and the human beings in it reacted in accordance.
“Bless you,” Mensah offered as a prayer but someone close by looked at Mensah and said, “He needs it; in fact, we need it,” quickened his pace and left the environment.
People around scampered in various directions as if pursued by a gun-toting maniac. Mensah rolled up the windows of his car but uncertain of the next development he made a U-turn at the earliest opportunity and headed home.
At the shopping center close to his home, he bought liquid soap, hand sanitizers, and a dozen and two flasks, one for each adult in the house and two for relations or friends he believed may stray in for a long stay. The flasks would hold hot water to wash down the tiny devils if they sneaked into the throat as medical experts held. America or no America the principal social safety net for Africans in a tenebrous world continues to be the extended family.
At home he poured a measure of the liquid soap into a container and left it close to the gate where a tap for watering the garden stood. The tap had a facility for hot water to be used during winter to wash cars. An emergency rule followed in the household – whoever went outside the compound must on return wash hands with soap and warm water before the person touched the door knobs of the four entrances into the house.
Fear in flesh and blood increased as rules increased to the point a close family observed social distancing to save each other.
As days wore on, statistics of fatalities continued to pour in like magma from a volcano. Mensah shrugged and held onto one African belief, which says all birds on a tree cannot depart at the same time. War, as elders held, cannot exterminate an entire group in one day.
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