Copyright namibian
There are moments in life that feel like travelling back in time. Not in a cool ‘Back to the Future’ way. More like catching sight of a news bulletin and reading ‘Covid-19 detected at Swakopmund’. This, coupled with the health ministry’s declaration of an outbreak of mpox, formerly “monkeypox”, puts my time travel somewhere in the region of March 2020 and May 2022. Fittingly and fully aware that it’s 2025 and the global health emergency is over, I read the coronavirus update next to a hospital bed. The screen is silent. But there’s a persistent, stress-induced ringing in my ears which makes for a suitable soundtrack. “Not again”, I say quietly, careful not to wake or worry the patient. Darkly comedic and ostensibly on cue, the man in the hospital bed across the way coughs wetly. As I try to remember whether Covid coughs are wet or dry, my companion draws the curtains around the patient’s bed in a panic. “Aerosols,” I say mechanically yet amazed at how easily such ancient pandemic terminology rolls off my tongue. I don’t really think a deadly worldwide wave is imminent, but it’s strange how the mind and body remember. My heartbeat quickens. The low-level but persistent anxiety I experienced for the better part of two years is back like it never left and I wonder if I should resume my mask-wearing, at least in the hospital. The body remembers. The notion is one I was chewing on the week prior as I wrote about Haymich Olivier’s ‘Land’. It’s a dance production which, among other things, attempts to embody and acknowledge the trauma of the indigenous population’s forced removals from Windhoek’s Old Location during apartheid. In ‘Land’, the body remembers because it’s prompted to do so through a process of research that also sheds light on generational trauma. At the hospital, years after the worst of the pandemic, my body remembers because it’s been triggered by an all too familiar news bulletin. While Haymich employs memory to create something abstract, inquiring and gorgeous, I see a tiny blast from the past and break into a light sweat. As I ruminate on ‘Land’, the Covid-19 news and the patient in a manner only a monkey-minded Gemini can, the more forgiving part of my psyche tells the fretful, self-deprecating section of my brain to relax. Hospitals make everyone uneasy. The Covid-19 pandemic was a terrible time, it’s ongoing, if not recent history, so it’s completely normal to feel some anxiety at the thought of a significant resurgence. Add that to the reason I’m at the hospital in the first place and the odds are certainly in favour of some hyperventilation. What is it the wellness gurus and certified psychoanalysts say? It’s okay not to be okay. It’s okay to be worried, triggered, in mourning, stressed or sick. The problem is the world keeps turning. Life keeps demanding you smile, laugh, talk, show up or meet targets, quotas and deadlines and there is often fair little grace when you can’t keep up. Thankfully, that isn’t really the case in my work or personal life. I have the privilege of a wonderful family and of setting my own working hours. But my heart goes out to anyone who is struggling with the sheer continuation of it all … blind as life can be to the world spinning off its axis. – martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
