THE CORONA THEORY OF EVERYTHING: A PERSONAL ESSAY ON CHANGE AND GROWTH FROM CONCRETE
Since the lockdowns began, you probably have been spending an unhealthy amount of time laughing at foolish people, and (or) nonsense videos on the internet.
Yeah, same.
I find this ironic sha. For weeks, productivity evangelists on the internet have preached using the period for self-discovery, new projects, inner work, light work, leg work and so on.
One of those kinds of posts I found on my Instagram, was a tweet screenshot that read something like “if you’re not working on your best self, moving mountains and changing the world during this period, you don’t lack time, you lack discipline”.
Mtchew.
Before the pandemic started to make big font headlines in Nigeria, I had been working from home, executing and creating new work at sometimes what felt like time-warp speeds. I tried to manage a healthy diet, sleep well and most importantly, take longer breaks, from work of any kind — even if it meant choosing not to use my laptop.
On Sunday 29th of March 2020, President Muhammadu Buhari officially ordered a 2-week lockdown affirming weeks of speculation in the media, about the rising number of Coronavirus cases. In the days leading up to the lockdown, I tried to keep my regular routines going and even took on new assignments. I also stocked groceries, and limited outside time, unless for early morning walks, picking up take-out and essential house errands.
But somehow, after weeks of following updates, reports and numbers, when the actual announcement restricting movement became public, I found myself dazed, numb, and not quite sure how to breathe. I didn’t get a productive energy burst. There was no renewed sense of wonder or freedom.
Strangely, the only emotion I have felt is a comforting exhaustion.
I know this feeling too well because at some point last year, I felt completely out of whack.
I moved out of my childhood home before I hit 20. At that age, work was one big stress trigger. I was running all editorial and managerial operations in the early days of The NATIVE, a medium-sized Lagos-based media startup. Combining that pressure with bills, relationships and general life management, created a series of mental hurdles that wore me out quickly. One big reckoning when I burned out was that moving out young is naive as fuck, when you live in Nigeria.
I didn’t want to sit and do nothing though. So I moved to videos, design and corporate communication strategy before my last birthday.
The switch-up gave me space to learn new things and apply my experience curating editorials for culture platforms to big-picture campaigns. But a lot of what began as a temporary way to recharge, seek inspiration for a long-stalled book, and work on new projects also gradually became my new normal. Tired all the time I had been, tired all the time I was.
Dealing with a pandemic overhead is just salt on injury.
In the streets, I see masked faces, but people are carrying on with their lives. Petrol stations are still filled with loud mobbish crowds. There are even more people outside now that restrictions were relaxed for markets and people in the food sector. At supermarkets, security orderlies squirt hand sanitisers on your palm at the door, otherwise, it’s just another day of getting groceries.
It’s almost like no one cares, that something about the world has probably, devastatingly changed.
At the start of the lockdown, I clicked through every link, watched every video and followed every update in hopes of stumbling on some reassurance. There was none.
By end of the second week, the facts and figures were becoming tougher to look at. Just as a sense of helplessness and underlying dread began to set in, history offered some succour wisdom of the present could not. I found out there are multiple records of people before us who lived in a world that didn’t have a lot of the advancements in science and technology of today.
Two hundred years before much of the Eastern Roman Empire was overrun by the Arabs, the first pandemic (popularly known as the Bubonic Plague) took off at Pelisium, a city near modern-day Port Said in Egypt. The year was 541.
It took a year for the plague to reach Constantinople, the capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire, and two more years to reach Rome and Britain respectively. Transmission continued through borders and peoples through the 7th century, until the 750s, when Islam had taken over much of Western Europe.
African sources are scarce, but archaeologists say the ancient Ghana Empire boomed around this period. New trade routes passing through the Gold Coast and colonial rule by the Islamic Caliphate led to increased economic activity in the region. Archaeological finds in Akrokrowa Ghana revealed a farming community surrounded by an elliptical ditch had been mysteriously abandoned in the 1300s.
According to ScienceMag, a similar pattern was recorded in the abandonment of Ile-Ife by the Yorubas. Also in how the population of modern-day Kiringo in Burkina Faso, suddenly shrank by half. Both in the 14th-century.
Islamic scripts hint the Caliphate had strict rules about ‘quarantine’, which may explain ethnic wipe-outs. The Wikipedia page of Syria’s ‘Plague of Amwas’ documents, Prophet Muhammad once instructed that “if a state is being hit by a plague, none from the state should escape and none from outside the state shall enter it”.
