“Banish the ghost of coronaaaaahhh…”

Before my trip to Kenya, I went to Passport Health, a traveler’s clinic for immunizations and fear needling. There, I was handed a terrifying brochure filled with the potential dangers of my destination. Typhoid. Hepatitis. Yellow fever. And a long list of other shit-inducing diseases borne of filth and mosquitoes and the social nature of human existence. It totaled $1500 to completely mitigate the fear of the unknown. I paid $500 to slightly assuage it, which my Kenyan friend found baffling and idiotic. I also paid dearly for taking the live Typhoid pills that made me vomit for hours on end over the course a week.

I took off into an exponentially panicked world. When I left one week ago, the novel coronavirus drifted in and out of the public consciousness. It still felt like a somewhat foreign concept. Other people’s problems. A few days after I landed, COVID-19 did too. Blessedly not via the conduit of me. Since then, it feels like the entire world has screeched to a terrified halt.

As I hiked through the vast Karura Forest in Nairobi yesterday, I passed a group of 20-something Kenyans, and the guy at the end, smiling wide, sang while staring straight at me, “Banish the ghost of coronaaaaahhh…” I found it hilariously apropos, as I am the whitest person I’ve seen in this entire country. Now a specter of doom and death indeed.

no label multicolored-virus-patterned silk tank top – $3, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store | ADAY almond Easy Days pants – $119 (discounted as I keep pretending I’m a new customer through alias email addresses to get the promo code) | Nike hot pink, yellow & blue cross-country mesh shoes with hot green laces – $5, Restyle Thrift Store | SavageX natural tiger print chiffon bralette  – $9.99 (during epic site-wide sale) | Quicksilver yellow fanny pack – $2.50, Idaho Youth Ranch thrift store (pick a purse outta a giant bin sale, I had to dig my way to the very bottom to find this) |pink & black multi-striped pink pashmina (the best travel accessory in the entire world) – gift from friend from Turkey

Cheep it while social distancing…