What is Home?

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Justin Trudeau, Canadian Prime Minister with his
brothers and father, former PM Pierre Trudeau.
The government and citizens. They need each other like teeth and the tongue but they keep secrets from each other.

All countries don’t tell citizens about agreements they have with the United States, should President Donald Trump tweet a war, after sending military drones to ‘liberate’ a certain country that does not subscribe to dollar democracy.

Military alliances are a government thing and there’s nothing citizens can do about it because it claims alliances are in the ‘interest of national security.’

We also keep secrets from the government. It has no right to know what happens in our homes and cannot mount electronic cameras at our gates to record the comings and goings of what kids call ‘uncles’ or ‘aunties’.

‘There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation’. CBC journalist Martin O’Malley coined this piece of wisdom but it reached all corners of the globe because Pierre Trudeau, the famous unconventional Canadian Prime Minister, repeated it. Yes. He has sons and one of them is the guy you know.

COVID-19 PROTESTS AGAINST STAY AT HOME
Some citizens in the U.S. are angry. They want to go back to work. They need the money so they took to the streets, which led to some states ditching WHO’s stay at home and social distancing advice, to contain COVID-19.

May 9, protest outside Manitoba legislature.

That is what we tell the government. We won’t say we want to go back to work and walk on the beach because the situation at home is intolerable. Normally, we have the 24/7’s and 9 to 5’s. It works well when two or six people have something to live for, outside the address they call home.

They wake up in the morning, shower and go to different destinations to make money, make friends or sit in coffee shops ‘working’ the whole day. The 24/7’s, family members who run the home raising kids, looking after elderly parents and doing laundry also have their own schedules, then the virus happened. COVID-19 is now forcing them to include the 9 to 5’s in daily planning.

WHAT IS HOME?
Merging multiple schedules and accommodating two or six personalities into one, is the problem. Dampness in the walls is bound to seep in, but it is is our secret. Keep the government out of it, and pretend we want to go back to work, for money.

This global health situation has exposed our secret, that home is not as sweet as it looks in Christmas ads and celebrity Happy Valentine, Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary, Instagram posts.

Money is important to keep body and soul together, but it is no guarantee for happiness. Take the British royal family for example. Divorce is its middle name.
 
Prince Harry was very young when his father Prince Charles and his mother Diana Princess of Wales divorced, but he must remember how it made headlines, mainly because it was a disappointment to millions of people who believe in fairy tales.

Here we are in 2020 with COVID-19 forcing us to live with our personal fairy tales. We have different agendas for living under the same roof, in either holy matrimony or economic necessity.   

Virus or no virus, we made our beds, so we shall lie on them. We just won’t tell the government that it’s the reason why we want to go back to work.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.










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