(My Lockdown Diary: Reflections on Nigeria and Covid-19 Pandemic; by Ehi Braimah; Bookcraft 2020)
TOUGH times are creative times. The immortal William Shakespeare wrote years ago, “Sweet are the uses of adversity.” When things go tough or awry, that is the time to know who can weather the storm or be able to survive. That is the reason why it is in tough periods of life that one can be able to judge who is a great and creative leader. When things are calm and going smoothly, that definitely is not a time to look for great things or great leaders.
2020 would go down in history as a momentous year; a year like no other; one that has produced and consumed so many that any one that is able to see the last day of it and get into the new year must count himself or herself lucky. It is the year that there have been more stay-at-homes than any other. Many deaths have been recorded, so much that it would take a long roll of parchment to write all the names — very great, not too great, mighty, not too mighty, little, big, small, not too small and so on.
2020 has been a year of many events.
It is in these trail of great happenings – low and high – that the world towards the first quarter of the year had to witness a shutdown of all activities to save mankind. It was in fact the first of its kind in a long while. The world was not at war, well sort of, and yet it was at war with an invisible enemy that boxed even the most powerful nations to their knees. It was a war that no one saw the use of war machines or any of those great weapons but it had to put a break to its interactions and travelling around the world. Borders had to be closed and everyone had to watch who to visit or receive as guests. Welcome to the new normal.
Read Also: Writing my first book
AT the start of this review I quoted Shakespeare who waxed lyrical over the positive side of adversity. He should know. The advent of coronavirus which has made and still continues to make life precarious all over the world, was no doubt a very tough experience. All countries of the world at various times had to close their borders and restrict movement across borders and even internally as a way to curb the spread of the virus. It was based on this that many a writer used the opportunity, with no conferences, seminars or workshops to attend, to sit at their keyboards to churn out books and works to occupy their time.
In this category is Ehi Braimah’s My Lockdown Diary: Reflections on Nigeria and the Covid-19 Pandemic. In very incisive and concise language, the writer in order not to sit down and whine over the opportunities lost during the lockdown imposed in Nigeria, decided in the words of the Bard, to turn the adversity of the times to sweet uses. The result is this book. He sat down by the keyboard of his laptop and wrote 32 pieces of articles that were published through various mediums in the country. It is these articles plus eight others, making 40 that have turned out to be this book, My Lockdown Diary.
In the first piece titled Coping with the deadly coronavirus, Braimah traced the origin of what he calls “an invisible and deadly enemy known as coronavirus”, and how the world began to adjust lifestyles and ways of doing things to suit the ‘new normal’. The many adjustments that nations had to go through; job losses, separation of families and friends as well as ties that had to be cut. Monumental job losses around the globe and other more. He talks about the fact that “We have socially adjusted to the new way of life by staying at home compulsorily with our families to contain the spread of coronavirus. I am told married women are having the last laugh in this regard.” Surely, the women did because it made no room for husbands to give excuses of being busy in the office when everywhere was shut down!
He also details what other countries have done to take care of their own because “the virus has no respect for borders, it travels everywhere like a ‘free citizen’ of the world without an international passport or diplomatic passport.” He also indirectly pokes fun at our VIPs who at the drop of a hat travel abroad on medical tourism but could not when coronavirus was everywhere.
In Coronavirus your days are numbered, the writer could be accused of hasty conclusion by thinking the virus was going to be like a flash in the pan. Many months after, the virus is still rampaging with the world living in fear of a second wave!! But like many of us Nigerians, Braimah resorted to biblical belief and call on God to find a lasting cure or solution to the pandemic. He thinks perhaps the invasion of the virus is a “reset button for the world to know peace and do away with evil practices.” Talk of calling on a supreme being for what man has been endowed with the power to deal with.
He concludes, “The good news is that nothing lasts forever, we can trust the same God to blow away the coronavirus storm just like the previous pandemics so that we can have our lives back but note that the world – as we used to know it — may never be the same again.” So true. The world has changed forever.
Braimah is a writer who is not afraid to go against the grains. One of the articles in this collection that would tend to arouse disagreement is the one about the late Abba Kyari, President Muhammadu Buhari’s former Chief of Staff, who died of Covid-19 related complications. He, like a few others, believe it is impolitic and un-African to “speak ill” of the dead because “Dead people cannot bite and they cannot speak for themselves. Conventional wisdom does not allow us to speak ill of the dead, especially in Africa, where our cultural norms forbid such practice.”
His defence (?) or treatise on Kyari does not follow the herd, many of who believe the deceased was a bad influence in the administration of President Buhari. This also dovetails into the next article about the Chairman of the Presidential Taskforce on Covid-19, Boss Mustapha, who also doubles as Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF). In a moment of epiphany, Mustapha had confessed that he never knew the country’s health system was in such a sorry state! But between the death of Kyari and the gaffe of Mustapha, Braimah offers this candid advice to our public officials: “What Covid-19 has done is to open our eyes to the existential danger of neglecting our healthcare infrastructure which, unfortunately, gave rise to medical tourism to far-flung places such as India.” But would they listen?
Read Also: Obaseki, Sanwo-Olu, Elumelu for Braimah’s book launch
In other articles he wrote about the acceptance and inroad that Nigerian pop music is making into the world music space, and also pays tribute to the memory of Prof Pius Adesanmi who died in an ill-fated Ethiopian Airline crash.
The 40 articles in this collection are incisive and full of wits and nuggets to enrich our lives. Any reader will find the writer engaging and “lucid” as Dr. Reuben Abati wrote in the introduction. It is a book that is full of wisdom and written in a language that is not arcane or laced with medical jargon that the topic might want to make one employ.
Braimah has in this collection of essays documented for posterity his own survival tactics and experience during the pandemic. As I wrote at the beginning, the adversity of the pandemic has yielded this volume and I believe more are coming from other writers and artists. The world has changed and this and other writing that would come out later have started recording for us and posterity these times. The world would be richer and better with this experience. Hopefully, lessons have been learnt too. Happy reading.
- The book will be formally presented on Sunday, November 22, at 4pm via zoom
… [Trackback]
[…] Find More Information here to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Read More here to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Find More Info here to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Information to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Information to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Read More here on that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]
… [Trackback]
[…] Information to that Topic: naijatimes.ng/surviving-the-pandemic-stress-the-braimah-strategy/ […]