Why Covid scare has gripped Kisumu villages

Folks in my village in Kajulu speak of the recent funeral of my neighbour Nyaloka in the kind of hushed tones reserved for the most difficult conversations.

Her body was removed from a mortuary in Kisumu one morning late last month and buried unceremoniously within hours.

For a respected mother in her late 50s, hers was a rather strange burial. According to local customs, the body should have lain in the home at least overnight. Everyone appears to rule out the coronavirus, citing her well-known long battle with illness.

But the local administration officials had little difficulty getting the family and the community to observe the Covid-19 safety rules, including curbs on elaborate burial ceremonies, crowding and feasting.

That was rather strange as well.

The last time I was here three months ago, there was mass Covid denial. Funeral goers resisted the chief’s orders to stay away. A number of people I talked to believed Covid was a Nairobi disease and seemed bemused at suggestions that the virus could have spread to the village already.

Indian variant

They knew about face masks and even had a local name for it – abuog rombe. But they mostly wore it while passing the police post at Gita market. Now, many more people can be spotted with their masks on. How did the narrative change so suddenly?

Reports of factory workers at Kibos testing positive for the Indian variant have caused a scare in the neighbouring communities. Scores of people from Kajulu, for example, work as casual labourers at the factory. Women fruit vendors walk the 6km stretch to Kisumu town, the epicentre of western Kenya’s Covid infections wave, while boda boda riders pick or drop off passengers along the route.

A spike in deaths in the villages hugging the Mamboleo-Muhoroni Road has got tongues wagging. A wag counted up to 12 funerals around Kianja, a fairly small area between Wathorego and Guba bus stops.

With the low or non-existent testing in the villages, it is difficult to say with certainty that community transmission is underway here. But the proximity of Kajulu to Kisumu town and the traffic in between should be enough to alert public health officials to the lurking Covid danger.

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Chief Justice Martha Koome has predictably got the flak for attending the swearing-in of the 34 judges in State House, only to issue a statement shortly after calling on President Uhuru Kenyatta to appoint the six he rejected the previous day.

Yet her first big move at the helm of the Judiciary isn’t out of step with what she promised. Letting the President make partial appointments is a quick pragmatic solution to a problem her predecessor, Justice David Maraga, couldn’t solve in 18 months. She gets 34 more hands to start cutting the case backlog as she continues working the phones for the other six.

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