Experiencing the mental health detriments of a pandemic

One feels alright

Are you alright? I hear people ask, and I answer, I am fine, thanks. I think I am fine; I feel I am fine, generally, things are fine and well. Yet, they are not so.

Some of the consequences of the pandemic are not as studied or appreciated to any extent, the mental health consequences. In terms of relationships, I am engaged, but we are on different continents almost 9,000 kilometres apart, we were last together in January and communicate daily keeping faith, hope and love alive until the circumstances allow us to meet up in South Africa soon.

To feel human

However, at the crux of this issue is the fact that I am a lone occupant of my apartment in a big city of impersonal glances or stolen greetings. My social interactions are only on Sunday, first at church in our socially distanced seating with masks on, no singing, no touching and pleasantries at a distance. I have not shaken a hand or felt the tight grip of a handshake in probably 9 or 10 months.

Sunday evenings, I meet with my close neighbours for wine and snacks, much banter, smiles and laughter, they have companions and family, I return alone to my abode comforted by the video conferencing with my fiancé or telephone conversations with friends I have no seen in ages.

Touch feels good

The last time I hugged someone was when we hugged at O. R. Tambo International Airport in mid-January. My social humanity is under stress and seriously strained. I was probably last touched when the nurse donned gloves to take blood in April, it remains the last significant human touch I have felt.

I am at work with colleagues I have never physically met, we have been working together since May, but I have been working from home or living at work as the case might be. They have families, some even visit the campus of the workplace, so human interaction takes place to an extent, which for many like me, we live in an electronic age of sight and sound, smell is local or just home as the restaurant culture is literally gone, touch is anathema as it is to be avoided and taste is what you cook or put together to eat.

Senses feel lost

You wonder what this pandemic has wrought upon the earth, it takes away your sense of smell and taste, then robs you of the enjoyment of the sensation of touch, whilst the use of sight and hearing is constrained to a world bolstered mostly by electronics. As social animals, we have lost the social and the animal begins to disintegrate without the grooming that comes with the socially enhancing qualities of human interfaces, much of it physical.

I am fine, I have found coping mechanisms, I am working with the expectation that things will ease up and soon a semblance of living like a real human being with all senses in deployment will come. That sensation of skin on skin, the warmth of touch, the whispering that triggers and excites the ear from breath to sound, the expression of love when lips meet and tongues tussle, you melt into each other with a longing that no words can yet express.

That is what keeps me sane, for I reckon, all this shall pass, the night always ends in the breaking of dawn, no matter how long it seems to our consciousness. There is stress, there is strain, but we prevail.

Sensory perceptions of silencing smoke alarms

A clarion to slumber

When I first heard the sound, it was like my mind was playing with me, I came from deep within my slumber at the point where the effects of my medication were beginning to exhibit that stoned feeling. It was just after 2:00AM

Then as someone who regularly sleeps with lights on and sound in the background, I began the process of elimination, trying to determine where the sound was coming from.

There was no urgency, yet my life could have depended on it as I checked my phones and pressed a button; the sound stopped. It was not another minute before the sound started again and it still did not occur to me in my half wakened state that it could be more serious.

Like a cricket hunt

In my mind, I thought I was the source of the annoying sound, so as I moved around the room as if to echo-locate the source of the sound, I pressed the power button on my laptop and the sound stopped momentarily before it started again. This time I switched off the laptop and it began to dawn on me something more serious was afoot.

The sound very much like the chirping of a cricket and those who know, know that it is nigh on impossible to locate a cricket in a room by its chirping sound, except if you are dog-eared.

That might be an alarm, I thought, so I phoned reception and no one picked up the phone, my heightened senses now primed for escape, I dressed up for the cold, and properly dressed and presentable I was, as I grabbed my cane and my hat and stepped out of my room, not forgetting my hotel room key.

Comforted I was

Located on a mezzanine floor and at the very end of a long corridor, I had earlier noted where the fire escapes were, I would be descending 6 floors in total, but I was comforted by the sight of a uniformed member of staff at the other end of the corridor, making it down the stairs.

