Let them all tell you what happened E-Book

Mercedes Pescador

• Herausgeber: Lo Que No Existe Producciones, S.L.U.
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 411

Beschreibung

These pages have been written by authors from the five continents fro March to May 2020, and they make up an emotional X-ray of what they were thinking and feeling while faced by a threat to their own lives. Artists, teachers, mayors, pensioners, ambassadors, homemakers, diplomats, writers, jobless, nurses… of all ages and origins, they all string their words together and write about love, fear, family, time or future. There are some who express themselves with a poem, an entry in a diary, a story or a critical reflection; and others with an illustration or a photograph. Together they create an intimate and diverse testimony of how a pandemic, the one in 2020, changed who we are as human beings.

Leseprobe

Índice de contenido

Authors

Dedication

Writings from the heart

Future

Fear

Time

Family

Love

Poetry

Fiction

The illustrators

Hitos

Índice de contenido

Portada

Authors

A

Sergio Luis Aguilar

Samael Alba Pérez

Ana Isabel Alcaide

Mayra Lorena Alfaro Méndez

Estefanía Almonacid Velosa

Rodrigo Alonso Otero

Deisy Paola Alonso Ramos

Rocío Amores Calvo

Mercedes Anchezar

Anonymous

Pilar Añibarro Aguado

Jorge Luis Aramburú Correa

Nora Delia Arrieta Camus

Irene María Arroyo Montero

Cristina Artsan

Keren Azulay

B

Irene Bachler

Andrés Felipe Balaguera Sarmiento

Claudia Barba Capllonch

Sheila Barbero Gil

José Luis Basulto Ortega

Alberto Bejarano

Fátima Beltrán Curto

Alicia Noemí Benítez

Carina Bentolila

María Inés Berrino Domingo

Lisbeth Boschetti Goetschel

Rosa Brosé Rodríguez

Halina Brunning

C

Javier Caballero Sánchez

María Cabrera

Diana Calderón

Jorge Andrés Calvo Izquierdo

Kevin Cano García Moreno

Iliana Capllonch Cerdá

Pablo Mauricio Carbone Unzueta

Carlavilla

Jorge Enrique Caro Niño

Laura Valentina Castiblanco

Jhonny Castillo

Rosmery Cedeño

Mercedes Centena Mora

Claudia Patricia

Milton Cohen-Henríquez Sasso

José Manuel Conde Pérez

Bernardo Congote

Sergio Contreras Pouso

María Jesús Corbalán Pérez

Herberth Coronado

Julia Paulina Correa Henríquez

Lázaro Miguel Ángel Cotrina Reyes

Ambre Couturier

Hugo Coya

Marcela Crespo

D

Silvina de Aduriz

Raquel Marta de Bordóns Cortázar

Alberto de la Fuente y de la Concha (Chorro)

