Coronavirus: Losing a job and surviving under lockdown

My wife lost her job at the beginning of March this year. She was an air and ticketing agent. Her boss told her in simple terms that business was not going well. “The air industry is on a standstill due to this Coronavirus. We’ve been running at a loss for some time now and we need to downsize.”

My wife was one of the five people who lost their work that day. She came home very depressed and it was understandable. Her salary was better than mine and our household depended heavily on it. “How were we going to survive on my meager salary now that hers was gone?”

We had other plans for her to start something on her own while looking for other opportunities. As at that time, Ghana hadn’t recorded any Covid-19 case so life was normal. My wife invested a huge chunk of her savings into wigs, shoes, and clothes for women, hoping to get things going. About two weeks later, Ghana recorded its first two cases of Covid-19 and everything started going downhill. We couldn’t sell because everyone was in a panic mode. Nobody needed to hear anything apart from “Wash your hands with soap under running water or use sanitizer.”

I kept assuring her that things would be stable very soon so she should hang on to hope. A week later, schools were closed down. That meant I had to be home (I’m a teacher) and help her sell her stuff. We huffed and puffed but we couldn’t do much. When the news of the lockdown started flying around, we decided to buy the things we needed so we could stay behind doors and stay out of trouble. We bought what we needed according to what our pockets will support.

Not so much…

On ordinary days, we should have been very fine but the bleak nature of what’s going on around the world is what scares us. We don’t know when this would be over and we don’t know how long is going to take for the world to recover from this blow. Everything is bleak. All we have is hope—hope that very soon it would end. Nothing specific. So as it is now, we can’t make plans and we can’t talk about tomorrow. The president said the lockdown is going to last for two weeks. What if it takes longer? How do we survive on the little we have left?

I see her. She tries to put up a bold front and smile as though everything is fine but you need to watch her when she goes to the kitchen to pick food. She stands still, looks around to see how much we have left before going ahead to pick what to eat. She’s always thinking about tomorrow. I told her, “We have life. We have love. We’ll beat this. Just be at peace.”

A moment later, I saw her status update on my Facebook timeline; “The world is not ending. Let’s stay calm.”

I gave it a heart and commented, “We have love.” She also haha-ed my comment. We are good together. Come what may, we shall survive.

—Obeng, Ghana

#LoveOnALockDown

#SilentBeads