It’s exactly a week since I came back to the UK from one of the most awesome countries in Africa, Tanzania, my home country. And now I’m in self isolation, staring outside the window wondering how I could have enjoyed the warm weather that beamed on us this weekend. However, it’s not that I am complaining about staying indoors. It has given me more time to reflect on how much damage Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) would cause.

When I left the UK mid-February to go and enjoy the sunny weather in Africa, the first question I encountered at the London Heathrow Airport was whether I had been to China in the last two weeks. I was a little bit puzzled and smiled saying, NO, but so what If I had been there. The response for someone who was on a holiday mood was shocking to them. I was told by one of the attendants that they could have even stopped me from travelling.

At the time that I arrived, there was not a single reported case of coronavirus from Africa. But I did find myself being tested at the Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam. I was not sure what exactly they were testing. Later on, I found out that it was my body temperature they needed to examine.

So, as I always do during my leave, I go to as many places as I can, meet family and friends in all sorts of places, and visit my cousins, aunties, and uncles in Zanzibar. But this particular time, the media was continuously on coronavirus where Italy was the highlight and almost everybody was discussing about their poor demise. Radio, television, social media, you name it. The reaction of the majority was quite calm, maybe hoping that it will never enter Africa, but with some, panic was brewing.

Despite culturally being people who always hug and shake hands while greeting each other, everything almost changed the minute the first case of a person infected by the virus was announced. Nobody wanted to shake hands, each will say ‘tusishikane, mambo ya corona’(let’s not shake hands, it’s all about corona). The announcement from the minister of health in Tanzania came just one hour before my friend Vicensia, my cousin Tutu, and I landed in Arusha. We were heading to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Manyara National Park. And, alas, the first coronavirus case was in Arusha.

Our first reaction was not to panic. We already had our sanitisers handy and we had a long discussion on how to protect ourselves and what to do in case we do catch the virus. It might not sound believable that Africans are easy to adjust, but what I witnessed in Arusha, where tourism has been highly affected, is how people immediately started washing hands. I have never washed my hands that much in my life. Every step you take in a hotel or restaurant someone comes over with water and soap or sanitiser. And, as I said earlier, no handshake at all. I know some will say, that alone is not enough. But it is a step forward.

The majority have changed their behaviours, despite the government not announcing a lockdown. A number of people who never even heard the word sanitiser started gaining interest. Most of the hotels and restaurants were empty and many respected social distancing.

While all this was happening most of the airlines cancelled all their flights in attempt to combat the spread of the virus. However, I managed to get Qatar Airways from Zanzibar. At the time more than 7,000 people had died in the UK. Did I panic? No. But I was very concerned as I am among those who have an underlying condition – asthma.

I stayed on transit for almost 5 hours in Zanzibar and a number of hours in Doha as well. You can imagine the number of people who were around the airport. Though most were wearing masks nothing is fully guaranteed. Unfortunately, I could not stand wearing a mask as my nose started itching continuously and made me sneeze profusely. And sneezing makes a lot of people around you uncomfortable, especially during this pandemic. When I sneezed just before boarding the flight in Doha one European woman who was sitting beside me stood up, looked at me, nodded her head in disgust, and moved far away to another seat.

I arrived safely. Unlike Tanzania where they tested your temperature, the UK was a bit relaxed as I was not tested at all. I went home straight away and noticed the country was almost deserted. Then I got a minor flu, which made me remember all the homemade ‘concoctions’ as my dear friend Jo-Angeline, who called to see how I was doing, call them.

So, I thought of all the natural medications our mums and aunties used to give us, from boiling ginger to drinking hot water with lemon and honey. I even came back with leaves from the neem tree, which is known as muarobaini/muarubaini in Swahili as it was said to cure forty (arobaini/arubaini) ailments. As I was taught as kid, I boiled the leaves and inhaled their vapour. I just did anything that will make me feel I am killing the virus.

What was different in the UK is the lockdown where almost everybody is indoors. You only go out for a very specific reason, mainly to the hospital or to buy groceries. Even that has to be very brief. As I hardly had any food in my house, I popped out briefly to buy groceries two days after my arrival. You have to be prepared to ‘wait ages’ for a bus and, on top of that, you have to be patient enough to wait on a long queue at the supermarkets while making sure you observe a distance of at least a meter or two from each other.

What surprised me when I was in Tanzania was the number of phone calls I received from my cousins in the UK, asking me to bring back Panadol, yeast, and spirit for homemade sanitisers. At the time some of the stores in the UK had run out of these products. Now there are some limits on the amounts that you can buy to curb hoarding so other people can also get necessary products.

While I sit and wonder in my living room about Tanzania, a number of issues come to mind. Despite closing schools, no handshakes, and Tanzanians trying hard to wash their hands, religious gatherings and public prayers are still going on. In my own view, such public gatherings could be halted for a while just to help in combating the virus. One particular mosque in Dar es Salaam, known as ‘Msikiti wa Ngazija’, had almost took the right turn by closing its operations for 21 days so as to protect its worshippers. However, just after 3 days the mosque had to change its stance. A number of friends have also told me how hard it is to convince their parents to stop going to churches.

It may also not be easy to control people who use public transport, but maybe taking less passengers at a time might help as what is called ‘level seat’ in Tanzania seems to be aiming at. Not everybody can buy from supermarkets, but maybe controlled queues in traditional markets might serve the purpose. Limited people should enter banks and other public spaces at a time. In my reflections I thought flights, especially from abroad should probably be suspended, so I am relieved that at last Tanzania has decided to halt all international passenger flights. Our local media should also be more proactive in sensitising people to take coronavirus seriously and follow official guidelines on how to protect one another.

I am not saying it’s going to be easy. But I strongly feel it should be done. Well, that’s just me, dreaming that my beautiful continent of Africa and the whole wide world will be saved from this terrible virus. As the first president of Tanzania used to say, “it can be done, play your part.”