Patricia del Amo Torres

Maritza Delgado Rubilar

Marta de Prado

Sandra Analía Di Croce

E

Francisca Andrea Estay Lizana

F

Claudia Gabriela Fernández

Marcelo “Michel” Fernández Farias

Juan Miguel Fernández Linde

Susana Fernández Ollero

Danna Nicol Forero Muñoz

Dr. Bartolomé Freire Arteta

Cristian Fuster Sebastián

G

David Galarreta

Mariano Gallardo

Jesús G. Amago

Juan Ramón García Alquézar

Toni García Arias

César García

Marta García de Alcaraz - Chason

Noemí García

Mar García Rodríguez

Catia García Vargas

Isabel Garzo

Juan G. Bedoya

Asun Gómez Bueno

Clara Gonorowsky

Elizabeth González

África González Fernández

Erika Paulina González López

Carmen Luz Gorriti

Ammi Guiop Vadillo

Alison Daían Gutiérrez Rivas

H

Lidia Inés Heller Sonis

Dionisio Hernández Contreras

Gabriela Hernández

Beatriz Hernando Moral

Lourdes Herraez Cáceres

Enrique Manuel Hidalgo Naharro

I

Ángeles Iglesia

Gema Igual Ortiz

K

Gitika Kaji

Alicia Kaufmann

L

Horacio Ladrón de Guevara

Eva Levy

Alejandro Li Hon

Ana Isabel López

Dilcia López Chuquihuanga

Graciela López

Xavier López

Nerea Lorenzo Casado

Axcel Herbertsh Luhr Rauch

M

Fiorella Madera Martínez

Ayelet Mamo Shay

Pedro Manrique

Silvia Marsó

María Amparo Martín Esteban

María Paz Martín Esteban

Maura Martín

Susana Mato Adrover

Orlando Alonso Mazeira Guillén

Hever Mendoza

Verónica Mercado

Núria Miguel Villalba

Omar Duval Milano Dib

Ana Mercedes Miranda Morán

William Fernando Molano Lamprea

Eudes Alexander Moncada Colmenares

Lidia Monzón

Nicole Stephanie Morales Cooper

(Natalia) Musa Moreno Maldonado

Dianne Mortensen

Estrella Muñoz Jurado

Emilio Muñoz Ruiz

N

Enzo Navone

NMF

Brigid Nossal

Daniel Núñez Ansalas

María Angélica Núñez Jelves

O

Julio Ocampo

Arturo Ocaña Ocaña

Alicia Ojalvo Sánchez

Rafael María Ontivero Valero

Manuel Orantes-Álvarez

Perpetua Ordoñez Villavicencio

Mariana Orrego Sánchez

P

Keydi Pacheco

Adlemi Palomo

Mariluz Parras Salgado

Adrian Parsadh

Silvia Penón Sevilla

Mercedes Pescador

Katerine Pombo Jiménez

Jesús Portillo

Giovanna Catherine Prado Cuadros

Lidia Susana Puterman

Q

Mathilde Quiney

Rita Quinodoz

Sara Quintero Triguero

Paola Gabriela Quispe Quispe

R

Roberto R. Aramayo

Héctor Rasguido Espinoza

Paola Verónica Reverón Hurtado

Roberto Reverón

Mario Reyes Becerra

Cristina Rey Fernández

Steph Ritz

Gema Rodríguez Carmona

Juan Manuel Rodríguez Elizondo

Hernán Rodríguez Fisse

Maite Rodríguez García

Jaime Rodríguez

Rosa María Rodríguez Loranca

Damián Rodríguez Pérez

Olga Rodríguez Rodríguez

Gabriela Edna Rojas Maldonado

Carla Patricia Rojas Neculhual

Mar Rojo Rodríguez

Cecilia Soledad Roldán

Marcela Royo Lira

S

Marián Salaet Martínez

Susana Sala

Ester Noemí Salomón

Gladys Inés Salomón

Raquel Sánchez-Muliterno García

Sylvia Sánchez

Viviana Sánchez

María del Refugio Sandoval Olivas

Javier Santiago Soria

Horacio Federico Schmidt

Amalia Serrano

Eva Serrano Clavero

Ana Serrano Tellería

Ekaterina Shapovalova

Sandra Araceli Soto Dotor

Marlyn Johanna Soto Ramírez

Carlos André Suárez Rivero

T

Ramón Tamames

Silvana Tayupanta

Franco Roberto Tempone

Jacqueline Toribio Vargas

Arturo Tornel Moreno 

Benjamín José Touris Durán

U

Elizabeth Ugalde V.

Rebeca Urazán Benítez

V

Luesa van Luyn

María Soledad Velasco Rodríguez

Ignacio José Vidal Arriola

Adonay Vilche

Katherine Villa Guerrero

Dixson Villasmil

Juan Villegas

Oscar Javier Villegas Vélez

W

Sandra Wandemberg

Y

Isabel Yano Lombardía

Z

Kevin Zea Castañeda

Dedication

To all those who couldn’t get a hug in their last moments:

may their souls rest among tulips and almond trees,

wrapped up by the breeze of unconditional love.

Mercedes Pescador

“My soul is free and it is its own self,

and it is accustomed to carry itself in its own way”

Michel de Montaigne

The Essays (according to the 1595 edition

by Marie de Gournay)

Writings from the heart

I started this collective literary work on March 12th 2020, I was full of curiosity but I also did it out of my own fears. The World Health Organization (WHO) had just declared the coronavirus or COVID-19 a pandemic, the death toll was alerting of an unknown danger with unpredictable consequences which was spreading from country to country, causing death and misery. The book shops were closing, the crisis was affecting every economic sector and the continuity of my own publishing label was unknown.

If this were to be my last book, I would be grateful.

While scientists were desperately searching for a vaccine to save humanity, I found refuge in these intimate chronicles of the 2020 pandemic.

While world leaders were declaring the state of emergency and ordering their citizens to stay home to fight the unknown and highly contagious virus, I knew that my passion for the written word would be my only confinement. The lockdown, the closing of borders, airports, schools and companies was pointing to a recession and in my heart, there was a growing need to tell the story, to leave a testimony for humanity.

