01/05/2020
Corona and the Common man.
I have, through the years, developed special interest in the common man. His organizational skills, his religious beliefs, his political views and even his spending habits. I have dedicated a great deal of my time to the Study of The Common Man. For the sake of this post, the common man is the guy that buys sweet potatoes everyday on his way from work, stops by the local pub for a packet of Chibuku or a nip of these 'ethanol based, food flavoured' spirits and as soon as darkness falls, staggers his way home, passing by his girlfriend's house to offload half of the goods he bought from work before proceeding to his resting place for the night. The home usually has a wife with five to six closely competiting children.
Hold on to that picture.
Some day last week l made a regular trip to the place I like calling KUJAKU. That place is always packed with common men and I sometimes use that environment to my advantage by asking questions on some trending issues in our community, call it 'kutapa anthu mkamwa' if you may, but all in good faith. I asked my neighbors what they make out of this whole Corona situation we have in this country. Little did I know this would spill over and become the prevailing topic for the few hours that followed before darkness sent us ahome.
A few of the common men pressed on the relevance of the lockdown principles while the majority was of the view that there is no such thing as Corona Virus in this country. Let me also point out here that the few common men were later labelled as ruling party cadets for their support of the preventative measures that were proposed by the government. This made me think of how 'politicizing government initiatives' tends to distort what would have otherwise been important information. I also started to think of the possible effects of the same. But that wasnt why I asked, ofcourse.
So I, naturally, took special interest in the majority, I wanted to find out why they would say something as absurd, considering that the media is now awash with statistics, of the dead, new cases and sometimes of those recovered. The common man, ladies and gentlemen, is an interesting subject. The answers ranged from 5G conspiracy theories, which in the local language they called ' chi network cha satanic', mere government propaganda just to disturb the on going voter registration exercise and the number one point for the day 'God loves Malawi too much, he can't let Corona kill us'.
As my interest was primarily to gather information I did not even waste a second in trying to argue otherwise. Kujaku is not a place to stand on the opposing or this particular case, the enlightened corner. People do not like to be schooled by a younger teacher, worse still the same one that teaches their children at Bangwe Secondary School. One key thing I noted that day was that, despite all the efforts that are currently being implemented by various stake holders in trying to combat this virus, we still have a long way to go as a people before we can comfortably regard ourselves fit to face the enemy. This preparation has to also focus on changing people's mindset. We have to work extra hard, especially in convincing the faithful that this battle is not spiritual, unlike all that they believe in, this virus is real and it's killing.
The common man isn't ready.
