The key to containing ‘kokoro korona’ is to speak to people in their own languages.
Mororo moros. Corolla virus. Coro. These are the aliases that the deadly novel coronavirus goes by in West Africa. As the virus pummels Europe and the United States, governments here are scrambling to prevent an outbreak by enforcing lockdowns and ramping up public health campaigns.
It’s why Vickie Remoe, a publicist in Sierra Leone, got to work the minute neighbouring Ghana and Nigeria announced index cases of the virus. Remoe, the founder of marketing company VR & C, knew the virus would soon knock at Sierra Leone’s doors. So when the country’s first case was announced on March 31, she and her team had created fliers and radio dramas urging people to Was yu an, Dey na os and Kip tu yusef.
Remoe said she wants to reach children who may not understand why they can’t go to school. She knows how it feels, she said, having lived through the Sierra Leone war with little understanding of why people were hurting each other. In Iseyin, a town in Nigeria’s southwest, villagers have heard of kokoro korona. They’ve also heard it’s spreading because of G5 masts. It means Sola Fagorusi must plan carefully. He is the team leader of Onelife, a nongovernmental organisation creating awareness of the virus. With a spreadsheet, his team finds the right Yoruba words to explain how the virus spreads. The words they use must be factual and appropriate in the local context.
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