These pages have been written by authors from across the five continents during the convulsive spring of 2020 and they make up an emotional radiography of what they were thinking and feeling while facing a threat to their own lives. All of them appear with their real names, without any position or titles. There are town mayors, ambassadors, diplomats, artists, writers, teachers, housekeepers, unemployed, pensioners, nurses, of all ages and backgrounds, they all put together their words to write about love, fear, family, context, fortune and future. Some express themselves with a poem, others choose an illustration or a photograph. All of them together make up the evidence of how a pandemic, 2020’s, changed our lives.

Thank you to all of you, writers, men and women from the five continents, thank you for granting me the rights to publish and put it out at everyone’s disposal. Your words have been my stimulus. Thank you, dear Alicia Kaufmann, for sending out invitations all around the world so the most intimate diaries could reach our publishing house. Thank you, Carolina Orihuela, Estephanía Guerrero, Any Do Santos and Alicia Ojalvo for your priceless collaboration with the production and launching of this literary work.

The impressive cover illustration is by the world-renowned Chilean painter and illustrator Carmen Aldunate. The back-cover drawing is by Adam, who, at just 5-year-old and confined with his parents in the U.S., keeps drawing his life and he recreates the world as a big house with one sole roof through where the “bad bug” sneaks in.

If this were to be my last book, I would be grateful. Thank you.

Mercedes Pescador

@MPpescador

www.mercedespescador.com

Spring 2020

FUTURE

What is happening now is different, it kills confidence

Ramón Tamames

Madrid, Spain

Economist, professor and writer

We show our surprise, we talk about how incredible this unexpected situation is, with the overused reminiscence of black swans. We don’t quite understand the fact that we are still in confinement, more or less strict, not less than 4.000 million people, half of humanity.

Frequent recollections from Bocaccio’s Decameron, and Camus’ The Plague, even if we hadn’t read them. There are, sometimes, personal feelings of freedom deprivation, but the confinement is not a prison but a passage from normal life to a path somehow oneiric.

There are a few episodes of unease induced by the “stay home”, in a society which is, to a great extent, filled with comfort. But also, the extreme situation of what we call “to live hand to mouth”, as we can’t clearly see what the future might be.

The media, obsessed with the virus; and whole families, by the millions, are draining their stocks, both mental and physical, of films and series. Using telematic resources, they try to continue working, maintaining their precious routine…

Memories re-emerge, from past and hard times: the oil crash of 1973-1974; the stock-market crisis of 1987, which was stopped dead by the central banks; the fantasy of the dot.com companies in the third millennium; the wealth loss on the real estate speculative crisis of 2008. What is happening now is different, it kills confidence and foretells harder times.

Nothing can compare to the coronavirus crisis, the viral grave for hundreds of thousands of people, entailed by the darkest premonitions. No, we will not live better tomorrow just because we showed solidarity. We will suffer greater hardships, for the lack of global governing and coherent reasoning.

But we shouldn’t sink into depression either. Jorge Manrique explained it better than anyone: “Not any time gone by was better”.

The coronavirus seen from the future

Juan Manuel Rodríguez Elizondo

México

Grandad, why do you call my dad Chato?

—Oh, my dear Ana Sophia! It’s because I couldn’t call him Juan Manuel, because it would feel like I was talking to myself. You are as nosy as I am, poor you, any old matter will make you curious and you will try to make sense of the less common things.

—Hey listen, granddad, I want you to tell me about that time when so many people got sick.

—Yes, I remember, it was in 2020, a time of much uncertainty when the way of life of people got really disrupted.

—How many people died, granddad?

—Well, I’m not sure exactly, but at that time we were about 7.700 million people in the world, and I think around 50 million died.

—That’s a lot of people…

—Most of those people were adults, elderly people. Even though they took refuge in their homes, many got infected with that disease. The biggest problem was that the symptoms didn’t show in the first days of infection, but it still could be spread to other people. It was a time when we all felt unsafe because we were not really sure who was ill and who wasn’t. A few mad ones said that it was just a smoke screen so the world economy would reset but I never believed that. It was terrible, there were many deaths in Europe, the continent with more elderly people.

» Some people blamed China for the whole problem with this pandemic, because that’s where it started. They said that they had allowed the virus to escape, that they had created the virus in a laboratory, that it was a biological bomb, like in science fiction movies. We were afraid. To kill the virus, we hid ourselves behind face masks, gloves, disinfectant products, sprays. It was a time of psychosis; it seemed a nightmare. There was a page on the internet which informed us about the daily cases of infection, the daily deaths, and the total figures.

