Milembe

Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Black African
Background: Milembe is 52 years old and is Black African. She is married, with two children, and works in human resources. Milembe was worried about the relationship between her African ethnicity and the Covid pandemic. She wonderd if she caught Covid if she would be more likely to die than her white husband.

Milembe felt anxious at the start of the Covid pandemic. She had thoughts like, oh my God if I were to die will my husband remember to call my sisters, my friends She says that watching the news gave her even more anxiety. Milembe became aware that because of her African ethnicity she had to have double the strengt to get through the pandemic. She explains that these are thoughts that her white husband did not have about himself, although she was worried about his diabetes. As she puts it, if it hits this house, I;ll be the first to go

Milembe talked about how impractical it would be to isolate from family members within the same household. It was therefore some relief that she and her family tested positive for Covid all at the same time.

Milembe spoke about the role of conspiracy theories in her decision to take the Covid vaccine. She explains how people in African communities tend to be more skeptical of vaccines developed in western countries. As she puts it, whether they [people of African ethnicity] want to be used as a guinea pig, things we do not know about, we can’t read the leaflet, they’re written in English At the time of the interview, Milembe had her first vaccine and was a couple of weeks from getting her second. She says that she believed that the vaccine would help her recover from Covid if she caught it in the future.

Milembe says that her Christian faith helped her cope during the pandemic. She says that otherwise she would have gone crazy She says that she clung on to messages in the bible about God’s healing. Milembe also says that the focus of her prayers turned to healing.

Milembe’s message for others is if you are alive today you are very privileged She thinks about all the people who died from Covid who had ordinary lives and just happened to catch the illness.

Milembe found it difficult to isolate from her family at home

Age at interview 52

You want to go to the bathroom or the kitchen you have say, “Hey, I’m coming so just stay away,” and so even that in itself, the management of having one, even one person in the household you don’t think about it. It’s just actually very, very difficult to feel that you can actually be, you know, infecting other person within your house, so not only now you’re worried about yourself, now you’re worried about you passing it on to someone else.

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Milembe felt that her children were getting behind with their schooling.

Age at interview 52

As a parent I was worried about the children being so behind so much so for my older son who is on his final year of secondary school, he’s doing GCSEs this year. So not only that he was struggling with, with the focus with work, he’s so behind in performance-wise, also his emotions, emotions were at the high end so I was worried about what was going to happen for him.

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Milembe wondered why more Black people were dying in the UK than in African countries.

Age at interview 52

So, I, you know, I just, I was just following up and asking myself questions. “Is it, why is it worse for the black? Is it because of the sheer skin, what is it anything else because that does this virus doesn’t like, black?” You know, you just felt like, “oh this black people, they have to get it worse for everything, you know, you get discriminated for, you know, just being the shade, even the virus does that” [laughs].
 
I felt like, “mm?” I’ve never felt like being black was such an issue until, until the virus came [laughs]. I was like, “even the virus doesn’t like you” [laughs]. So that, yeah that was quite interesting but I try to follow it up in a, looking at it in a scientific way and that was, “Why black? Is it just because of being black? Is there anything else apart from being black? What are the other factors that are perhaps unlikely to be impacting the black and then the virus makes is just, you know, a like, a catalyst to that?” or so I started thinking obviously I didn’t have the answers but I was just rejecting it can’t just be just because you’re black?

And then I started comparing because the virus went on to hit the African where, you know, where the population is all black and then “how come it doesn’t, they don’t, they’re not dying at the same rate as we feel in here?”.

 

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Milembe’s husband was on a zero-hours contract which meant he had to risk exposure to Covid to ensure he was paid.

Age at interview 52

And you know, financial-wise, I my husband works with this contract, what do they call it, zero, zero hours so if you don’t work, you don’t get paid, period. So, I just also been able to observe right some people would risk their life because they just need to earn money to survive. So, there’s a very bad, vicious circle here going on. While you are going to fetch, you know, to get work for your own survival, you could be also a transmitter to other people maybe of a similar reasons and surely in this household, I was saying to my husband it was like, “Oh another reason, if I don’t go, I won’t get paid.” I was like, “Yeah so be it, you know, we’ll survive on my, you know, my salary so who cares?” So, I had that like, ‘do you know what, doesn’t matter’ but he’s like, “Oh if I don’t go there’s no-one else who could, that could go, you know, I have to go de de de.” So, he was more taking risk I suppose and we saw what happened.

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