Sight, Smell, Sound, Taste, and Touch

For the past year and half it has been hard to write about anything other than the pandemic. “In these unprecedented times…”, “…the global lockdown…”, “…due to the COVID-19 pandemic…”. I have used various mutations of these sentences in feature articles as openers; they have been integrated into columns as conclusions; and they have weaselled their way into last-minute cancellation messages for engagements I did not want to attend. Their continuous use has felt like a creative loop, a hamster wheel of cliché clauses with no end in sight. Or, rather, there was an end, but it was far, far away. Remember when we thought the world would be back to normal by May, July, and then September last year? Ha! The joke was always on us. While writing about lockdown, curfews, curtailed movement, coughing, and being cooped up I hoped for better days, or, at least, for different ones.

In the past year I have abused some of my senses and neglected others. I have watched as many series and films as I can stomach. I have finished four or five Playstation games. I have never finished any game in my life. (Who would have thunk it? Games have end credits too.) But watch things I did. What I have not done, though, is look around in the curious and artistic way needed to write or take photographs with meaning or gravitas. It is, after all, hard to be open-minded when the world is closing up and shuttering itself away. My morning and evening views have been limited to the squares of my study window. I have been seeing, but I cannot say I have been looking, not in any way that has allowed me to create or imagine new and interesting landscapes.

I have been seeing, but I cannot say I have been looking, not in any way that has allowed me to create or imagine new and interesting landscapes.

Taste, meh. I am a decent cook. But if there is one thing lockdown exposed about me, it is that my recipes quickly become repetitive. I gravitate towards convenience, not cuisine. Sure, maybe I should have used the time to explore other recipes. But, really, I was not motivated enough. It was not as though I was hosting dinner parties. Family gatherings needed to have carefully monitored attendances. So taste was also stunted: no cafés or restaurants. It has been the same old, same old.

I cannot recall what I have used my sense of smell for. It did not disappear when I tested positive for COVID-19, thank goodness. Oh, I know - the rains. Windhoek was so pleasant before and after it rained. The freshness of the air is something my nose remembers.

I have abused my ears with head and earphones over the past year. Music, podcasts, audiobooks — all of them have been played at high volume during lockdown. No concerts or clubs, no festivals or parties, no interesting aural landscapes from my daily life. For the most part, the white noise from my fan and the slow traffic in my street have been the most prevalent ambient sounds. The ocean roaring? That came through the BBC documentaries I was watching. The wind gliding over the Namib? That was a curated ambient sound. With little else to see, taste, and smell, and with so few places to go, I leaned heavily into anything aural.

But the sense that has suffered the most is touch. I have not shaken a single person’s hand in a year. I hug my parents or friends only in the most unavoidable of circumstances. Everyone else has been literally kept at arm’s length. Before entering a shop I scan the aisles to see if they are crowded. There has been no accidental grazing of elbows in about a year. The press of life that forms the foundation of my community has shrunk. I could not frequent my regular haunts without putting my health at risk. The only plus side of social distancing is that no one has stood uncomfortably close to me in a queue, breathing down my neck. For once I have found the right excuse to tell someone, “Buddy, you’re way too close—please practice social distancing.”

It is a strange thing to miss: touch. One never thinks about how much of human life is dependent on basic encounters and physical contact. It has not felt the same to bump elbows in greeting or to conclude a business deal.

When I finally received my first vaccination jab it was the first time in a long time that someone I did not personally know had been in such close proximity. The nurse, a kindly woman, explained the possible effects of the first dose and outlined the continuing need to wear a mask, sanitise my hands, and uphold my social distancing practices. But, hopefully, she said, “When enough people are vaccinated, we can return to regular life.”

To seeing and looking, to hearing and listening, and to feeling and being touched.

It might still be a-ways off, but it is a possibility.And what a possibility it is.

Rémy is a Rwandan-born Namibian writer and photographer. He is the founder, chairperson, and artministrator of Doek, an independent arts organisation in Namibia supporting the literary arts. He is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine, Namibia’s first and only literary magazine. His debut novel “The Eternal Audience Of One” is forthcoming from Scout Press (S&S).