By ELSIE EYAKUZE

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As I have written before I am a huge fan of comedians as a source of news analysis. This service is no longer available in Tanzania thanks to our restrictive regulations on what the media can do, we’ve all gone a bit dry and up our own bottoms as a consequence. 

To get my fix of laughter and insight, I roam around the internet looking for shows that are actually good at snarking out truths. One such is ‘‘Late Night’’ with Seth Meyers where I get so many of the juicy details of the madness of the American Right Wing.

One innovation that Meyers came up with as an internet-only feature is a segment loosely called “Corrections” in which Meyers and his crew respond to the many corrections that fans in the show send in pointing out in excruciating detail all of the flaws in the information he gives out during his broadcast.

Suffice to say it has become a favourite and a welcome innovation that brings dialogue into a rather static one-way format. It is also a wonderful learning tool for Meyers and his team and for his fans: everyone’s fact-checking abilities and pedantry get exercised for the good of all.

Dry correction

It is in this spirit that I want to confess: I made a big statement last week that was kind of wrong. I said that “Covid doesn’t discriminate by sex as far as I am aware of.” Turns out that I really wasn’t far in my awareness indeed, and was kindly forwarded a nice and delightfully dry correction of my own.

The data is coming in: Covid-19 affects more men than women, as a generalisation. I was slapped with three different documents supporting this news, including the 88-page long United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s “Macroeconomics and Social Development in Eastern Africa 2021: From Pandemic to a Sustained Recovery” with guidance to read pages 53 and 54.

If we set aside the necessary discussion on the dependable unattractiveness of UN Report titles, folks: I have graduated. I finally received a deeply pedantic correction of my own and it feels fantastic.

Thank you Andy Mold and may I say — what an apropos surname.

To address the issue: indeed the numbers show that men are much more physically affected by Covid-19 than women.

The point of my previous article remains the same: Africa’s recovery from the pandemic and her ultimate thriving will depend on putting cash-money where the ladies’ wallets are. Perhaps my point is even reinforced by the fact that men suffer disproportionately from the disease than women do.

I am not being entirely truthful about this being my first major correction. In reality, dear reader, you certainly share your opinions with me freely and occasionally even your own articles and musings. I think it is time I acknowledged that, especially when it comes to a handful of very consistent feedback-givers. Shall I let you all guess what the gender balance of my correspondence from readers is? Sorry, no prizes for such an obvious answer.

Blues and jazz

Over time this has helped to keep me on my toes, it has occasionally challenged my views and it has caused me a lot more joy than irritation. It has also provided me with a music education in blues and jazz that can’t be valued monetarily, it’s just so good.

But most of all, it reminds me that this is not a monologue, that we are in dialogue and that I am eternally grateful that even after a decade y’all still indulge my scribbling and done your best to make it better. I am humbled yet wildly suspicious of how polite everyone is, being a millenial and all.

And if I am being completely honest, as lovely as it is to receive missives of encouragement it is the ones that engage directly with a challenge or with good information that I wasn’t aware of that are the most thrilling. I am not one to scoff at a free education in any form, and a good argument is always a pleasure.

The social media ethos of interlocution is permeating all other forms of media, generally for the better in my opinion. In the Before Times it was much more the norm for static media like say newspaper columns to come from a person of influence and expertise.

This hasn’t changed per se but it is nice that the definitions have broadened to become more inclusive, and one no longer has to write a Letter to the Editor to engage with newspapers anymore — you can just reach out and say what’s on your mind directly. I think we are all the better for it, thousand-page UN documents notwithstanding.

Please consider it a gesture of my appreciation for you, dear reader, that I did indeed read pages 53 to 54. Do stay safe, and extra safe please if you are male.

Let’s try to keep this dialogue of ours rolling together into the next year if we can, shall we?

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: [email protected]