upside down: shattered norms and broken conventions - the Musings of Mokobi.

Hi. You may call me Mokobi. These are my musings.

In 2020, I have witnessed a world with its communities turned upside down with shattered norms, broken conventions and a pronounced glare on the rampant inequalities that plague our societies.

It's a very unnerving time for the average person who has trusted one system or another for their education, healthcare or livelihood. Conversations on personal and social security is very much in focus. There is a sharp contrast - in the views and ‘what to dos’ - between the Governed and the Governors.

In navigating this new pandemic world, Governors are asking for communities to live in a very different way that is inconsistent to the society that Governed people have been socialized.

As clichés go, necessity is like a mother, and this pandemic has forced a rethink and an adjustment to what was mostly unquestioned order and routine in everyday life.  What was once normal has simply changed. Today is now scary and tomorrow is still unknown.

So what else ?

There are several pandemic battle fronts going on simultaneously. Beyond the obvious and immediate survive or die battle ground with SARS-CoV-2 , there are real ongoing financial and social hardships with real people in disrepair and feeling destitute.

How do I survive when you ask me to shelter in place - no doubt, a good measure to break the cycle of a real pandemic causing virus that is no respector of socio economic status - when it also means I will loose the means to my livihood?

Is there an end in sight?

The solutions will undoubtedly involve creative political, ideological and technological compromises between the Governed and the Governors. There is unprecedented - yet some would argue not enough - interest in cash transfers programs and universal basic income initiatives, where Governed people get a periodic stipend with no strings.

On a social front, a mostly invisible struggle wages between - on one side - folks who have mostly accepted the need for a new normal  - versus, on the other side - folks clinging and doing their best to restore or reboot a semblance of the prepandemic life, now almost half a year ago.

Families and friends are being pitted against each other over differences in their pandemic approach. Divergence in individual responses to mundane and innocuous situations like visitations and gatherings are potential wedges and a source of tension.

The situation is further excercebated in communities where the effects of Covid-19 is practically invisible due to minimal death tolls and a mostly asymptomatic infected population. In this context, you have one camp that is fighting against a mostly invisible pandemic along with its unseen short term effects and unknown long term implications, pitted against a camp that has essentially moved on and resumed regular lives, because it's hard to fight a pandemic with no visible effects or impact.

In GH, the lockdown has long ended and with it, a fizzling of the active consciousness that SARS-CoV-2 still persists locally. There is now - what feels like - a resignation to Covid-19 being a part of our foreseeable life. People are mostly now congregating without physical distancing or masks.

So what is the bottom line?

When it comes down to it, in GH and by extrapolation Africa - something in our geography, climate, culture, demographics, economy or prior health interventions is epidemiologically keeping the visible Covid-19 disease and it's associated death rates on this continent mitigated in comparison to the horrors in other regions. As for the actual insights in infectivity, positivity, health outcomes and impacts... your guess is good as mine.

Nevertheless...

life will endure in one way or another. Families are going to have decide how to amend their social contracts, employers and their employees will have to agree new work arrangements, primary, secondary and tertiary education have been ripe for disruption even in the prepandemic contexts, and governments and businesses are going to have to ponder how the needs of their stakeholders will be delivered in this new world.

Life finds a way. 🤓