»We didn’t have a cure for this disease. They said it was like a very strong flu, damaging the lungs and stopping people from breathing. At that time there were still many people smoking cigarettes with diabetes, which was a lethal combination for those infected. Thank God, I didn’t get infected, although I belonged to the risk group. At that time, I was a bit fat and I was suffering from high blood pressure.

»They forbid us to greet with handshakes and kissing. It was very strange, I would watch movies at home were the characters were hugging and kissing each other, and I would feel a chill down my spine watching those scenes which had been shot before the pandemic but now seemed like irresponsible actions. They put in our heads the idea that every personal contact meant a risk of infection so we would avoid any signs of affection.

» We learned a lot about health and how we could protect ourselves from this type of virus. Some politicians affirmed that it would only affect rich people because they were the ones who travelled more and therefore were more exposed, how ridiculous! In one occasion, a presenter from Spanish television mocked the Mexican president for saying that the virus could be fought with the catholic saint cards. Your great-grandfather said that Spanish people came to teach religion to the Mexicans when they colonised us, so he wouldn’t accept the mockery. Other people said that the virus had emerged from an armadillo species that the Chinese ate. There were no vaccines. A Frenchman became a hero worldwide for discovering that there were two medicines for malaria which could be used to cure patients with the virus.

»The most frequented tourist destinations like Spain, Italy and France were the most financially affected. A long time passed until visits could be resumed. Many economies collapsed, we even thought that humanity was coming to an end.

»Prince Charles, the heir to the British crown, got infected with the disease. That’s why he couldn’t become king and they mocked him saying «At last you had the crown, but the coronavirus, you fool». In Mexico there were about 100.000 deaths, not that many if you take into consideration the total population, and it was because we all locked ourselves at home when it was known that the virus was so lethal.

»That was the story of the coronavirus, my dear granddaughter, a story of psychosis from which we didn’t really come out as well or unscathed as we should have done.

We’re just a speck of dust in the Universe

Bernardo Congote

Colombia

When the Voyager 2 spacecraft was planning to leave the Solar System in the nineties, Carl Sagan asked for its camera to be pointed towards us to take our photograph. And this way, we found out that we are nothing but a pale blue speck in the Universe. Now, that little blue speck is under a death threat made by a virus that scientist call COVID-19. These scientists, vilified by believers, chiromancers, preachers and haruspices, are now chased by journalists, political and social networks. To kill them? No! To find out the truth. COVID-19 is saving us from the post-truth era. From the ephemeral kingdom of Twitter and Facebook.

Scientists are teaching us to wash our hands and look after our bodies, something that thousands of gods and priests hadn’t manage to achieve.

The one who calls himself God’s representative on Earth has locked himself in a palace. He doesn’t speak. And the square were his sheep usually hover around, is now empty. If he were to come to his window to give a speech, he wouldn’t have an audience, as he had deserved for centuries. The country which they say is God’s reign, Italy, is deserted. Europe, the empress of terror for centuries, is shaking, moaning and in lockdown. It’s a positive feeling to notice how pleasantly peaceful it is now, in the middle of Trump’s silence, and also now that the Chinese dragon hardly spits the flame of a match. The overly mass-produced goods are detained at the harbours because consumers are buying less. The oceans, infested with tankers, are desolate. The airports, empty.

What are we learning from this? Our own insignificance. Our belonging to a little planet which we had destroyed with no compassion and with the hope of reaching quickly a fantasy heaven. The apocalypse has arrived already; we’ve been building it for centuries. The churches are heading towards becoming museums, we could even substitute them for schools. Teachers could now achieve the position required by humanity eager for knowledge. Schools should function twenty-four hours a day, and at the same time brothels should close down.

Our arrogance has made us think that Earth is immense because there are cars that reach 400 km/h and planes that get to 1,200 km/h. However, our planet travels the Solar System at around 40.000 km/h and the light’s wave-particles travel at 300.000 km/s. The universe we can actually manage to see is just 5% of the total, the other 95% is made out of dark matter and energy. It’s believed that the history of mankind only spans across 200,000 years, while the known Universe’s is estimated around 13m500 millions of years.

We have deified our ignorance! The search for a sole path should be understood as multi-trajectory; what we considered to be true, as untrue. It’s advisable to change the predictive ability of priests for the scientific empire of the doubt; our eagerness to live in balance, for the permanent unbalance; the search for equality, for the awareness of the unequal reality. It’s in our own interest to learn again what we thought we already knew.

To those people who thought the world was going to end, I give you the good news that it’s hardly starting thanks to a virus. It has made us aware of our small size in front of the immense universe and it has left wide-open the doors to the world of wonderland.

