Tunde Asaju

By Tunde Asaju

I am grateful to be alive today. Note that I said today. We are all sitting ducks for this crazy bug. If you watch what it does to its victims, you’ll drop all your political correctness and heroism in a bucket and run fe cover
You’ll close doors and windows and choose death by asphyxiation.

But why I’m I grateful? I look back to the days when I was younger and invincible (apologies to my elders on the wall). I look to the days when I fed on the diet of scriptures with my brain suspended.

Those days when I would have defied the stay at home order spitting ‘dangerous’ scriptures against the virus. You know – no weapon fashioned against me shall prosper; his banner over me is love; a thousand shall fall by my left and ten thousand by my right hand…but no evil shall fall on me etc etc.

Those were the days when after provocatively running Easter procession through the Emir Palace Road in Ilorin and being mercilessly beaten by angry people, I thought that I’d earned a medal in heaven. Those were the days when anybody who did not profess my brand of faith was not worth talking to or associating with…for what has light to do with darkness.

I am still a Christian but thank God who redeemed me and gave me my brain back. S/he showed me that creation is beautiful as he made it. How boring the world would be if we all went the same way. I testify that God’s diversity and mosaic is the zenith of artistic beauty. It is not perfect but its beautiful realizing that we will never reach a convergence in faith. Never! That realization humbles me and it makes God even more fascinating!

Life is awesome even in the face of a rapacious and invisible enemy – a spherical ball with horns like a snail peeking out of its shell.

I have lived with asthma now for decades, first diagnosed by a girlfriend. She saved my life, that lady. An asthmatic in crisis will frantically thrust his nose everywhere looking for the same oxygen that observers and care givers are taking in without scruples. Its not funny. Your lungs constrict as life quietly sneaks out of you. Asthmatics know that air is gold! If you get the help you need early, you survive. If not, you’re coronized!

Asthma comes with allergies usually…exzema for some. For me it’s rhinitis – itchy bloodshot eyes, itchy and running nose and ears and sometimes hives.

Please don’t pity me, even I don’t pity me. I don’t have the time for pity, I live!

So why am I rambling? Well because I am in my sixth week of isolation. I wake, take my meds, exercise, eat, open the curtains to watch the sun bathe the world around me with rays of heavenly smile. Outside is quiet, the occasional whirr of planes landing and taking off at the nearby Ottawa airport; or the sound of a car taking off. Yes, there is the odd couple taking a walk and someone walks their dog, but apart from that, there is the silence of the graveyard! I didn’t know that one tank of gas could last more than 6 weeks! Poverty makes me conscious of my fuel dial.

Friends laughed at me when I took isolation early. I laugh back, telling them that asthmatics value oxygen more than gold bars. No need to feel or act heroic. The only people who think I am their hero are some members of my family.

Covid-19 is not flu. It is NOT malaria. It is NOT allergy, it is an invincible death lurking outside there. Don’t believe the spiritualists goading you on to certain death. Don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories and grandfather tales. And by God, chloroquine and àgbo does NOT cure it, ask the doctors, God acknowledges them.

I know you need to survive. I know it’s not easy. The challenges are dire. I see it in my inbox from people who think that I have enough to spare. I know it because members of my own family need the assistance that I am unable to provide them.

If you can, please stay at home, observe the existing lifesaving protocols. Don’t joke with this virus because it won’t joke with you. It wants to kill you. You have a divine duty to stay alive, obey that duty. You’re not invincible to this virus, it can see you. It won’t have mercy on you if it gets its hands on you.

To those of you who HAVE to go out there, we’re praying for you. As the virus spreads, you’ll need to wear masks and learn to take them off properly.

And to all our wonderful health and essential workers out there hoping to keep us alive and keep the world running, thank you in ways thatvwords can’t express.

To the rest of you who can, stay home; stay safe. And yes, if you have a dime to spare, spare it for those in genuine need. You won’t need money in the grave, believe me. And to those doing fine bara and stealing from people, you’ll have your day in hell and I hope Covid-19 gets you before you could spread it.

We all die people, but don’t commit suicide, stay home and stay safe.

Salaam/Shallom.
Picture from an earlier encounter at the hospital. Don’t panic, I am well.