Around Europe, similar public health measures gained state-approval. A recent article by The New Yorker suggests references of “forty days” in Christian mythos resulted from practices like 14th Century Romans docking ships in forty-day isolation wards to “air” them out before off-boarding. “Forty days gave the plague enough time to kill infected rats and sailors,” Elizabeth Kolbert wrote.
From the French Industrial revolution to Haitian slave uprisings and more recently Zimbabwe’s 2008 cholera riots, pandemics have played a role in the shaping of human history itself. Data points to a few familiar facts: pandemics often spread through geopolitical trade networks; nations and economies transform rapidly during times of pestilence and disease; social behaviour, popular literature, arts and culture, are often inundated permanently.
In addition to Roman and Arab conquests spreading pandemics along with colonialism, there are also parallels between China’s Belt and Road Initiative (also known as the 21st Century Silk road) and the Silk Road of the 700s. Both are anchors for political and trade activity originating from Central Asia, through Europe and Africa. I think I should note here, that both Coronavirus and the 7th-century plague originated from China to the rest of the world, hitting parts of Iran and Italy the hardest in its early days.
‘Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack
in the concrete,
Proving nature's laws wrong it learned 2 walk
without having feet
Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams
it learned 2 breathe fresh air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared!’
-Tupac Amaru Shakur
As President Muhammdu Buhari, announced the extension of the lockdown and movement restrictions in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo and Abuja, 2Pac’s autobiographical poem, “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” echoed in my mind. The poem is a tale of defiance and rebellion against norm, that may well become similar to the story we tell about coronavirus in years to come.
Oxford University says over a third and half of the transmissions of COVID-19 come from asymptomatic people. This means, pending the development of a vaccine, the virus would have infected (and potentially killed) those who are most vulnerable. While asymptomatic carriers and successfully treated survivors develop herd immunity.
Optimism, though short-sighted, can be placed in a near-future where the pandemic has gone full circle, even as it affects everyday life.
In Medicine
Many countries around the world are going full throttle in the development of medical capabilities. You’d think governments taking public health seriously should be a no-brainer. But while such policy failures may make sense to a Nigerian— whose president habitually takes medical vacations —the world does need medical strength at a level only required during wars. It’s sad we can only donate, clap and post on social media while health workers overwhelmingly risk their lives. Hope is that innovations and public policies from dealing with this pandemic would bring the world a step closer to achieving sustainable universal basic health.
In Business and Innovation
In the corporate world, remote work is changing how corporations operate. Reliance on team-building services like Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, means, the longer the effects of COVID-19 lasts, the more likely there would be an incentive for many banks, firms and big corporations, to build their third-party platforms with the value-add of data and security. An unbelievable amount of jobs may be lost but this space will also allow for an enabling environment to finally bring about the marriage between localised new technology and corporate money.
In Arts and Culture
In a sense, struggle is a big part of the art world’s psyche. British theatres shut down for nearly 78 months in the 1600s due to a plague. But since the pandemic hit major cities, a new wind of financial uncertainty has swept over the industry. Releases have been rescheduled, advertising spend budgets are shrinking by the day and, a horde of big events and festivals got axed or postponed. The only real winners in this sector are creators. Social media is allowing them to pivot away from traditional “industry” middle man structures like management, agents and promoters by engaging audiences directly via social media. Hard to say how profitable this will be in the long run, especially in Nigeria where most entertainment revenue is generated offline, but as the internet continues to thin out national boundaries between audiences, creators who persist may gain a near-boundless reach.
(For context: Mr Eazi, just launched an app, Netflix has been getting mad pitches, also the literary community has been geeking over the possibility that Shakespeare wrote some of his best work like King Lear and Macbeth while under a kind of lockdown.)
Nearly a year after my burnout, I can appreciate how moving into a new work environment in May 2019 allowed me to recharge. These days, even the naivety of thinking I could live without my parents, which has long been a “what the fuck were you thinking?” moment, feels more like a testament to my resilience.
There’s still a lot to be said about mixed strategies governments around the world have employed to combat the spread of COVID-19. What history tells us is that pandemics have always instituted changes that laid the groundwork for future generations to thrive. Yes, this means there’s a looming possibility much of the lifestyle changes we’re already witnessing will be around for a long time. But it also paints a picture of a new way to view the days of our lives.
No one can say for sure how worse things are going to get before they become better. The course of humanity itself has shifted many times as a result of uncertainty and unbelievably great horrors. How we bloom from this hard place will be determined by our collective efforts to be resilient, overcome the dark days, and stick out the new learnings as individuals within a sum of parts.
