Living in a War Zone

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I cannot imagine living in a war zone, a thought common in Canada and United States. We did, in March 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. We ran out of toilet paper and baked beans.

We couldn’t use season tickets to baseball and basketball games. We postponed flying to Trinidad and Tobago to play mas at the annual Carnival. We canceled weddings and surprise birthday parties.

In a nutshell, we couldn’t do the luxury things, we consider the good life. In fact, we thought life had stopped because our movements were restricted.

Living in a war zone means no movement at all, for fear of one thing we fear the most: death. In 2020, we thought about catching the virus so we avoided human contact and got vaccinated. There are no prevention measures in a war zone, the heart’s battery can die any time.

Living in a war zone means the reluctant marriage between day and night because citizens are indoors all the time, thinking about how to escape death.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.

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