Reminisce & Renaissance after COVID
The name “COVID-19” broke the air like glass. No one saw it coming, at least not here in Nigeria. In all truth, I was initially ecstatic, a young primary teacher eager for a break from the heavy burden of teaching three (3) classes.
"News has it that this particular pandemic, COVID 19, is deadly. As a matter of fact, this virus is here already, in Nigeria and spreads real quick. Like I said earlier, it kills within seven days! School is hereby dismissed up until you receive a summon. Listen to the radio, don't touch your eyes and nose with your fingers. Also, avoid touching and playing around. Stay indoor… stay safe. God bless you all."
Teachers chit-chatted about the federal declaration. Students happily scampered home, almost jumping out of their blue and cyan uniforms with deafening guffaws.
I'm glad my family didn't desert me when I took ill when this all began. It was terrible timing, you know?
I began to shiver vigorously, after a haircut at the barber's shop. I laid in my bed, trying to brush it off as just a cold. But my fever lasted for hours, cold freezing into my soul as its shadow melted hot over my membranes. Father remained hopeful but I was not—the drugs I’d taken didn’t break my fever. I was lucky that there was no governmental authority near enough to harvest me and cast me into an isolation room like many others.
In the strength of this edge and wish to get better in the morrow, I made prayers sink down my being.
"Glory to Jesus, you are now fine" Mother rejoiced.
"I told you 'twas nothing," Father boasted.
"So, it wasn't coro," Bobo said, and the remaining three cackled in the sitting room, befriending the T.V. for the new updates.
The first two weeks of “stay indoors… stay safe” were full, and we had old pals around to banter with. At least, the abidance to social distancing, here, wasn't among the ten commandments; boys broke baskets of rules. Football was a scary game to play in the main, but since no DSTV station would stream a live match with no players on the pitch, we daydreamed about overtaking the big stars on our local field. Freedom, as no road was busy, the tail of the expressway lying desolate, as though after a war.
Months rolled by and parents began to miss their sickening jobs. We grew tired of footballing and shooting funny videos when our stomachs began to demand our daily bread. We wanted work so badly that a day at a building site was like the hand of God reaching into our pockets. Swears! Revival is me, cooking a pot of beans and bread in lockdown. The sweat was mean enough to kill the appetite.
More so, Revival is the survival of education as school has now been restored. Aside from the beauty in the status quo—featuring kiddies, teens, netting across the land on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons, lost in the ecstasy of social life, only to mill inside, heads arranged in rows and columns, as pedagogues stand in front.
At least, in a school like mine—a citadel of playful seriousness where the birth of brilliance isn't believed to come from a barrack. Freedom was cheap as air to children after the lockdown had stretched like a rod against the nervous system of the citizens. Though many lost faith in school during lockdown and judged school nothing better than a mere policy of subterfuge. All I know is education is not a spell.
Revival, furthermore, is how wounded homes, with time and divine help, have been comforted. No palliative from man is capable of soothing the soul whose relatives or loved ones boarded the hot carousel of that deadly pestilence. Just the same, no amount of tears would bring a dead person back to life until the end of times where we shall meet again beyond the crystal water. Resurrection of the dead is not a fantasy, I reckon.
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Psalmuel Benjamin Oluwasheun– word commander 1 is a poet, writer and spoken word minister from Nigeria.
He writes from Ewekoro in Ogun state. A lover of beans who believes in friendship. Currently working at Oyewole Business centre, papalanto. He's the 2nd runner up of the PROFWIC SPOKEN WORDS POETRY CONTEST 2022, A quarterfinalist of War of Words9 2022, winner of Shuzia thursday poetry challenge sept., 2022, finalist at POF4 (pen on fire) Longlisted for BOPP poetry prize 2022 with works published on PAROUSIA, CC, LUMIERE REVIEW, Agape, ARTS LOUNGE, EskimoPie mag, Lion and Lilac, Allegro, Shuf Poetry, Communicators' League, MixedMag, Nanty Greens, Kalahari Review, My Woven Words, Fieryscribe Review and others are places where you can find his works.
If he's not writing, he's doing a whole lot of other things like drama, painting, preaching and all. His brother, Bobo is his biggest fan. And the g.a.n.g is his home with bro Joel & Emmanuel John.