On March 27th 2020, I lost a mentor to COVID19. It had only just been a few days since my former university classmate and friend had told me that our legal clinic supervisor had been hospitalized and was in ICU. The turn around time between news of his illness and the news of his death was dishearteningly quick.
Ricky & His Wife at a UWL Award Dinner
I met Ricky Singh in 2017. I’d just started my second year of university and I had decided to volunteer with the West London Equality Centre to gain some legal work experience. Ricky saw me, acknowledged my work ethic and took me like many others under his wing. He was like that. He had the ability to see potential in people and guide them to the tools to make the most out of it.
Every Wednesday i’d get up, go on a bus and sit through many an appointment with a homeless person, a vulnerable teen, someone uncertain about their immigration status, and he’d sit down and help us help people through what seemed like impossible situations. He was an individual who gave of his time wherever he could and more people ought to be like him.
He pushed me. Ricky Singh was a Caribbean man, he was in fact Guyanese by birth and was very taken with the fact that we both had something in common. He would always tell me that I had more to prove, that I have the capacity to do better. He was ever so impressed with me when I won the award for top academic performer for my 2nd year and told my Aunt and Mom as much at the reception. He was genuinely in my corner and for that I’d always be grateful.
While I had always taken the COVID19 pandemic seriously, this loss was personal. It added an impending sense of dread to the entire situation. It made me think about how many individuals in my family were actually vulnerable, how many i could potentially lose. It made me even think about myself with my own health problems that I often forget about and gloss over. It made me re-think even stepping outside the back garden door for a little while. I have not been outside in 2 weeks…
It makes me look at how Antiguans are handling the situation with distaste. How they’ve taken this as an opportunity to act without any common sense. Instead of social distancing some people have begun socializing. Instead of facing the facts people are peddling fiction. I cannot understand why people are clustering in lines outside of supermarkets, jamming together, when they know full well closeness is the breeding ground for this disease.
COVID19 is like sand or even glitter. Once its stuck to you it is difficult to get off and it easily attaches itself to everything else that is close enough to it.
Yes I understand that the situation is alarming, I most certainly know as I’m on lockdown in London, a city with over 8,000 confirmed cases of COVID19. I understand that the instinct for self preservation has kicked in, I really do. However, at the same time, please carry sense. Rushing to the supermarkets, which aren’t closing during the lockdown, only creates a crowd and COVID19 L O V E S a crowd. Wearing a face mask and then touching it up to do things or using the same set of gloves both outside and inside your car or personal space is just spreading the germs, COVID19 lives on your gloves and your face mask. Please stop flocking gas stations and supermarkets and please… KFC is closed REST.
The best thing for you to do is to sit in your house with your family and stay at home for the week or how ever long Uncle Gaston decides the lockdown is for. Panic breeds chaos and the chaotic environment isn’t helping anyone or anything.
I really do hope that everyone stays safe, stays at home, and stays healthy so that we can find some sort of normalcy within the next few months.
A very special thank you to each and every healthcare worker and essential personnel who have to risk infection daily to ensure that people are cared for and that services can still be provided in this historic crisis.
REST IN PEACE RICKY SINGH