All this because of Carmela

Jhonny Castillo

Montevideo, Uruguay

These days I haven’t stopped thinking about a course on historical demography about the black plague which I attended a few years ago. There we took some time to analyse the prologue of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. The Italian author, who belongs to the humanistic school of thought, besides writing about the scourge that was decreasing the population in the 14th century, he talked about the cruelty of abandoning the sick to avoid infection: on the third day of showing signs of the plague —among them, stained spots on the skin—, the convalescent patient would die. These stains are the equivalent to cough and fever nowadays. The isolation and the social distancing are now being battled with the use of technology, but the vulnerability of the species is still the same.

And, talking about vulnerability, Uruguay became news to the world for not having any patients with the virus. They all blame Carmela for the disease reaching the country now. This small country ended up honouring that popular saying which reads «small country, big hell». The theme of conversations now is not the weather or crime, but the virus, and three key words: Milan, marriage and Carrasco.

It turns out that a fashion designer was in Milan and she says that when she returned to the country she requested to be tested for coronavirus at the airport. She didn’t get an effective reply from the public officials so she continued with her life as normal, in the bubble of her world of furs. A few days later, she decided to attend a wedding with over five hundred guests, and after that she found out she had coronavirus.

Carmela told her story to the newspaper El País, putting the blame on the government forces for their health inefficiency for not having done the appropriate tests. However, she has been heavily criticised, especially for her lack of common sense and caution. There was a leak of a few recordings where some of Carmela’s acquaintances accuse her of being stupid and showing a cold and absurd individualism where the “I” prevails over the “we”.

I’ve turned a bit sceptical since I arrived in Uruguay two years ago. But it’s kind of odd that the virus appeared on Friday 13. Everybody talked about Carmela more than the disease. They said: «It’s all Carmela’s fault, it’s because of her that this is happening to us». As Carmela is posh and lives in Carrasco, one of the wealthy 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?

Just the beginning

Ekaterina Shapovalova

Moscow, Russia

I am writing this note with mixed feelings inside. For me personally as a professional coach, consultant and lecturer, the crisis opened many new possibilities and provided a secure space for experiment, where the right for mistake is granted with acceptance. Having faced substantial external limitations people and myself are facing inwards to find and accept their personal limitations, vulnerabilities and imperfection, which in turn is the first and most important step to creativity, growth and professional integrity. I feel it like this since my profession and my passion is around the issue of change.

But I look outside of my window and imagine lives of many other people in Russia, who’s passion is stability, conservation in the survival mode. And I am scared to think of what social consequences this crisis will have for the majority of people who are losing jobs, struggling making means for living. For me as a Russian citizen the corona-crisis looks like the tiny first step into a wider and deeper social and political crisis in our country, where the need for change was long ignored and covered with propaganda of stability and total control. We are now at the doorway of major disillusionment and disappointment in our system that will follow and I am scared to forecast what will it take for people to overcome this…apathy, rage, revenge…?

And if I move further to the global context, I also see this crisis as a big test for humanity in accepting its limitations, its non-omnipotence, its vulnerability. But as well as a kind of trial of the distant or not so distant future where virtual will replace more and more the physical, but as we see it now, it will never replace it fully. We now all feel how much we need true human contact.

If this doesn’t beat me, nothing will

Juan Miguel Fernández Linde

Madrid, Spain

Factory worker

Without freedom: that’s the best way to describe this moment.

I’m not in favour of going with the opinion of others, or with the majority, I always use logic and common sense to everything that happens to me, but this time I made the mistake of letting myself be influenced by the media which, far from putting the population at ease, they enjoy making us suffer in a rather morbid way. Spain is, once again, at the back of the queue in regards to coherence and logic. We live in a state of emergency and this has made me be more selfish.

As I cannot leave the house, I don’t watch television (except for series), but it is inevitable to think of the families what won’t be able to deal with this, in my own family…, but I quickly return to my selfishness and I put that thought to a side. I think they have created this, yes, they’ve created it to wipe clean the planet of the people who are not useful for production and also, once they’re at it, generate a feeling of hate among us.

And in the middle of this situation, I start to value the people I have, or had, on my side before this happened, thinking that mankind is the worst species of this planet, greedy and jealous by nature. I realised that the few people that are by your side, by own accord, are the greatest treasure we could have.

I get many things clear from this situation, and I try to stay positive, I, one of the most realist people you could find… But I understand that if this doesn’t beat me, nothing will.

By the way, I had to spend the quarantine alone in my house. Some say they would go mad, but I brought out in myself the strength of a lion wishing to survive.

