Tatalo Alamu
Covid-19 has been trying everybody’s soul across the globe. Nobody expected a situation as dire and dismal as this. Sadness abounds everywhere and there is an eerie stillness abroad, as if the world has become one huge funeral cortege.
After sustained incapacitation, the living are dazed and disoriented. It is hard to imagine how the post-Covid-19 world, or what they choose to call the new normal, would feel like. The normalization of the abnormal always comes with its own perils.
Yet it is a fact of human existence that adversity often brings out the best and finest in humanity. The current eclipse is not without its sterling heroes.
There has been a rash of noble conduct and exemplary selflessness which cuts across countries, races, religions and creed. Despite the poor conduct of a few, our collective humanity is roused again by collective suffering.
A peep into the stars’ parade reveals a rainbow coalition of triumphant humanity. Please step forward, Captain Tom Moore, centenarian and veteran of the Second World War, who has raised several million pounds for the National Health Service in Britain by daily trudging across his estate behind a wheeler.
His original aim was to raise a thousand pounds before his birthday. But the outpouring has surprised the wildest imagination. At the last count, it has topped twenty million pounds. Arise, Sir Tom? The British surely know how to honour their heroes. They must not keep the old man waiting.
Across the globe in South Windsor, Connecticut, the bugle of honour has already sounded for Dr Saud Anwar, a Pakistani-American Muslim at the Manchester Memorial Hospital who devised a contraption that allowed a ventilator to be shared by at least seven people.
This became very critical in saving lives during the acute shortage of ventilators in the US as the dreaded scourge rapidly proliferated.
It was a thing of joy to watch Dr Anwar stand in solemn attention as the convoy of cars filled with grateful fellow Americans hooted their way past his house. This was a moment America renewed and revalidated its promise as a land of immigrants.
There are so many more that cannot be mentioned in this brief tribute, particularly Nigerian-born health practitioners in the Diaspora who distinguished themselves in the course of serving their new fatherland.
Quite a number of them did not live to tell the story. Among them was our own beloved aburo, Dr Kayode Adefolu Adedeji, who fell in North Wales in the course of duty. May their noble soul find perfect peace in the bosom of God.
Tomorrow, the clouds will recede, darkness will be lifted and the world will smile again.
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