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Heavy
Editor’s note: this article is part of the “Covid-19 Reset” project, where the LéO Africa Institute is asking its fellows and associates to imagine a new, progressive post-covid world for our respective communities and countries.
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Truck drivers drive the number up
Truck drivers drive the number up
Track them/ stop them/ we hear they drive straight into brothels/ for babes and bottles/ to bottle the spread/ government called in Bad Black/ to give a recorded message/ the message is that now government recognizes sex workers as a constituency it can work with?/ After years of persecution with prosecution/ and ethics based condemnation/ to open cooperation/ in COVID interventions and communication/ communicates the messages/ that when things are bad enough/ stratum is forgotten.
Forget your car
Or exchange it for a root of cassava
Ow’emmotoka/ n’owa puloti/ both plot how to survive/ sixty-five days of lock down/ and government still says no driving/ but pack your staff into a bus/ and drive them to work/ sometimes I wonder how this whole campaign to will work/ if measures appear to be knee jerk interventions/open garages but don’t open spare parts shops/don’t drive unless you have a sticker/or can afford to bribe for one/one thing about my country/ is that at the right price, anything is for sale/shopkeepers sell at five times the price/and those who can’t afford it can eat ebinyiga/here, stuck at home/alone/watching home alone/lonely/ because we can’t drive to go see the ones we love/stay at home/ flatten the curve/and fatten the belly/Watch NBS dance party on the telly/ really hits me how things have changed/ from Bandali Rise weekends/ to raising the dust in your living room watching NTV SNL/ while ex-NTV employees raise dust on Twitter about their salary/ it’s said that most people don’t earn a salary/ they collect a basic subsistence stipend/while their employers spend on foreign cars/due to cash flow problems because of this lock down/ we will be forced to farm down/ and terminate majority of the staff/ whilst slashing salaries of the rest/ I could see the panic and unrest on my friend’s face as she read the email.
Read the alerts
NBS asserts that there has been a sharp increase
In the number of infections by 8/and two are community spread/ the virus continues to spread/and the East African Community/ is working in great incongruity/ so we will probably see a continuity in the spread/I hear in Tanzania people dread to discuss the subject/ because there is an information blockade/ and not a nationwide lock down/ efforts are underway to fly in the Madagascan miracle medicine/by plane/ funny how countries are happy to fly in untested medicines/ while their citizens are stranded abroad/ and will probably not board a flight home/ until next year/or until this disease is fully contained/ but how will we contain this virus/if we contain the release of information/ if we detain and torture legislators giving food relief/ while other legislators relieve themselves of the duty to check/ cabinet excesses/ and write themselves a 20 Million food relief cheque/ when presidential addresses don’t address tax credits to those who contributed to the COVID fund/ while the consolidated fund is used to fund supplementary expenditures/ three times bigger than the budget of the top foreign exchange earning sector/ technocrats capitalize on the crisis/ to capitalize their bank accounts/instead of capitalizing UDB.
Be assured, taming a virus is easy
The biggest part of it is taming ourselves.
