A letter to my grandchildren

My dearest grandchildren, 

A few weeks ago, just days before he died, your great grandfather sent an email to me. He suggested that I write a letter to my grandchildren that they can read 30 years from now.

He felt it was a good idea so that - with the passing of time  - we won’t forget.

He was right, because I am sure that in three decades from now, when we relate the events of 2020 to you, you will find it hard to believe.

I find them hard to believe even though I have been and continue to live through them. Recently I stood in a shopping queue and looked at the people around me. If anyone had told me on New Years Day 2020 that three months later we would all be wearing masks and keep a distance from one another I would have laughed.

Or, if someone had suggested that the whole (and I mean the entire) world would come to a standstill, I would have said: “Impossible”. But that, my darlings, is exactly what happened.

With all our technology, weapons and knowledge – a virus, 10 000 times smaller than a grain of sand, floored the world.

We first heard rumours of it in January 2020. News reports informed us of a deadly virus in Wuhan, a town in China. We didn’t take that much notice, since we have had these viruses before -  SARS, MERS, swine flu and of course Ebola. Every time it seemed like a bit of a storm in a teacup. “Surely this would be the same and we will survive”, we thought. 

How wrong we were.

The COVID-19 virus, as it was named, spread like wildfire and killed people indiscriminately in its wake. We watched in horror as health care systems (and mortuaries) in countries like Italy and the UK and New York became overwhelmed.

We prayed that it would miss us. “Maybe, just maybe Africa will get a break”, we whispered foolishly. But it was not to be. Beginning of March we had our first diagnosed case. A week later your mums and dads – and I had been infected. We were lucky, but hundreds of thousands of others were not.

Our president, Cyril Ramaphosa, acted immediately. Like many other nations around the world, he shut down the whole country. I know that it must be impossible to comprehend, but everything came to a standstill overnight. Almost no cars on the roads and no planes in the air. All our cities and towns became ghost towns. People could only leave their homes to shop for essential items, like food and medicine. Strict curfews applied. We were not allowed to visit one another, or go to church or exercise outdoors.

At first it was only going to be for three weeks, but then it became another three weeks and gradually the months rolled on.  

Although some restrictions were lifted over time, it took five very long months before we felt something resembling normality beginning to return. I say something, because the world is a totally different place from the one it was before lockdown.

It is as if we had hibernated and when we woke up – everything had shifted. Nothing seems the same anymore and the things we were certain of seem no longer certain at all.

We can no longer engage with others in a way we as humans long to. Instead, we have to wear masks and keep our distance – because every person we meet can harbour a death sentence.

The global economic system can no longer provide hundreds of millions of people with jobs and so we are seeing hunger and depravation on an unprecedented scale, making us wonder if this system is, in fact, the right one.

“What caused all of this?” I’m sure you want to know.

The answer is surprisingly simple. It was our greed, our cruelty, and arrogance that caused all this suffering. We knew that when animals are put under stress, diseases can jump from them to humans.

Yet, greed allowed millions of wild animals to be traded for consumption by a privileged few. Arrogantly we ignored all the warnings from scientists and activists  - thinking we would have the skills and the knowledge to survive any virus.

As humanity we have been left shell-shocked by the knock nature has given us. 

The question remains whether we will learn anything from it.

Thirty years from now, when you read this letter, you will know whether we did. If we have not learnt to let go of our greed and stopped consuming the way we do, if we have not ended the cruel exploitation of nature and animals, if we have failed to elect leaders who are kind and humble, you will live in a world very different from mine. Oceans will continue to swallow up huge parts of land, extreme weather events will kill thousands of people every year, zoonotic events will continue to cause pandemics leaving you to wear masks and stay clear of others like we do now.

But perhaps, just perhaps, we will take the time to have a good look at how we engage with the world around us and change our ways.

I will work for that, because even though (as far as I know) you have not even been conceived yet, you deserve a a world that is as beautiful, more just and safe than the one we have in 2020.

Your loving grandmother,

Melanie

19 August 2020