BY OUMAH OTIENOH

“There was never a forewarning that this thing was coming. It came out of nowhere, as ghosts do…”

This opening catchphrase from Lidudumalingani Mqombothi’s award-winning short story, Memories We Lost painted a true picture of the past globe’s gory situation of the effects of Coronavirus (COVID-19).

What short story should we write about Covid-19? This question reawakened my maiden encounter with Mqombothi’s tale first published in Incredible Journey: Stories that Move You (Burnet Media, South Africa, 2015).

I was invited in 2016 by Writers Guild (Kenya) to talk about “Memories We Lost” that later won the Caine Prize for African Writing at my alma mater, Kenyatta University’s Mombasa Campus.

The excruciating biography narrated in the first person is about the life of a sister suffering from schizophrenia, a mental disorder, through the lens of a younger sister who was two grades above her as the former missed classes battling the malady.

My audience sobbed in their seats as I read portions of the short story which reflected loss and regret. “I remember another time my sister banged her head against the wall until she bled.” Their heart warmed to the nameless sister.

Interestingly, the story was picked the same year as a lead one by Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) in an anthology for secondary schools, Memories We Lost and Other Stories – an exciting collection compiled by my literary godfather, Prof. Chris Wanjala.

As the citizenry made a clarion call about the tales writers should pen in the wake of the coronavirus, harrowing is the mindless violence of mental illness. Even more harrowing and violent is the novel coronavirus that nearly grounded the operations of the entire world.

What parallels can we draw from “Memories” chronicles and the global pandemic? Many resemblances exist between the two. First, as the younger sister tells us about the strange disease, there was never a forewarning. When the coronavirus, a new disease, a strain of the pneumonia virus erupted in Wuhan City, China in November 2019, there was never a premonition.

The sister further tells us about the struggles of the mother to alleviate this strange illness. “She had been through all these rituals and church sermons, and nothing had changed.” Similarly, countries such as Italy and Spain were at crossroads with soaring death tolls as the disease crippled the global economy.  

Even so, there were divergences in the duo. As the narrator held the sister in a tight and long embrace due to the noninfectious nature of the bug, in the coronavirus case, one’s kin and kith were at arms-length once you’ve been confirmed positive – a situation that was common with the citizenry as “social distancing”.

In the “social distancing” era, failing to be miles away which proliferate the virus if in contact with an infected person was comparable to blaming a vulture for perching over a carcass in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God.

Even as we wrestled the pandemic, my mortal mind takes me back to Love in the Time of Cholera by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garca Marquez. In this award-winning novel, the two main characters, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza fall in love during their youth.

Ariza is heartbroken when Daza leaves him and marries a wealthy man. As fate would have it, the man later dies and their love-affair is rekindled.   

The endemic ravaged the entire sphere like in the case of Florentino Ariza.

However, we demonstrated unwavering understanding, care and love to everyone as when the “man” dies, we revitalised our lost love-affair with Mother Nature.

The writer is a Kenyan contributor on literature, art and culture. He is also a travel enthusiast.  oumahotienoh2009@yahoo.com