Another festive season has rolled around and corona is still here, reminding us to remain vigilant. The pandemic has also been a lesson in humility: one can make whatever plans one wants but all it takes is one negative test to scatter all such plans. I was in Lagos on a short work visit and had to cancel appointments because people suddenly felt unwell or tested positive. It is overwhelming to have this pandemic still hanging over us but it is what it is. The good news is that folks – at least in Lagos- are doing their best to keep safe. I was impressed at how each hotel I stayed at took the temperature of every arriving guest and provided hand sanitizers. This is a lot more than was done at the last hotel I lodged in near Atlanta. When these oyibo scientists wonder that COVID isn’t killing us all off in Nigeria, they’d best remember that it isn’t all just a fluke.
My trip was fun, despite a tooth infection that swelled my jaw and landed me in a dentist’s chair for an emergency extraction. When the dentist said I needed an x-ray to see the extent of the infection, I panicked because the times I’ve had tooth x-rays in the US, it’s been uncomfortable: the film positioned inside my mouth and then the machine brought to my cheek to take the picture. In Lagos, it was painless. I was given a radiation gown, stood in front of a machine, asked to close my eyes and keep them closed until the machine said I could open them. And that was it. Painless! The extraction went well, my swollen jaw went down. I was put on a course of antibiotics. What I found fascinating, was the number of people, in Lagos, who warned me against seeing a dentist in Naija. The level of distrust was high.
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But we have been conditioned as Nigerians to be distrustful of the quality of healthcare we receive. What with heads of state who travel abroad to get their headaches checked out and everyone who can afford to checking out of the country for medical treatments, and with the horror stories one hears, who can blame anyone for being wary? One person said I was brave for getting my much needed dental care in Nigeria.
And so, for Christmas, here’s my wish: better healthcare in my country. I want there to come a time when we are as comfortable visiting hospitals and dental clinics in Naija as we are doing so abroad. When we do not have to worry about the supply chain of the drugs that we buy and / or the quality of care that we get. When we trust our system as implicitly as we trust the ‘abroad ones’.
Christmas wishes come in threes, which means I have two more wishes to make. Both of them are linked to Nigeria too and this my most recent trip. A friend mentioned that he had wanted to travel to the east with his family, but that he was shelving it due to security concerns. This friend grew up in Enugu like I did and our family traditions mirrored each other’s. As a child, it was our Christmas tradition to drive from Enugu to Osumenyi, our ancestral home, for the break. Often, our cousins and friends would travel down from Lagos and other parts of Nigeria for the holiday as well. There was little to fear. Our parents didn’t sequester us in homes guarded by MOPOL. We moved about freely, rode our bikes to each other’s homes, and when we were old enough to, drove to neighboring towns visiting friends and trying out isi ewu joints. My second wish is a Nigeria where today’s security challenges are a thing of the past. I wish today’s youth – especially those in the South East where insecurity seems to have been steadily escalating – the same unencumbered freedom I enjoyed.
I saw a friend’s post (it might have been something forwarded to her) about how at this time of the year when families gather, it is imperative that children are guarded from sexual abuse. Anecdotes abound of children who are assaulted by family members and who do not dare to tell their parents. It reminded me of a recent conversation I had with a friend of how well-known sexual predators at our university back in the day got away with their crime because many of their victims didn’t report them. My third wish therefore is that we raise our children with the confidence to report predators, and with the assurance that their safety (our children’s) will always be privileged above everything else.
Because Christmas is for miracles, I will allow myself an extra wish: an end to this pandemic. Two years is long enough and we are tired. E don do! Corona, free us abeg.
Merry Christmas everyone!
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