This morning I woke up and during my morning coffee I quickly went through the news and all the news about lockdowns brought me back for a moment to the day when we had the first Covid-19 infection in Suriname. I decided to share with you an excerpt of that day from my diary.
It is March 13, 2020. I am sitting in the garage of the house I have been renting for several months now, engrossed in a math exercise.
It is 10 minutes before 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Exactly at 4 o'clock I am going to start tutoring math and physics.
After a few minutes, my student Tvesa comes strolling into the garage, which is also used as a classroom, screaming out loud, 'Miss, I don't have Corona!'
I laugh at her.
'There is no Corona in Suriname, dear.'
I shake my head and start to put the papers on my table together nervously, while trying very hard not to think of my sister's words, just ten minutes ago: 'Corona is already in Suriname. It arrived.'
'Oh yes teacher! It's here! Mama says it's a foreigner. A woman.'
I sigh and get up from the chair where I had been sitting for the past ten minutes behind the math exercise, confessing to myself that I needed to forget about the world's problems for a while. Suriname is a 3rd world country, where medical care is not always optimal. