Qwemy
Vero sat next to the charcoal stove outside a half-mud, half-cemented house concentrating on eating her kasoli in perfect lines. It always seemed more organized to her and polite; surely any host would greatly appreciate well-organized eaters. It was etiquette, obuntu bulamu. It was 6:40 p.m. and the light was dimming too fast for her to continue her precise exercise, she started to squint at the cob in her hands. The woman seated opposite her watched her steadily and burst into a low chuckle, finished off on a note of pity.
“Why is everything so serious with you?”
“It’s just roasted maize.”
She took a swig of her Senator lager and threw her head back embracing the droplets of drizzles that had started precipitating on the Monday evening. She didn’t know what to do with her daughter. She was so uptight. Twenty-three and never broken a damn rule. She wondered how she actually excelled at this motherhood thing. After Kazende injected her with child at the township borehole, she’d stopped exertion of effort on anything; school, volleyball, church. But it was as though her lost efforts had been reincarnated in her spawn doubly.
The black cuboid between them cackled to which her daughter quickly adjusted a faded golden knob anti-clockwise. The previously disrupted voice spoke out as clear as day.
“The president today offered a bounty for the state’s enemy,” it said.
The speaker continued to play a recording of their Head of State.
“Playing nice guy seems to have gotten our country in holiday mode. These bazukulu of mine are strong but laziness and love for money has led them to premature graves. I know you lack discipline, even with the very lives of your own children. You and self-drive are as incompatible as oil and water. The virus has been in the country for four months, seemingly winning this battle, and yet we attained control over Luweero in less time…”
The news anchor cut short His Excellency’s monologue and proceeded to summarize the press conference, “His Excellency announced a prize for the Ugandan who comes up with the cure for the coronavirus inclusive of a lifetime of income, medical and educational benefits for his or her family and infrastructural upgrade for their home district.”
Vero’s mother spat in the fire.
“Passing on his duties to another? Men!”
“Maama!” her daughter exclaimed, “you can express your dissatisfaction without throwing your saliva to the flames,” pointing her head to the fireplace, “It’s not good manners.”
“Why do you care about being good?” Vero’s mother shouted, “Who told you it puts meat on your plate or mobile money on your phone? Shut up and let me be!”
“It can bring you good fortune in the future, Maama, maybe not even in this life but perhaps after death,” Vero tried to reason.
Vero’s mother rolled her eyes and continued with her lager. Forget the pandemic, she’d give all her seven goats to anyone who could knock sense into her child.
Several weeks passed and Vero resorted to listening to their Panasonic radio alone at the meat markets alongside the highway to Kampala. Equipped with a government distributed mask she sat at a corner of the market next to a jolly lady who roasted kasoli, as she watched different lives of people unfold through the day. She’d often thought of a family of more than two relations. It must give more options. She constantly hoped of leaving the little village and seeing more, at least the next town.
Her favourite people to watch were the truck drivers coming from over the border; the Tanzanians and the Kenyans. The way they spoke and carried themselves was so different from her countrymen and it was delightful to watch.
She’d never forget the day she saw a lady truck driver laughing with all the men and assuring the Ugandan chaps that the nyama choma East of the border was a class apart from their charred marabou stork and roadkill. She’d return every four days. On the ninth incident she walked to Vero and asked her if she ever got tired of sitting on the sidelines instead of being part of life. They chatted about dreams and bottlenecks to them and Sonia, as Vero discovered was her name, always had a solution for each one. Sonia, a typical rule-breaker and life-chaser, inspired and scared Vero.
With a malaria check-up two days later at the Health Centre IV, Vero tested positive for mild malaria and spent the next couple of weeks at home recuperating. One early morning, outside the house, a wave of nausea hit her when she heard the village megaphone shout her name and of “those who knew her”.
Veronica Nakanwagi had contracted the corona virus and all in contact with her should report to the Health Centre immediately. Kalisizo village had registered its first case, and in many minds their first death. Nobody in the country had survived the 2020 plague.
Vero’s heart clenched and her breathing abbreviated.
“Co..co.c.corona virus?,” she choked, holding her chest, “I have it!” Pictures of police, injections and a coffin blurred her vision. She quickly shut her eyes to black them out. The smell of hospital wards and medication materialized in her nostrils.
How? She didn’t feel sick; the mululuza she’d been dozing herself was always effective.
“On malaria! Not corona!” she chastised herself.
She couldn’t have the corona virus! She didn’t have the flu, even her asthma had not disturbed her in years. They had told them it attacked the respiratory system. She was okay. That was another Veronica Nakanwagi. They were common names. She continued to comfort herself and calm down when a gush of red dust raised by approaching ambulance and police pick-up approached the small compound. Her nausea returned.
A man in navy blue camouflage uniform walked to her with an obvious doctor in a white coat scurrying up behind him.
“Are you Veronica?” he spoke through a mask.
She nodded.
“Where is your mother?” the lab-coat-adorned woman beside him continued.
“She’s at the back of the house.”
The army man signaled to a comrade to go and check.
“You tested positive for corona virus, your mother and anyone in contact with you in the past two weeks will go through quarantine and treatment at Masaka Referral hospital at your own cost.”
“Ssebo, we don’t have that amount of money!” her mother who had joined the small gathering shouted rudely.
“Wewe!” He darted a dark, short-nailed index finger to Veronica’s mother in authoritative warning.
“Kujaapa!” he said eyes fixed on Vero with an arm directing her towards the ambulance.
She followed him, half-way looking back to see her mother yelling curses and exertions of rights to freedom. Far behind her was another camouflaged man with white boots and a spray can disinfecting their house.
In the vehicle to the referral hospital, Veronica tried to piece together how she could have contracted the virus. Was it at the meat markets? But she had worn her mask at every moment and performed endless ablutions and kept several metres from other human beings. Did her mother give it to her? How? She had not left home. Even her alcohol was delivered by Mukasa. It must have been that. Maybe she got it from Sonia? The truck drivers had been reported to have imported the disease. But they now checked and quarantined them before they crossed the border? Vero gave up her search for the culprit of her misfortune and focused on her fate.
Her good actions had not spared her or her mother or Katonda knows who else in their village. There went her dreams, engulfed and crushed by a microscopic organism. Everyone who had caught the virus had died. Two hundred infections, turned to two hundred deaths in mid-June. Six hundred thirty-four infections consequently became a mirror number of fatalities. The virus had been triumphant in the equatorial republic. The future was as bleak as could be.
She sat up at the back of the ambulance and implored herself to look for a silver lining. She smiled.
At least she would get to see Masaka.
Five days later, she still felt normal and exhibited no tell-tale signs. The lab coat adorned gentlemen just stared at her and asked her inane questions about her medical history and that of her family. They drew blood and other bodily excretions and encouraged her to take walks on the hospital grounds with a nurse. She wondered how they were going to pay for all this. She wondered how her mother fared in the separate room. She’d since stopped screaming at the medical staff.
The Masaka Referral Hospital staff had received four other residents of the Rakai village who all tested negative for the virus but surprisingly had the viral print. It’s like they’d had it and recovered and hadn’t gotten seriously ill, like the common flu. The lab technicians repeated the tests and they without doubt confirmed there had been presence of the virus but each munakyalo didn’t report any serious ailment in the previous weeks. The mother-daughter pair still tested positive for the virus but showed absolutely no signs of pain, flayed breathing, flu or even slight discomfort.
Doctors from Mulago arrived the next week, to lend further expertise to the phenomenon and days later returned with the two peculiar patients to Mulago Referral Hospital. COVID-19 would take Vero’s life but at least it had given her an opportunity to see other parts of the country and now the capital city itself!
Kampala was clean! The kolasi roads were everywhere, not just the highway to the city. The people dressed as if they were going to church, and it was Monday. They were going to markets and shops. The women had interesting hair styles and the men kept their beards kempt. It was miles from Kalisizo and her heart beat differently. The English spoken sounded straight out of a TV set and the Luganda in no way like that in Rakai, the Luganda spoken by her doctors that is. She’d never thought of a vernacular having the exact words but sounding so different. Her mother was even speechless for once, she was positively galvanized. They both silently acknowledged: their fate was not the worst, the journey to it at least.
