ARTIST: MINANA WANJOWA
COUNTRY: ZIMBABWE
MATERIALS USED: PENCIL
This pandemic we’re facing has brought many of us excruciating pain and tremendous grief. It has attacked many of us regardless of profession, ethnicity, status and age without any remorse. Parents, children, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews all around the world are grieving every single day due to this deadly life-threatening pandemic.
Doctors and nurses throughout the world are sacrificing their time for people they hardly know just to be able to save them or give them the chance to be able to see the light of day fully and not suffer the way they are suffering. Scientists as well are sacrificing their sleep just to be able to find a cure for this pandemic that has wiped out thousands of us from the face of this earth.
This pandemic has brought many problems such as the long queues people have to wait in to be able to buy food despite the weather hot or cold and the fact that it’s preventing many of us from being able to see our loved ones due to the lockdowns being enforced around the world. For my piece l focused on how people are being hospitalised and put away in quarantine due to this pandemic. My main inspiration for this piece was when l thought of all the children who have become victims of this virus.
Innocent children at this point of time are lying in hospital beds while doctors and nurses are running around wondering whether they would be able to save them or not. Parents are in pain as they watch their children lie on those hospital beds and they force themselves to stay strong when they are asked whether they are going to die. Imagine having your own child ask you if they’re going to die because l honestly can’t.
Parents are having to put on a mask that will mask all the sadness and pain their feeling just to be able to tell them that everything will be okay. This pandemic has brought us a lot of grief and sorrow but looking at the positive side it has also brought us together. Together as a community, nation and world. People all over the world are joining forces in order to pray. In order to pray for peace, healing, protection and to pray for guidance during this challenging season.
Some of us have started to lose hope in this virus outbreak ending considering the fact that it has been going on for months now. Many of us are looking at the negatives and are losing faith far too quickly. Why can’t we stop looking at the negative side of things and start looking at the positive side of thing? There might not be a lot of positives but that doesn’t mean we have to occupy our minds with the negative things going around us every day.
Some might not believe in this but l say that there is still hope, many are recovering at this moment and many are still to completely recover, this itself is a sign that we shouldn’t give up so quickly and reframe ourselves from looking behind and start to look forward.
