Let them all tell you what happened. Mercedes Pescador
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neighbourhoods of Santiago, there have been recommendations not to go to that particular neighbourhood, but also not to go to poor areas where for sure nobody there had been to Milan….
What started as just factory gossip has turned real and there are now fifty cases of infection. I was sent home, teleworking, for being asthmatic. You see know the fast pace of people in the street. I live with three friends and in our home there’s an unprecedented revolution taking place: we all clean with enthusiasm. There’s a smell of chlorine, soap and isopropyl alcohol.
I told my colleagues of the quarantines we had in Venezuela: «You could go out, yes. But, in times of social conflict, your life was in danger. If you demanded your rights, you were in risk of ending in jail or injured. That’s why we had to be prepared to stay at home. You would buy and eat whatever was available». In war times in my country, between 2014 and 2017, you knew that it would all end when either the people got tired or when the government yielded. It was always a case of the former. This situation is different because it comes with pure and hard uncertainty. For now, we will remain isolated, without personal contact, like in the times of the black plague. What started as the union of two people in marriage, today is separating us. Thank you, Carmela.
A voice for the world
Adonay Vilche
Maracay, Venezuela
In our global society, mankind has forgotten its origin for a future it won’t see, creating a reality where what’s valued is not the simple but the complex. Mankind and its dynamics are the origin of the pain we are experiencing right now. We are the ones who caused this distressing situation of social and family isolation, with grandparents separated from their children and grandchildren, couples at a distance or parents away from their children, trying to ease that distance with telecommunications. The houses are empty, getting ruined, without the presence of those who made big efforts to buy, build or refurbish them. The vehicles are gathering dust. The gardens are dry, with no new flower sprouts, and you can’t even hear the barks of a guard dog.
And that’s how we find ourselves in this global world, the same world where mankind wanted to enjoy a pleasant life, enjoy the gardens with family and pets, not imagining that soon nothing of this would be true.
Overcoming the problems as a team
Steph Ritz
Corvallis, Oregon, United States
As someone with a rocky health history, when my non-American friends began entering lockdown, I stocked up on essentials and switched to working from home – before the stay-at-home orders from our state governor, before my country understood and hoarders cleared out stores, before businesses were forced to close.
Like so many others, my full-time job reduced my hours because of the pandemic and I am facing an uncertain financial future. Even while I grieve the loss of income stability, I am grateful I still have insurance, that I had a second job, that my second job was able to pick up my extra availability, and that both jobs can be done from home. As the economy crumbles around the world and stocks plummet, who knows what will happen with the job market. Yet my loss is nothing compared to what others are facing because of this virus.
On Easter Sunday, two friends in two different parts of the country lost their fathers to COVID, while a third friend lost her mother. As someone whose parents have already passed, it’s never easy to welcome others into the dead-parent-club. My heart aches for their losses.
Where I live now, no one I know has been affected by the virus.
Living on the outskirts of a deserted college town in Oregon, USA during COVID has its perks. We’re a poster-child community who took early action and has done well practicing proper social distancing. I’m surrounded by quiet country roads and crisp cool smells of spring blossoms.
It’s not been a lonely time, what with shelter-in-place friends upstairs, a sprawling backyard with a hen who loves hugs, and two cats vying for attention.
Instead of going to the market, I now buy my food directly from a farmer about 5 miles away. Coming up with seasonal farm-to-table gourmet meals has become a special kind of passion for me. This week my farmer friend tucked a pint of strawberries, first of the year, in my basket – a delicious treasure trove of juicy ruby gems to share with my quarantine crew.
It has always worked out in the past, so I trust it’ll be the same this time.
A window to the world
Damián Rodríguez Pérez
A Coruña, Spain
Lawyer and script-writer
Day April 3rd 2020. There’s less light coming through my window today. What day is it? Nothing seems to make any sense; citizens are avoiding each other. The pandemic has won, fear has sneaked into each corner of the city. You turn the television on, or look to the counter of the newsagent’s in one of those programmed trips, and all you can see are numbers and figures. I’m so tired of it all that I’ve started to not even feel empathy for others.
Day March 12th 2020. The pandemic has spread its dark wings, the jokes are over, the laughs are frozen. I see psychosis and paranoia around me. I miss reading without getting worried, but all of those deaths and my fellowmen getting infected, it’s affecting me.
Day March 15th. Mark Zuckerberg has started to abduct us. We are eager to know and know more, even though it might be fake news. I’m worried about my parents, María and my friends. I have a lot of plans in my head to mitigate the isolation. I’ve started to go up and down the stairs like a madman to keep fit and to get rid of anxiety.
Day March 23rd. What is freedom? Now I start to understand prisoners and those people who have lost their freedom. The windows in my home are the bars in the prison cell I live in. Spring has arrived with all its exuberance. The first thing I’ll do when the state of emergency is over, will be to hug a tree.
Two faces of the same coin
Diana Calderón
Medellín, Colombia
On March 19th 2020, he came to my house to bring me a book he had bought thinking of me, To Die for Love (really?). That was the last time I saw him. But this is not a story about my impossible love. It’s the story about how, up to that day, I thought I would see most of the people in everyday life for indefinite time: students, bosses, friends, family. On the next day the quarantine started in my city, and then spread nationwide.
We are living in uncertain times, more questions than answers. In spite of everything, I’ve managed to keep some continuity and I feel privileged. I’ve managed to continue with work, teleworking from home, and continue getting a salary, now there’s double the number of people living off this salary. My nuclear family is small and living together has been peaceful. I’ve tried to keep active doing a bit of exercise and I’ve lost the hectic pace I had before the lockdown, now I don’t get up early, I’m not late coming back home and I always eat at regular times. I’ve also kept in connection with the people I love, through video calls, and I’ve spent so much time colouring mandalas that I must be close to nirvana.
However, there is matter I still haven’t managed to resolve, with respect to the two different positions being discussed about what will happen to humanity after all this is over (an expression quite common these days). There are those who say this situation will bring out the worse in us, and they predict more wars, poverty and diseases; but there’re also those who think that we will suddenly learn from our past mistakes and we will come out of this situation being more empathetic and more aware of the world around us, more “human”. Aren’t these, by chance, two faces of the same coin, and therefore the full representation of mankind?