Captain’s log book

Javier Santiago Soria

Madrid, Spain

March 26th, Day of Our Lord, 2020. Eleventh day of confinement on the ship Our Lady of Literature.

The crew’s mood alters during the course of each day. You can tell that they are not guys used to this type of journey. They are not demoralised yet, but they are worried, uncertain about how many days are left until they can put their feet on the ground.

The oceans of information we’re sailing through, are unknown. When we set sail, there were talks about it being only for two weeks, although I think not even our commanders trusted that prediction. For sure the lack of government on the ship is the most pressing problem. The history of Spain repeats, a great country dreadfully ruled.

We get news from other expeditions which with different perspectives. The most terrible ones are those which have sank, and we also know about others which are going through terrible difficulties. It’s specially worrying the fact that there are not enough shipyards to fix certain damages, and they say the lack of materials can even force them to choose which ships continue their course and which don’t. It’s terrific to think that our destiny is in the hands of people who are more interested in saving their own backsides than looking for solutions.

Each day, on the eighth evening hour, we can hear how other ships cheer the shipyard technicians who are fighting against adversities with such few resources. On our ship, we try on the first day, in hope, but when we stick our heads to starboard we discover in despair that the rest of the ships had a route in the direction out at sea, but our route, no matter how much we advance, it’s always towards the cliffs.

We fight against monotony trying to keep as active as possible, considering the limitation of our resources. That’s why we force our imagination to use fantasy and oneiric resources to make up for the lack of other realities. Physical exercise is repetitive but necessary, and reading turns out difficult at times, as it’s hard to concentrate our minds in the narrator’s story while our heads are filled with dark clouds. It’s complicated not to have our minds on the hard future ahead once we disembark. Maybe it’s wiser not to think too much about that matter during the sleepless nights: the important thing is to reach port, and about tomorrow only God knows.

This insignificant Captain hopes to have managed to reflect his reality in this log book. If other captains were so kind as to share their thoughts, it would be comforting, for sure. After all, to know that we are all in similar adventures allows us to look into the future with optimism and smile with the perspective of a happy ending for the majority of the expeditions.

Commended to the Virgins of Carmen and Guadalupe, Captain Javier Santiago, nicknamed “the one with the clear forehead” bids farewell.

In the East of Argentina, my city of Resistencia

Ester Noemí Salomón

Resistencia, Chaco province, Argentina

In the hot summer in the city, while I was taking care of my sixty hours a week work, I was looking to and fro, searching for the female mosquito spreading dengue which is keeping us on tenterhooks, it was my great concern health wise! Something changed this March while it was giving way to an unusual Autumn, the season was beginning without the shop windows displaying the new trends for the coming chilly weather. The buzz of devastation was coming from afar.

We watched television terrified and in disbelief, it was showing a horror movie with a small virus in the leading role, a lot smaller that our winged mosquito. Soon after the legal rulings arrived for all of us to lock ourselves in our homes to protect ourselves from the voracious pandemic. Then, every human being understood how brittle their case that contains them is.

The mandatory quarantine meant that we had to know and accept the feared “I”. Self-knowledge emerged in the first hours when we had to walk the path of loneliness in our own place, and we found out how much we needed external incentives like going out for a coffee or for dinners with family and friends.

At home, hundreds of books were waiting for us to show up, and we knew from the very first instant that the word boredom wouldn’t exist in our dictionary.

Uncertain times, no doubt. We were asking ourselves how much or the information we were getting was actually true and which consequences will the disease have in the future for those who suffered it, and if this was the final stage of the disease or just the tip of the iceberg. Too many concerns about a disease we know a little bit about, but maybe too little.

In my quarantine, during which I will turn forty-seven, I wanted to stay home, read reality, use my imagination and wait for the future with faith and strength.

Absent politicians

Sara Quintero Triguero

Getafe, Madrid, Spain

Administrative officer

Nowadays, more than ever, we see how we have more than enough politicians but we’re short of health workers. Our politicians have made an affront to public health and, instead of offering the necessary supplies to aggressively prevent the virus from reaching Spain, they acted as if they were immortal.

We’re lacking a huge amount of resources for our protection. I’d never thought that the best present a friend could give you was face masks and gloves. At this time, we are witnessing how the acts of solidarity from many people are doing more for the country than the government itself. However, we also see how other people are ignoring the state of emergency, uncaring selfish people who have caused that fifteen days of confinement have turned, so far, into fifty.

