My Covid-19 Dilemma

When this Covid-19 maelstrom has finally cleared, and the lockdowns world over have
been lifted, and normalcy returned, there will surely be tales to tell. The conspiracy
theory that China made coronavirus will become part of our folklore. The staggering
statistics of Covid-19 fatalities in Italy, Spain, and the USA will feature prominently in
our tales. We shall always remember the Ugandans who bribed their way out of
Entebbe Airport to elude mandatory MoH quarantine, and the botched hunt for them
later on. We shall sure find time to reflect on our president’s farcical briefings, and oh
boy, that indoor workout demo that went viral will be a keepsake of sorts. We shall
talk of how petrified we were as the spectre of contracting the disease loomed large.
The ban on public transport and the ramifications that ensued will be on our lips
forever. There will be many tales, tales enough to last us a lifetime. And when any talk
shall veer in the direction of the ban on transport, I shall have a very personal tale to
tell.

My story begins at the start of the second week of the partial lockdown. It was my
turn to be on duty at school. Almost everyone I have talked to about this duty thing
has asked, “What duty was there to do at school in a lockdown?” Well, our school
arrangement has always been that during school breaks, we (a select group of five)
take turns being at school for at least a week until the holidays are over. We keep tabs
on the support staff. Banana plantations must be weeded, overgrown lawns trimmed,
breached fences mended, the cows tended to, and besides any emergency that might
arise, we must ensure that the security of the entire establishment is guaranteed by
checking on the security teams regularly. So I had to leave my home in Mbarara, forty-
odd kilometres away, to report for duty. Private vehicles were still being allowed to
move, albeit with no more than three people, driver inclusive. I have no vehicle of my
own, but a workmate who owns a little saloon was willing to pick me up and drop me
at school at a pocket-friendly charge. We reached school a little after midday.

Later in the evening, I strolled into school to check on our nighttime security team. I
found them eating supper at the gate. We exchanged pleasantries and bantered a bit
about our coronavirus-induced plight, and I left them laughing, as I moved on to
check on other places in school. I happened to pass behind the administration block,
and from there I could see what was left of the sunset. Most of the sun had gone down.
Only a residual splash of crimson hung on the horizon, as a piece of cloud that looked
like a giant alligator glowed above what could have been Lake Edward. I sauntered to
the boys’ dormitory side. It was eerily silent, and walking alone in this place with the
huge pitch-dark curtains of nightfall stretching around the earth’s corners was a tad
unnerving. For a place synonymous with the babel of adolescent chatter, the silence
here was deafeningly loud. I later retreated to my house, with the chorus of nocturnal
sounds filling my ears from all around.
On the second day of my stay, we got social media notification that the President
would be making another address to the nation. It was during this address that private
vehicles were banned. Some car owners were complicating the fight against the virus,
the President said. With public transport outlawed, they were going for the kill. They
were converting their cars into taxis, and whereas they carried the mandatory two
passengers, it was probable that they were ferrying virus carriers from one end of the
country to another, and daily, thereby increasing the risk of the disease spreading fast.
Only delivery trucks, government vehicles engaged in the coronavirus fight, and boda
bodas, provided they did not carry passengers, would be allowed on the road.

My weeklong stay at school was the epitome of strict adherence to the “stay home”
guideline given by the MoH. Apart from the daily rounds I made in school, I mostly
stayed indoors either marking my students’ scripts, reading, writing, watching telly or
cooking. Palm Sunday was the last day of my duty turn, and my thoughts were now on
my homeward journey. I thought of hiring a small 1200 cc pickup truck. I could act like
I was going to pick merchandise and travel lawfully. I began contacting some of the
people who owned those trucks. They are not many, and the two I spoke to were
asking for an extortionate ninety thousand shillings to take me. I felt it made no sense
to spend such a sum like that at a time when I did not expect any payment soon. I
would hoof it back, I resolved. But that would be after the curfew hours on Monday.

I hit the road at six fifty-four, twenty-four minutes after the curfew time had expired.
The morning was chilly, and more so in the valley. A cloud of mist hung above the
swamp on my left, shrouding the tufts of the papyrus reeds in some parts. Swamp
warblers rang out their cheer for the new day from somewhere under the mist, while
other little birds, not to be outdone, chirruped sporadically from the comfort of the
trees and shrubs of the valley. Apart from the sounds of nature, it was a quiet road that
I walked. I could hear my footsteps as I briskly hit through the gravel under my feet.
The sunrise was an otherworldly kaleidoscope of radiant gold, yellow, orange, peach
and cinnabar against a backdrop of black silvery clouds. The hills around would later
be bathed in a glow of sharp beams of gold. Now, I should tell you that sunsets and
sunrises affect me in a very sweet way. Here I felt as if I had just been newly created. I
felt immensely peaceful, a kind of peace that seemed to gravitate to the core of my
soul.

