Covid-19 in sports: Making lemonade from bitter lemons

On the evening of September 18, 2020, just one month after the birth of my daughter, I was mugged by a gang of about five hoodlums who cornered me on a well-lit lane in Nairobi as I was heading home from work.

It was about 8:30pm on a Friday night and in my ill-advised haste to get home before the onset of the 9pm-4am curfew, occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic, I made the grave mistake of taking a shortcut to my matatu stage.

I didn’t reach my destination via the shortcut. Mean-looking fellows sprung out from nowhere, swiftly cut me off my route and boxed me into a tight corner.

They didn’t find any money on me but they still relieved me of my wristwatch and cellphone.

I didn’t care much about my weather-beaten phone, but for many days and weeks I “grieved’”over the loss of my prized wristwatch, which an old friend had bought for me overseas.

But rather than wallowing in self-pity, I got over my small tragedy by sharing the experience.

And when my story was published on the Nation, for a whole week I was the butt of jokes on the sports desk where the likes of Japheth Mutinda, Ayumba Ayodi and Chris Omollo couldn’t understand how a ‘well-fed’ fellow like yours truly could so meekly surrender to muggers.

Good spirit

It was in all good spirit and we all had a good laugh about what had otherwise been a distressing incident.

The gentler souls that are my female colleagues in the office were more sympathetic, not that I needed their sympathies anyway.

I will say it here that that story turned out to be the ‘best’ I wrote in 2020.

Not that I wish to ever go through such an experience, but the story had a therapeutic effect on me. It was my way of making sweet lemonade from the bitter lemons that life had hurled at me.

The mugging incident also opened my eyes to some dangerous street corners that I’ve since learnt to avoid at all times as well as the wisdom of meekness when you find yourself cornered and outnumbered by fellows whose sole mission appears to be causing grievous harm at the slightest provocation.

But most importantly, the loss of my priceless wristwatch notwithstanding, it was a ‘good’ story because I got through the ordeal unscathed and lived to tell the tale.

This brings to mind the ongoing debate about the numerous lost livelihoods and missed opportunities that have been visited upon many Kenyans by the Covid-19 imposed partial lockdown of some counties and the indefinite ban of social gatherings and activities.

Hit hardest

Specifically, sportsmen and women in Kenya have been hit the hardest by last month’s presidential directive that brought all sporting activities in the country to a screeching halt.

It’s a great source of concern that in the absence of sporting activities, many sportsmen and women in the country have been deprived of their livelihoods.

But even in the midst of this great predicament that they now find themselves in, our sportsmen and women should remain hopeful of better times.

This is not the time for them to resign themselves to their fate; rather the global pandemic presents an opportunity for them to squeeze something good out of a bad situation.

It’s a time for retrospection and reinvention, something I believe many of them are well capable of.

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