I can tell you that this virus affects the elderly more aggressively, they are dying because there’s a shortage of breathing machines. They even ended up activating a protocol where the healthier younger patients win and the elderly, after spending their whole lives working, lose.

I’ve always thought we were free. However, nowadays I question how it seems like the powerful lords choose when there’s going to be a virus and how many people should be in the world. The flock was getting bigger and bigger and therefore more difficult to control. Besides, this is the best way to get rid of elderly people who are getting a pension and using Social Security resources. After some investigation, I found out that four months before this disaster had happened, there was a meeting with the wealthiest most powerful people in the world, where they carried out some drills and tests with bacteria and viruses. Is it just by chance that the virus appeared in the country with more overpopulation and at the time of larger migrations? Is it just by chance that the same person that has the patent for the virus with a company has, at the same time, another company which owns the vaccine ready to sell? I don’t believe in chance. We are not free.

My conclusion is that technology doesn’t make us happier, we are social animals and we need the love of our own people and gadgets shouldn’t interfere in a conversation while we eat with family or friends. I’m also aware that politicians are not really doing their job, but we don’t feel their absence, this is because our generation is thoroughly ignorant.

Nowadays, more than ever, we should see who is contributing and who must move out of the way.

Same as yesterday

Franco Roberto Tempone

Alvear, Argentina

It’s too early to start a day which repeats itself until tonight time, but it’s now over two hours ago since dawn’s first light. The calandra-lark perches on the bars of the dining room window. With sharp moves it looks at the corners while its tail moves up and down like blinking, it pecks on a mummified insect trapped in a spiderweb. It looks like it’s frowning and it’s staring at me with persistence. It’s like it’s challenging me, arrogant and smiley. Its eyes are fixed on me. I feel I’m safe in my fish tank, like an axolotl. The bird is sideways and in his eye I look for Ariadne’s thread to come out of this fiction. Fiction is also a labyrinth. I look and get lost in its eye’s iris, through the different cylindrical passages until I find the right one, I open the door and see the small round mirror, that one that hanged from a rusty nail in the shower in Mitre street, the mirror that, when I was a young boy, couldn’t show me who I was then. The other passages are false because they tell me about progress, productivity, success, competency, but they all orbit around the same thing, and they keep us waiting to then suffocate us in non-renovated waters.

I was opening doors and keeping myself busy reading about dystopian worlds where the end of the world would find humanity fighting with their last weapons in a scenario which was grey after explosions, chaotically deforested, flapping in dry rivers or cities which were unconsciously collapsing like components of a dream. But, always with humanity as the last survivor switching the light off.

The calandra-lark doesn’t have an ego, for sure, it glides on the air because it’s part of the colours of that sky which doesn’t have beginning or end. I make a sudden move to drink my mate and the bird takes off, flying towards a clear sky of an artificial blue hint like the Oaxaca sky. The calandra-lark is now just a speck in the vast sky… Getting smaller and smaller, an eye’s pupil; and farther, a virus, a threat, until its particles became condensed in the reflections of April’s sun.

A “millennial” in quarantine

Ignacio José Vidal Arriola

Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala

Secondary school teacher

Ilive in a very centric area of the city of Guatemala. I’m the youngest of three siblings, I live with my parents, I work and I’m also a student. These are my main obligations. I’m sure that many people my age are living a similar situation.

Unfortunately, Guatemala is a poor country hit by corruption and great inequality. However, we also have positive qualities like our hospitality and positive attitude, family closeness and respect for our traditions and culture.

I’m a teacher of Social Science and, since the moment we heard about this new disease at the beginning of the year, I discussed the news with my students in the classroom, but we never thought this disease would actually harm us.

In my home we enjoy a certain level of comfort which is not the average in our country. We always watch and discuss the international news, specially from Spain and Italy, countries where we’ve had the opportunity to travel to, and we feel culturally identified with. In our family we agree with the actions taken by our president to safeguard our health; home quarantine for people suspected to have the virus, immediate closure of schools and universities after the first case, a 12-hour curfew from four in the afternoon, and the mandatory use of face masks. Being the youngest in the house, I’ve taken the responsibility of looking after, accompanying and protecting my parents, who are quite old and have a few health problems.

I’m a millennial but I can’t help finding funny the behaviour of many young kids on social media, where they feel invincible and even unaffected by the virus. People from my generation, we always try to rebel against the system and its regulations. We are known to be egotistic, manipulating and even resentful with the treatment we receive from society and our parents: more difficulty to find jobs, fierce professional and work rivalry, and less room to get established. However, I think the majority of us are quite comfortable living with our parents still.

