The one hour journey to Gwagwalada is reminiscent of my student days at the University of Abuja.
Often, on Fridays, as the weekend kicked off, students like myself who had families in the town would hop into luxurious buses that would take us home. On Sunday evenings, or Monday mornings we would troop to the Area 1 or Wuse Market parks to head back for our lectures. This pattern can hardly be forgotten – it was the journey week after week. And we could tell the route to town and back even with our eyes closed.
On a holiday like today, May 1st workers’ day, many students would have been on their way home to return after the weekend.
Gwagwalada is today best known for being the first isolation Centre for patients of COVID 19 in the FCT. For those who have never visited the city, this may be all they know about it.
Today, the purpose of the weekly trip to this town was not to return to lectures, but to return appreciation to those who are paying the ultimate price for the Coronavirus pandemic: our doctors and health workers at the front line.
The Gwagwalada Isolation Centre, like many others across the country, and even the world, plays host to patients who have tested positive to the world’s most notorious and common enemy – that cannot be seen, nor eliminated. Its transmission rate from human to human is incredible. In Nigeria, within a month those infected have gone from less than two hundred to two thousand. Some unfortunately could not beat the virus, they died.
At a time when the Coronavirus virus has put the life of every citizen of the world in danger’s way, those who have dedicated their lives to fighting it daily, the doctors, and all health service workers on the frontline are our heroes. They know that this deadly virus can be contracted by the slightest slip, yet they put their lives and those of their families, at second-place, while they live to ensure that the lives of those who have contracted the virus are not taken by it.
The greatest love that humanity knows is that of self-sacrifice. And this is what these doctors and medical workers have shown.
Today, we paid a few of them a visit to say thank you for this sacrifice they make and continue to make.
Dr Vivian Kwaghe, the Head of the Infectious Disease Unit at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital leads the team fighting the virus head-on at the Isolation Centre. She was filled with emotions to the near point of tears. She said: “I don’t think I have ever received such an honour in my life before,” after we gave them the heroes guard of honour: our little way of saying “thank you.” Two words that cannot sufficiently carry the weight of our gratitude.
On a day the World takes a pause to honour Workers for their efforts in sustaining economies and building nations, we took our pause to the frontline of the fight against COVID-19 to honour those who without their sacrifices we would not look forward to the days when the COVID-19 caused lockdowns will end.
Gift Johnbull
May 1, 2020Interesting writing style… Commendable effort towards making the Country a better place