No one seemed to be in panic mode as they called the lift, but I needed to be sure it was not my senses playing games with my reasoning. I hailed the security man and he assured me there was nothing wrong, that I could return to bed.

Not by half, I do not sleep that well to have my sleep disrupted so flippantly that I could roll over and shut eye back into slumber-land at the flick of a switch, neither was my mind ready for work, I had to step out.

You don’t say

Apparently, a guest, (Room 318?) whilst having a shower and how it adds up escapes me, there was a leak which entered the fire alarm system in the room below and yes, it was the fire alarm that went off when I was pressing keys in my room thinking the sound was centred on my own little world.

What was more upsetting was the realisation that I did not realise that it was a fire alarm and that I should have gotten out of my room at the earliest opportunity to safety.

My reflex, my conditioning, my alertness all deprecated by reason of medication and almost being too smart for myself. This requires a radical readjustment in my conditioning. Strangely, I have a way to compensate for this kind of situation, I know now that when I hear this sound, I should err on the side of caution, thinking it is warning of a fire before I start engaging my brain in the stupid exercise of endangering myself.

Alright now

One can rationalise and beat oneself up afterwards, but there are things you do not trifle with, fire alarms, for instance.

As for sleep, maybe in another hour, I would have had that before this gets published because, this was first drafted away from the hotel at about 4:30AM.

Beyond the veil

Right through the veil

A lot of commentary has gone in the talk of unveiling the veil which gained some serious press when Jack Straw, the leader in the UK House of Commons revealed that he always entreated veiled visitors to his constituency surgeries to remove the veil.

As Nkem in African Shirts highlights, whilst he submitted the issue of communication, he was really pushing the issue of integration – both in my view are important.

Coming from an African society, Nigerian in particular, it was a sign of disrespect or obstinacy to look elders in the eye when being spoken to or when speaking to elders. In fact, rarely do we look each other in the eye when communicating even amongst peers, it is deemed confrontation and aggressive that it rarely happens.

Look me in the eye

When I moved to the UK, this cultural thing came with me, but then I realised all too soon that people expected you to look them straight in the eye when conversing, it represented honesty, truthfulness and sincerity – I was at the risk of being condemned untrustworthy for not interacting in the expected manner.

The expected manner being the culture and norms of forms of conversation in the UK, this regardless of the fact that I for a while from the age of 6 to about 25 the dominant culture in my life was Nigerian.

In these modern times, we are used to various forms of communication; the telephone by which variations in tone and inflexion can convey a manner and demeanour; emails or letters where hopefully thought and expression are used effectively; online chat which allows for casual forms of communication or Short Message Service (SMS) test messaging on mobile phones.

Senses in communication

The list is not exhaustive, but these allow for communication without the need for physical contact. However, when the person with whom I am communicating is in my presence, then, I expect with all the available senses I have at my disposal to interact with varying levels of intimacy.

Recognition (sight) of whom I am meeting, then a handshake (touch), as part of an introduction and greeting that would be voiced (hearing), if we are wearing cheap cologne or perfume (smell) and (taste) in a kiss, if we are a lot more intimate.

Some people might have some of their senses deprecated and then would have to rely on other senses to interact – Helen Keller – who was both deaf and blind used her hands to feel faces and communicate.

My point, when there is a presence to communicate; concealing the face does become an impediment to communication.

Where we are from is not where we are

Now, there are cultures and locations in this world where covering the face with slits for the eyes are signs of chastity and purity, that place in not in Europe.

My view is that we should definitely bring the best integrating bits of our foreign cultures to meld with host cultures for the promotion of understanding of where we are from, those bits of our cultures that separate us such that it creates division rather than interest and inquiry do not help us get assimilated into host cultures.

The freedoms the West offers us to be who we are should be not taken to the point that our expressions of values go against the grain of cohesion and the fostering of community relationships.

We are who we are, yes, but we are no more the dominant culture when we leave our indigenous lands of origin.

Basically, I do not see this as an Islam issue, it is basically a cultural-integration issue where people forget that freedoms they enjoy in freer societies should encourage them to integrate rather than look for ways to dissociate and be separate.

People who read this along religious lines are just looking for conflict rather than conciliation and shame on them.