I am Simplice J., a student at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of the University of Yaoundé. I am 19 years old and I am in the second year of general medicine. I live in the city of Yaoundé with my parents. I met two great difficulties during the confinement.

The first was the difficulty related to my studies. As in all other universities, our faculty closed its doors and we were also in confinement. We had just finished the first semester of the year and so we still had a semester to do. In our school, to solve this problem, the directors decided to organize online courses. This is where the problem occurred. It was not easy at all because other students did not have all the necessary computer tools. Despite this problem, I took online courses but I did not go out. It was my first time taking online courses; we are not used to doing online courses in Sub-Saharan Africa. The course evolution was so slow because we could not easily adjust to online courses. Finally, it was at the beginning of June and that’s when we normally complete the end-of-year exams. But in 2020 we had incomplete classes. In short, it was a failed school year.

The second difficulty was grief. It was really a very serious trauma. During this pandemic period, I lost my best friend. He died of COVID-19. The doctor said that he was not going to die if he did not have asthma. It was his asthma that worsened the situation. He left so young. I was so troubled by this death. It hurts me so bad to lose a human being, and this was my best friend! He was a trustworthy person but the cursed pandemic had come to win. The year 2020 was a missed year.