
Memories From the Year 2030 is a collection of fictional letters, memos and visual artifacts created by a group of futurists, speculative designers, authors and artists. Read the entire series here.
In the spirit of the tradition that says what is said is done and what is done is said, and of the persuasion that trusts that the infinite universe is created out of utterance, I want to tell the story of COVID-19 as it will be told because, as Einstein foretold, chronological time is a fiction, and because what is said is done. I want to do this in the storytelling modality of the West African practice of libation. Let us stand on this earth in 2030 and pour a libation to honor the spirit of the ancestors who suffered through this pandemic. Let us begin by recounting events from way in the past and, at the same time, let us stand here today to project a future in the present. I will be there as I am here to witness today.
The advent of COVID-19 had been predicted years in advance, yet its stealth, swiftness, and ferocity caused frantic course reversals: borders closed, neighbors masked, cities locked down, blocks blockaded, families separated, walls sprouted, and human immigration reversed like rivers flowing upstream. Its path was mysterious—that is why some started calling it the Mysterious Traveler.
The MT was like a hurricane that swept through cities and towns with abandon, killing over 100,000, many of whom were those brave enough to care for the sick. As always, the working poor, the people of color, and the health care workers could not get around its deadly approach. Many died alone, strapped to ventilators, with no one to hear their final gasp.
Before the MT, humans had been fixated on economic growth, which translated into senseless movements directed by their priest, who uttered daily oracles from the stock markets. Every human value was subsumed under the assumption that what was good for the market was good for all. To service the market, forests were cleared, the wilderness decimated, the rivers dammed, and the oceans reduced to cesspools. It all made sense in their calculus, their primary method of reckoning good and bad.
With the MT, came this headline:
Coronavirus: Mexicans demand a crackdown on Americans crossing the border.
It was a time when many predicted that a tide of African immigrants fleeing global warming would traverse deserts and meet a tragic demise baking in the sand under the sun, or that they would cross oceans, braving wild seas in flimsy traffickers’ boats, or face border dogs, armed guards, and razor wire fences on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. The MT saw this reversed.
During the reign of the MT came another headline:
African countries close their borders to European travelers and adventurers, a move that should have been considered 400 years before.
For the world of animals and plants, the MT was a superhero: it was the Liberator, the Avenger. Every animal in the bush, fish in the oceans, and tree in the forests was given breathing space as a consequence of the stay-at-home commands.
In Hong Kong a piece of graffiti read something like this:
Let us not go back to normal, because it turns out normal was a huge problem.
Before the Mysterious Traveler, the most rigorous arguments, the most courageous resistance, and the most fervent prayers couldn’t slow the traffic on roadways, seaways, or skyward-belching factories. The earth had painfully been compelled to PAUSE! During the PAUSE, people searched for sanity by separating physically while connecting emotionally, appreciating their personal relationships as the most redeeming element of their existence. Although calamities expose humans’ duplicity, treachery, and cowardice, the MT also revealed their ability to act with nobility.
Let the story be told that, even while spreading death and devastation, the Mysterious Traveler encouraged us to look within. I live, we live, right here and right now. We are in-the-future beings. Let us pour a libation to the future so that our descendants may pour a libation to the past. We give water because we living beings are made of water. In the spirit of all those ancestors in body and spirits seen and unseen, in town and in the bush, in oceans and the deserts, in the plants and animals who gave us life, we pour a libation to you and to the ancestors as yet unborn.
Kewulay Kamara is a poet / storyteller from Sierra Leone now living in New York City. His poetry and stories are based on the Mandeng oral traditions of the Jali (musicians and bards) and the Fina (poets, historians, and masters of ceremony).
This piece is adapted from a blog post that originally appeared on City Lore.