Reality

We made it back to Dar es Salaam at some point in the middle of the night. They make a show of being interested and following a procedure, yet it seems no one at borders can be bothered with Covid protocols these days.

Tanzania is particularly remarkable in its attitude to the pandemic given that for the first year of it the President at the time denied Covid’s presence in the country. However, worldwide, I think the dropping of various rules and the less stringent requirements for people who are vaccinated, represent quite a significant unacknowledged reality.

If infection rates are not significantly lower between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated then the dropping of testing if you’ve been vaccinated is the same as acknowledging that the spread is no longer going to be contained. We truly are just living with Covid as a new disease burden, and for the most part we have got used to it.

I’m now clutching this painting I bought in a gallery in Kigali. More ‘Scandinavian volcano’ than ‘green hills of Rwanda’, but whatever. It’s art.