Am I my brother's keeper?

So, I have this friend. He is a big gregarious Ugandan guy who, despite supporting Arsenal, a team we all know is for softies, drinks like a bowser. I suspect he is on speaking terms with every bar man in Johannesburg much in the same way that Pele and Zidane were the only footballers, ever, on speaking terms with a football. I always tell him he is refreshingly African because his door is always open in the sense that I remember growing up. I find, us Zimbabweans are a little bit too British when we move to the suburbs. At the pub, he makes it a point to properly greet every person, by name, looking them in the eye, asking them how they are in his deep booming voice, "Mr Gumbo! How are you? How are they at home?" Most of us just say,"Howzit, gents!" 

My friend is big on family and he makes a mean goat meat braai and, the good news is, he has four children. This means, at the very least, four times a year you get to go and have some very very good goat meat at his house, accompanied by the excellent East African meals that his wife serves up.

I suspect many of the guys, in the pub, have privately benefited from his advice, medical and otherwise in times of stress and I guess his bedside manner in the hospitals where he does is rounds, is excellent. He has been there for all of us and this is why I am writing because my friend is a surgeon. We call him Doc. He prefers that we call him Solomon.

I recently saw a clip on twitter of a Saudi Doctor arriving home and his little son running to him, only for the father to say "stay back!...." before breaking down in tears at the strain of it all. I thought of my friend and wondered how he was coping. Can you imagine the pressure of driving to a hospital as a professional every day worrying about your patients in this age of coronavirus, Ebola, influenza and H1N1,then returning home as a parent worrying about your family and the risk you may pose to them? I happen to know that in times of crisis, as for the army, all leave is cancelled for medical personnel. They are looking after us. Who is looking out for them? Across Europe and India, millions are gathering at their balconies, in front of the porches to publicly and symbolically applaud our brave heroes at the coal face of the effort against COVID 19. There's really very little we can do, thereafter.

I decided to send him a message and say how grateful we are and that I am thinking of him and his family. If you have a friend in the medical field, perhaps give some thought to what they might be going through and give them a call or send them a message to say, thank you for your efforts. It is a small gesture but it is one nevertheless. I received a video after the message from someone else. It was that of an ambulance team in a hospital corridor, waving their arms and singing to doctors on the other side, behind a glass door. They are singing along to that incredible anthem, "You never walk alone". 10 000 dead and counting in Italy alone is beyond mere statistics. It bring home the stark reality of what we are facing and what my friend Solomon is facing at the hospital and in the car on the way home where his children are waiting to rush to the door in welcome. The bloke is an Arsenal fan, but he is a hero, along with all other medical personnel from Wuhan to Washington, Soweto to Stockholm and I salute him. Doctors and nurses are also human. Give them a call and a word of support, anything to say we see you, we love you and we stand with you.

For Doc, a whisky awaits at the end of this all and I know my mates from the pub will join us and the wives will approve. YNWA