It was about eight when I passed Kabwohe. The town was just waking up, and a few
souls ambled about in the streets. I could see that most shops were locked with
gigantic padlocks. Apart from the agrochemicals shops which were open the normal
way, the other shops I saw open had restraining sisal strings in front of them, and each
of them, conspicuously had only one of their double shutters open. The usually jam-
packed boda boda stages were just bare ground. The taxi rank for the Mbarara-bound
vehicles that would normally be a cacophony of noises from brokers, travellers, and
the honking of car horns was now very much like an abandoned mine. The loud men
of this place infamous for spewing obscenities and brawling for the pettiest of causes
had been robbed of a livelihood. I just wished to know how they were coping.

On the eastern outskirts of Kabwohe, a little after a police checkpoint, I caught up

with a ragged-looking young man, who seemed to have been walking for long. He was
tall and dark. His face was partially visible because he wore a woolen hat right to the
eyebrows, and stretched it slightly below his ears. He wore a pair of black denims, a
ragged blue T-shirt inside a black bomber jacket and a pair of drab sneakers. He had a
small plastic soda bottle in his right hip pocket, and over his left shoulder he carried a
small nylon bag. He looked to me a little curious, and I chose to ignore him. I simply
passed him and quickened my steps. But after about ten minutes, he was back in step
with me. I decided to speak to him.

He told me he was going to Mbarara and had started his journey at eleven o’clock in
the night from Rutookye, a trading centre in Mitooma District, some fifty kilometres
from where we were. It defied logic, though.

“How about the curfew? Weren’t you disturbed by the security men enforcing the
curfew?” I asked.

“I met thugs, just near Nyabubare,” he said, “but I passed nonetheless. There was not
much they could do. Nobody can stop me walking in my country.”
He went on to tell me that at about three in the morning he had stopped to rest in an
open roadside kiosk in Kitojo, seven kilometres from where we were, and slept there
for about two hours. Something was not adding up. If he had resumed his walk at five
or thereabouts, I should not have found him after Kabwohe, he should have been far
ahead. I decided not to probe further into the flawed side of his tales.

We reached a roadside stall where a middle-aged woman was selling pancakes in a

transparent plastic bucket that she covered with a blue lid, and my colleague bought
about one dozen pieces. As he walked towards me, he stretched out his hand to have
me pick some from the newspaper leaf in which they had been wrapped for him. I told
him my stomach did not like them, and thanked him for offering to share with me. I
remembered that he had used the one thousand shillings note that he had picked in
the grass near a stationary truck that we had passed a few minutes back. I also
remembered how he had swooped on the little note when I had shown it to him in the
grass. It was from there that I sensed that he did not have money on him. Whenever I
stopped to buy water, I bought his bottle as well. He did not thank me though for any
of the offers I gave him. We stopped four times, and on the last one, he ordered some
drink whose name I had never heard. I later learnt it was one of the many drinks
locally produced here and advertised in various media for a myriad of health benefits,
with greater emphasis laid on sexual performance enhancement among males.

The sun was high now and it shone on our heads with unrelenting fury. Beads of sweat
continually dropped from my forehead, and I could also feel a wetness coursing down
my back. It also seemed to be the peak hour of the traffic on this road. The permitted
vehicles whizzed past, and boda bodas, sometimes carrying passengers, rattled by.
There were also lots of trucks passing from either end, making our walking
uncomfortable. I still remember that fleet of huge Primefuels trucks nearly blowing us
off the road, and their frightening engine roars causing mini tremors beneath our feet
as they passed. Some motorists rather inexplicably chose to pass too close to us, and
there were moments when we had to scamper off the road onto the grass to survive
being [Link] on the grass end meant having to occasionally leap over rotting
carcasses of canines, cats, or mongooses that had been knocked by speeding vehicles
and pushed to the side. If it was not the dead animals we were jumping over, it was
rubbish of all manner, most likely dropped out of car windows by travellers in taxis
that ply this road. There were blinding flashes from the aluminum foil of takeaway
packs, mineral water and soda bottles, soiled baby diapers, and sometimes we passed
sackfuls of domestic waste.

A time came when my movement became laboured. My bag got heavier and I began to
feel a burning sensation under the big toe of my right foot. I had been feeling a
growing pain first in the lateral ligament of the left knee, but then the right knee also
buckled. It felt as though the entire network of veins in my legs was conspiring to fail
me. Every step I made ramped up the pain, which shot like arrows into my brain. I
wondered what would happen if I could walk no longer. Meanwhile, my colleague,
who was now walking at the opposite side of the road, on my right, was adjusting to
my pace. We were not talking anymore. But I felt I needed to tell him what was
happening to me.
“Don’t despair,” he said after I had told him, “we are nearly there.”
I kept trudging on, thinking of what a disappointment I might be to him if I failed to
proceed.

We were a couple of yards from the Ibanda Road junction, four miles outside of
Mbarara town when the unexpected happened. A blue truck pulled in, a little ahead of
me. The man at the wheel said he was offering us a lift. I did not know him, nor did
my mate. He said he had passed us countless times as he made his trips. “You surely
must be tired,” he said. We jumped onto the truck and rode in the trunk, my friend
and I. A couple of minutes into our ride, we looked at each other. We smiled.