I’ve thought a lot about my social status as a millennial. Are we, by chance, ready to inherit this planet? Have we learned enough as to take landmark decisions on transcendental matters for humanity? To be in lockdown and to sacrifice going out with my friends has been terrible. And at this moment I realise that: we are growing and, at any given time, it will be us who become the leaders of our nations and societies.

I’m scared. Our health system doesn’t guarantee that all the population can be saved, and not forgetting the problems we already had like pollution, poverty, malnutrition, political corruption, economic inequality, discrimination.

At the same time, I really appreciate the company of my parents and I’ve seen the supportive and understanding side of my friends. I have also built up my patience and I’ve discovered, at a distance, that I feel a great affection for my students.

The future is uncertain. I don’t know if the people I love will survive. I don’t know if I will recover the comfortable and easy life I had, but, in this short period of time I’ve learned a very important lesson: life is not just about me, I’m the one who must work for my own life and the lives of the people around me. Now I am more aware of the inequalities and that worries me. As a millennial, I cannot afford to put the blame on others for my own mistakes and problems, and I cannot forget the reasons I have to be grateful.

A Spaniard trapped in Colombia

Anonymous

Mocoa, Colombia

At the beginning of February, when the virus wasn’t a concern for me, as it was happening very far from here and I thought that, like Ebola, we would end up forgetting about it, I was about to start the biggest trip of my life. I was going to Colombia and Peru for five months with my partner. More than a simple trip, it was an initiation, an experience of self-growth. The adventure was great: we found the perfect place and we got what we wanted. We stayed with a guy whose country house was in a mountain, one and a half-hour walk from the capital of Putumayo, where the Colombian Amazon starts. In that magical place, where we worked a bit in exchange for accommodation, there was no electricity, so I could only communicate with my family every now and then. We were very disconnected from civilisation, but they kept me a little bit up to date on how the situation was developing.

The quarantine arrived to Italy and Spain; the borders of some countries were closing… By mid-March, the Spanish embassy recommended all Spanish people abroad to return as soon as possible. My partner had doubts, as for the first time she was really feeling home somewhere. I chose to follow the advice and return. I bought my flight ticket for the 27th, not rushing much, as the president of Colombia had informed that the air borders wouldn’t be closed despite the already effective closure of land and sea borders. The next day, my partner bought her flight ticket at the same price, 400 €, with the same airline, Air Europa. A few minutes after making the payment, she received a message from the company informing her that the fee had changed and she should pay another 400 € if she didn’t want her ticket cancelled. Panicking, she decided to do it. A few hours later, again the same thing, and she ended paying a total of 1200 €. The next day, the Spanish embassy announced that from the 23rd there would be no more international flights from Colombia. We understood that we had to stay until all this would pass, initially in a month’s time, although it is still unknown.

Soon after, Spain announced that they would arrange for a special flight, but it was badly organised and they were not giving out many details…. They said that they didn’t know yet when the flight would take off, but we should all be in Bogotá before March 25th. When they gave the details about the flight, it was on the 24th, internal transportation had started to be affected and not running so we couldn’t make our way out of the city we were in, Mocoa.

The school that made us happy

William Fernando Molano Lamprea

Chía, Colombia

Teacher.

It seems like the days pass more slowly. Outside my window, dusk is falling, under my faint and tired eyes after a long day in front of the computer’s screen, wishing for the day when I could return to the classroom.

I’m one of those teachers who value their students, of those born to soak-in the buzz and noise, and who enjoy teaching, nearly in a child-like way, those who listen and love to be listened to. Or at least that’s what some of my kids tell me.

But now, same as five million people in the world, I find myself prisoner in my own house, far from my “home”, far from my “children”, the children I was given “in adoption” thanks to my profession. Those who many times, among cries and pleas, end the day with a thank-you and a hug.

There are many of us who face reality in the classroom and understand there are many paradigms and social barriers concerning the teaching tasks and we have to learn how to teach using digital resources, and the tedious planning of the virtual lessons. The secretarial task of revising literally thousands of emails at the end of the day, is stealing, somehow, part of my life; the same life which before COVID-19 was victim of criticism, indifference and loneliness, but today we miss it from the depths of our souls.

We can only wait, continue to educate and invite all our students to value and see the school as that place where until a few months ago was making us the happiest people on the planet. This planet we took for granted and only now we understand its value.

When will this situation end?

Nicole Stephanie Morales Cooper

Maracaibo, Zulía, Venezuela

When hen you live in a country where you think nothing can get worse, and something as incredible as this doesn’t even surprise you, and it doesn’t even make you afraid.