by Ifeoma Chinwuba
30 April, 2021
The Coronavirus pandemic has brought about a lockdown in my city, Ottawa. People miss their former lives; the ability to travel far and wide or to be with friends and extended family. For others, their means of livelihood has been upended.
I wish I could stake a claim with any of these parties. Alas, before the lockdown, my life was not that exciting; I did not travel much to miss the strictures in travel. I did not have many friends and family in Ottawa to hang out with. And I did not have work to go to or a business to operate. With such a pared down life, I was already by the fire, when the harmattan winds whistled.
I am a writer. My preferred venue was the Starbucks Coffee shop at South Keys. J.K Rowling reeled out her Harry Potter series from a café. I said to myself, Locate the nearest café that allows unlimited occupancy of their table, and get to work. Any wonder I turned the South Keys Starbucks Café into a kind of WeWork Station? Like me, many regulars trooped there like workers hurrying to clock in. I preferred the robust rectangular table that could comfortably seat three on each side, four during the rush hours. Like Hemingway’s Paris, the chairs and tables were moveable feasts.
The patrons included students from the capital’s universities. There was the young guy with an afro halo. He was charismatic and very popular with the baristas, regaling them, arms flailing in all directions, always succeeding in finagling one or two cups of freebies from them.
Jasmine was a regular too. In fact, we were so regular that sometimes, if I was late in showing ‘face,’ she reserved a seat for me. What of the war veteran and his service dog? The Labrador bore a notice on his flank: DO NOT PET, SERVICE DOG. However, each time I found myself next to his master, this dog, denied the petting and cooing of passers-by and patrons, would flick out his tongue and lick my knee or ankle. Yeah, Buddie, everyone needs a hug.
I met a group of immigrants, who pooled chairs every Friday evening and reminisced in their vernacular language. No doubt, they compared home with life in this wonderful country. I can hazard a guess about the meat of their banter: Why can’t our government develop like Canada so we would not have to flee and suffer this cold? Theirs was a micro republic, complete with a Plato and plebeians. Or perhaps it was a democracy of tea and coffee drinkers, with the occasional demagogue and jingoist.
As I sat and watched the patrons queuing up to the counter, I built a database for my characters. I spied different hairdos, styles, dyes, tints. I observed assorted facial hair, from handle bar moustaches to ones that resembled the bristles of my toothbrush. I encountered assorted iterations of the sideburns, pencil-thin, manicured, others so bushy and scattered, they needed landscaping.
It helped a lot that the Chapters/Indigo Bookshop had a collabo with Starbucks Coffee. At ten, the booksellers would pull aside the grill that separated the two businesses and they would become one. Patrons could perambulate from the café to the bookstore, stroll between the shelves, caress book spines, peruse passages, scan the blurbs. It was the usual bivouac of choice from a bathroom break or a leg de-cramping exercise.
By far, my interest was the magazine stands. I read the glossy magazines for free; oh well, for the price of a coffee. I took down Juxtapoz, flicked through GQ and glimpsed The Economist and AD. I was up-to-date with current affairs, all for a cup of green tea. To assuage my guilt feelings, I always bought a magazine each month. They transported me, like Emma Bovary, to worlds of luxury and wealth alien to my modest quotidian trajectory. They provided book reviews, neologisms and supplied me fodder for my writings. It was like having a library at your fingertips. Where would I be without Starbucks and Chapters?
In my university days in Nigeria, I belonged to a group known as the FRA, no, not the Federal Rifle Association, rather the Free Readers Association. The founders of this fraternity were students who frequented the news-stand and perused the different headlines, too indigent to purchase the daily. Some of us would be on all fours to better skim the journals at the bottom of the rack. Here, decades later, was the modern version of the FRA.
Then came the pandemic. And the lockdown. Bars closed. Bookshops shuttered. Patrons were homebound. Sometimes, I would drive to South Keys, sit in the car park and gaze at Starbucks and Indigo, perhaps by osmosis re-live the hygge I experienced before the stay-home order? This pilgrimage continued until businesses got the green light, three months later, to re-open.
I ventured into the Starbucks Coffee shop, on wobbly legs. Thanks to physical distancing, only three patrons could be accommodated inside at a go. When I finally entered the hallowed walls, my heart sank. What! My beloved table, now a service station! What! No chair around it? All the intimate round tables relegated to a corner, with chairs belly-up on them? No more camaraderie? Where, the mild cacophony of revellers, meeting up for a cup? Could I stroll into the books section? No dice. At noon, the iron grill was still in place, like prison bars, effectively preventing any va-et-vient between the businesses.
I bought my green tea and slouched out into the Indigo Bookshop. Here again, I could see that things had changed. Where were those sofas in between shelves, where you could snuggle with a title? One used to be by the Stephen King shelf. And another, by the Young Adult offerings. Yet another was ensconced in the Children’s Section. All were now stacked away in some back store, as if to say, Keep Moving. No Loitering. No loitering? In a bookshop? You might as well add, Military Zone.
I confronted a sales associate. His mask smiled, expecting an enquiry about a title, an author, ready to traipse to the nearest computer. ‘When is the grill separating Indigo from Starbucks going to open?’ I asked. ‘Oh,’ he said, thrown off balance. He heed and hawed, then, ‘Probably not before the new year.’ New year or new wave?
I sulked to the magazine shelves and chose my favourites. There was no provision to browse or linger. For the first time, I paid for six magazines and took them to my kitchen table, aka Home Office.
Indigo/Chapters, if you notice a spike in your magazine sales, thank the confinement. Then, thank me later. Since the new dispensation, I visit your bookshop and actually buy my favourite monthlies.
In this lockdown, what I miss most is the collabo between Starbucks and Chapters.
Ms. Ifeoma Chinwuba was formerly Nigeria’s ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire. She lives in Ottawa. Her novel, Waiting for Maria, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) 2008.