A nurse woke them up the next morning to pack their belongings as they would be taken to the State House in Nakasero to meet the president. Not waiting for clarifying questions. The nurse nodded and said, “Yes, the president.” Veronica at this point sat on her ward bed and marveled at her travels sponsored by the foreign virus. Perhaps all her good manners had finally bore fruit in an unexpected pathological twist. She’d got to live her dream and the virus had been kind enough to not cause her severe symptoms. Two and a half months and, apart from headaches and some lethargy, she felt okay.
Her mother would meet His Excellency! That was her dream, mind you not to gape in his presence but give him a piece of her mind. Veronica wondered why they were going. Maybe they would meet more doctors; no one had told them how the virus had progressed in their bodies, they just took tests and asked questions. Shockingly, nothing about medical bills. She thought of her mother’s goats. Would they be enough once sold to cater to their unforeseen expectations? What did the president want?
They never met His Excellency but the beauty of the State House made up for it. On arrival they were heavily sanitized, given PPE equipment and led to a room with a TV the size of a table top. They were told they would see the president there.
It was switched on and they saw him speak.
“Our scientists are in the process of coming up with a cure for COVID-19. As you know, to date we have not had any survivors of the dreaded virus apart from two women from Rakai district. They have been infected with the virus for four months and three days and have not fallen sick or succumbed to the pathogen. Apart from four of their village mates contracting the disease early on, doctors have established they no longer can spread it. Their DNA, blood, plasma and other bodily fluids are in the final phases of study and research to create an antidote,” he paused and smiled.
“Bazukulu, Uganda has always had potential, I keep telling you and soon we shall pioneer a cure to the global pandemic.”
Maama Vero started mumbling, ‘You took our blood without permission? We are the cure? We are the cure! Pay us!”
Veronica sat prim and proper simultaneously processing the Head of State’s announcement and her mother’s words.
Two weeks later in a new house in Makerere, Maama Veronica read aloud an excerpt from an article in Bukedde, the nation’s Luganda newspaper penned by the Minister of Health.
“The COVICUVEN-21 (Corona virus cure by Veronica Nakanwagi in 2021) has been on the shelf for a year and in continued gratitude we salute Veronica Nakanwagi and her mother Magdalena Kimbowa who’s biological make-up and the healing properties of the Vernonia amygdalina “mululuza” plant that Veronica took as she suffered from malaria enabled production of this cure. The mother-daughter duo has unique cells that heal and multiply very quickly and even when attacked by the virus minimize and greatly eliminate its ability to be spread. The herb that Veronica took whilst simultaneously infected with the plasmodium parasite and corona virus weakened the virus’ RNA and halted its duplication within the body and with such a weak infection it’s no wonder they did not spread the virus in their hometown apart from initial people who contracted it before Veronica started self-medication of the herb.”
“This now patented medicine alone has steadily reversed the impending recession of our economy and put Uganda on the map with countries procuring Veronica’s cells and the antidote…”
Vero smiled at her mother and silently said a small prayer in thanksgiving, she’d seen the world beyond Rakai but, even beyond her wildest dreams, the world had seen her.
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“Kampala was clean! The kolasi roads were everywhere, not just the highway to the city. The people dressed as if they were going to church, and it was Monday. They were going to markets and shops. The women had interesting hair styles and the men kept their beards kempt. ”
Love your writer’s voice. Your tale is full of hope and giddiness. If I were to write a corona tale, I would go delightfully dark, and enjoy the darkness. But this ray of bright sunshine was still fun to read. Loved it!
Nice write up Frank. This calls for more research and investigations. I’ve had a similar experience during this period. The same happened to my sister. I just tried to convince myself that this is not Covid-19. We need to test more, we need to put in more work especially here in Enugu.