A COVID Sentence

My entire family will be dead in three weeks’ time but they don’t know it yet.

My father is a bus driver and my mother sells crayfish in the street market. Ever since the virus scare began, they barely pay attention.

In school, we were told to always wash our hands, avoid touching our face and using cash and to use hand sanitizers whenever water and soap is not available.

But how will that work for my family?

My father meets people every day, so does my mother. Their daily work literally involves them touching money from strangers regularly.

How can they practise social distancing?

When I told them to stay home and be safe, my mother asked me if I will be the one to provide money for food from now on.

As for my siblings, they laugh at me when I tell them to stay clean always. As the youngest, what do I know?

Yet, whenever I glimpse the television in the teachers’ lounge, I see death tolls in other countries rising to hundreds of thousands. I see patients in hospitals with masks and efficient equipment. Then I remember the local pharmacy my mother takes us to when we fall sick. I remember Nurse Bola and her long, black fingernails she always uses to scratch out the pimples from her face.

Once, I saw Dr Taye with his hands inside his trousers, scratching his scrotum. How can they keep us safe?

I went to buy hand sanitizer and nose mask for my parents with the 800 naira I have being saving since December. People rarely give money to 13-year olds. The cheapest sanitizer there cost 1,000 naira. A tiny bottle with barely enough that can be used up to five times.

The nose mask was also 1,000. Nurse Bola was smiling as she told me the price, saying that it used to cost 150 naira before this pandemic.

Tonight, my father will come back from work. I can only imagine the hundreds of strangers he would have encountered closely today. I can see the wads of squeezed naira notes he would have touched and counted, occasionally licking his finger to count accurately. Two days ago, he developed a dry cough that just won’t relent.

My mother will return from the market, weary and covered in dust. Yesterday when she returned, she complained of having a fever.

Mu brother will go to the field to play ball with the street boys in the evening. When I told him about social distancing, he laughed and said the virus is not in Nigeria.

My sisters will go to the market to help my mother out. I will be alone, the only rebel.

Teacher Abigail told me that the health centres still do not have the needed resources to detect, treat or contain this virus. So, we are all on our own.

She said it will be hard for my parents to stop going to work. How will they cater for us? The government that is asking us to stay at home, have they thought about our survival and how to help? Teacher Abigail is always praying these days, even though I can see fear in her eyes.

When I go to her house for the free evening lessons she bestowed on me for doing so well in school, she makes me wash my hands, legs, face and every visible part of my body outside. Then gives me enough sanitizer that I can use for my entire body.

I know it affects older people more. How will my parents cope? And if my siblings catch this virus, where will we run to?

All I can think right now is, when this virus passes over, will I be the only one left standing or will they take me with them?