Cough Cough

There’s a cough following me around on my errands and I’m just about ready to call the authorities.

I hear it as I sit sipping a sleep-obliterating coffee at my favourite city centre café and the man at a table a few metres over interrupts his loud, bragging, talk about tenders to practically cough up a lung.

Whether the fellow is choking on all the lies he’s been spewing or he’s simply being rattled by a mostly benign summer flu is a question for the ages but I don’t stick around to find out.

Shooting the man the same ‘Good luck with that!’ look radiating from everyone in the vicinity, I hastily gather my things and make my way to the sidewalk to cat

ch a cab.

There, I stop worrying about the cough long enough to flag down a rush-hour taxi that scoops me up, careens down Independence Avenue and deposits me at Maerua Mall.

It’s an uneventful trip until the end.

The friendly taxi driver is mask-less because when in plague-era Rome, and he says goodbye with a smile. Or at least that’s what he planned to do. Instead, he dissolves into a hacking, body-shaking dry cough before speeding away half hunched over the steering wheel.

“Jeez!” I say to nobody in particular before turning towards a cellphone repair shop to do something about my mobile’s busted screen protector.

Inside, I’m relieved to see the place totally empty, a heaven of social distance, but my face falls when I realise only one of three employees is wearing a mask and they prefer to use it as a nose hammock.

Nose Hammock is the one who starts coughing.

First at longish, measured intervals then all at once in a bigger continuous wave. I don’t mean to groan audibly but the sound escapes my body perhaps as irrepressibly as the woman’s coughs.

Nobody wants to be there.

The woman should definitely be at home in bed.

The man tending to my phone glances over at her and speeds up his ministrations on my mobile and I want nothing more than to be in a parallel universe where I’m not being stalked by the plague.

After the lifetime it takes to change my screen protector, I make a beeline to buy some face wipes from a nearby health and beauty store. It’s a bad bet just from the line that snakes from the checkout tills all the way into the shop itself but I decide to brave it.

Alexa, play ‘Instant Regret’.

The coughs in the health and beauty store are symphonic.

An alto in the candy aisle. A soprano over by the tampons and a crescendo somewhere between bath and beauty. Maybe it’s my imagination but everyone seems to be on edge.

Coughs ring out like gunshots amidst the seemingly deranged, upbeat music trickling in over the sound system and I pinch the bridge of my mask to tighten it around my nose in my go-to pandemic gesture for ‘Lord, have mercy!’

The sporadic coughs continue and I go ahead and trap myself in the tight checkout queue with the rest of the sitting ducks.

I don’t want to say it but I know everyone is thinking it.

The kneejerk and discriminatory international travel bans are already in effect.

Christmas is coming along with the reckless abandon inherent in the season.

Vaccine hesitancy is edging towards more of a halt.

Masks have long been jettisoned in favour of a good time rather than a long time.

“Omicron, is that you?”

– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter, Instagram and

Facebook; marthamukaiwa.com

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.