My recent arrival in the United Kingdom earned me a fourteen-day compulsory living in quarantine in London.
The entire fourteen days of my stay in quarantine remained not only a lonely self-isolating experience but a curious journey as part of the new “normal”.
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The countdown to the last days cannot be said a productive experience.
For me, I was not only looking for the opportunity to quickly outlive the quarantine experience; it means that I want to be a free man again.
That implies that I would no longer be tracked by the authorities after having spent a whole fourteen days of life in a quarantine regime as strictly required for in-bound travellers entering the UK within the prevailing COVID-19 Protocol from a number of listed countries among which is Nigeria.
These days people talk of the “new normal” in the way people do things and so do not be surprised to find this new normal stretching from some parts of Nigeria all the way to Europe.
As you enter the Terminal Building at the Abuja Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, you find a sparsely populated building with everyone walking and carefully keeping a distance from the other person at the same time with everybody wearing their face mask.
The careful screening of would-be passengers started right from the checking desk where you are required to answer if you have the right to enter the country of destination.
You are required to complete a COVID-19 questionnaire at the Immigration desk.
A number of airlines require you to take COVID-19 test and show the clearance certificate before boarding their flights.
Not that this necessarily means you are free of the virus, for you may test positive today but turn negative in few days on re-testing.
This is the nature and mystery of COVID-19 that continue to put fear in people generally.
It is a new normal when people are afraid to mix and some have locked their gates against friends and visitors for obvious reasons.
As a precaution few days before the trip and not asked by anybody, I took the COVID-19 test at one of the FCT testing centres.
I told them I was due to travel. After four days of the stipulated time, there was no result; even repeated emails and sms reminders went without the result.
Few moments before the mid-night take-off and still no results.
It took a friend doctor working there texting me that I was negative.
To date, I am yet to receive the official NCDC emails of my COVID-19 status.
But don’t worry if you take the test and result is delayed.
If indeed you are positive, the NCDC people themselves would rush to you.
Nigeria Airports have been closed to international flights except for humanitarian and special flights.
These special flights labelled as evacuation flights sometimes involve governments’ arranged flights taking back home their citizens.
Since the pandemic and subsequent lockdown, the Nigerian government had evacuated its citizens home and, similarly, others have done so from here.
COVID-19 has forced the world into a situation of “all to their tents”.
Besides the evacuees, people who have the means and special needs, like health challenges or passengers with pre-existing Visas can actually travel on “Evacuation Flights” or charter flights.
Because of “Social Distancing” requirement on every aspect of boarding the aircraft, seating and disembarking were orderly and in adherece to the global COVID-19 protocol.
We were asked not to use the overhead-fan above the passenger for the obvious reason that the fan might circulate the virus.
Altogether, large numbers of passengers boarded the huge Air France plane from Abuja to Charles De Gaulle with many Nigerian passengers transiting to London.
Throughout the flight, passengers kept on their masks, removing them only for the time they took their dinner.
With everyone wearing a mask, it all looked surreal and as if people onboard were coming from outer space.
This scenario was re-enacted at the Charles De Gaulle and at the Heathrow airports.
The thing to note is the challenges you face on arriving at Heathrow.
First, the long queue you find testifies to the fact that part of the world has been travelling despite the lockdown.
Business-related travels world-wide have slowed down, so too is tourism but people still have health needs and families trying to re-unite are travelling.
COVID-19 protocol is strictly observed in the UK beginning with the fact that you are required to go online to a UK government website to provide required information as to where you are staying with a phone number and address.
Ordinarily, people not equipped to do this got totally confused and were forced to wait for long hours at the airport.
The thing is to go online for the COVID-19 requirement before starting the journey to the UK.
By coming in from a foreign country by air, you are suspected to have been exposed and has to be cleared.
So, the UK regulations demand that you isolate and proceed into QUARANTINE and remain in there for mandatory fourteen days.
This applies to people arriving from Nigeria too.
Having filled-in the form online or with the immigration officer’s help using the tablet, you are given a hotline in an email to call the National Health Service (NHS) if you feel any symptoms linked to the pandemic while in quarantine.
Here, to live in quarantine is another form of isolating yourself.
You can quarantine yourself in a hotel room and pay your way or you quarantine in a family house in one room while not mixing with other family members.
The list of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ includes quarantining at the family house, being restricted to one room, not socially mixing and visitors are generally not allowed into the house.
All these, and the use of a separate bathroom and social distancing may be very difficult to follow.
I have been quarantining all alone in a room in a flat where I cook for myself.
Provisions are ordered online and are delivered at the door.
My contact with outside world includes using the phone and watching people in the nearby open park seven floors down jogging and playing football.
Mentally and psychologically, I identified with joggers in the park.
Still within the confines of the one room, I indulge in my own real physical exercise.
I walk the distance from one corner to another pacing from wall to wall and marking time jumping on the spot as Nelson Mandela did in the Robben Island prison.
To stay in UK quarantine is not like living in detention.
No one is holding the key to this “prison” but the key is self-discipline and self-control.
The authorities are able to call you at random and track you whether you are where you are quarantining.
So, the key is self-discipline. Nigeria to date, has in place a similar fourteen-day quarantine regime for incoming travellers.
Now, the tipping point is that, on my final return to Nigeria, the stage is set for my final hurdle and the dilemma.
Imagine, after spending fourteen days in quarantine in the UK, only to undergo another two weeks period of quarantine on your return to Nigeria which is bound to happen in a few weeks’ time.
The great expectation is that, with the resumption of international flights in Nigeria, there may be a review of current quarantine regime by the Presidential Task Force (PTF).
Ben Asante is a veteran journalist who based in Abuja and London, email: [email protected]
