We moved to Singapore in February, 2018 for my husband’s job. The hardest thing about being here during the pandemic is that my children are away from me and in two different continents: Malik is in Melbourne studying photojournalism and Maya is in the States. I’m most worried about Maya because I’m closely watching the case numbers go up every day. From here, the situation in the United States seems like total chaos.
I don’t understand why. It seems so simple here: everybody wears a mask everywhere they go and every place has contact tracing. We’ve had a total of 21 deaths in Singapore and all of them were over 60 and had underlying health issues. We’ve had 23,000 cases – and most of them involve migrant workers who come from Malaysia and India to work jobs in construction or as domestics. They live in dormitories. The Prime Minister segregated the ones who have tested positive for the Coronavirus. They are brought 3 meals a day, have someone to clean their places and the country is supplementing their income, so that they can send money back home to their families. Why is it so difficult for the U.S. to put the same things in place? Well, I guess I know why.
The locals in Singapore hate Trump and can’t understand how we voted him into office. Once people, such as cab drivers, realize that we are American, they start asking questions: “What’s wrong with him?” they ask.
I’m wondering if we won’t be able to go anywhere afterwards because Trump is handling things so poorly and it seems that a lot of Americans aren’t following the guidelines.
From my view, it seems as if senior citizens are the worst violators. They are acting like wild teenagers. I worry about my mom a little bit. She’s in Memphis and lives alone. She won’t listen and follow the rules. Every other day-she and her sister are finding a reason to go to the grocery store. I said to her, “You don’t need to go to Kroger again. It’s Wednesday. You were just there on Monday.”
I have good days and bad days when it comes to dealing with all of this. Some days I get sad. The Pandemic – and the politics surrounding it is a lot and then when the Ahmaud thing happened - it was too much. It feels like the devil is winning. I have to stick my head in sand. I had a lot of plans. I was supposed to be in New York touring Parsons right now with Maya, who is about to graduate from Howard. My sister is turning 50 and we had planned to go to Cincinnati’s music fest. I worry what the holidays are going to look like.
None of us have ever been through anything like this before. But we are in it now. We are in the mix. We have learned how to be in it – now we need to focus on how we are going to be when we get out of it. We need to focus on the future and not the now, especially Black folks. The only way we’ve survived all that we’ve been through is being united. We are stronger together. We have to be communal. That’s in our blood—to be communal people. If it affects one it affects us all. We need to be kinder to each other and offer grace. Beautiful things come out of the most horrendous situations. I don’t know what it is but something good is going to come out of this.
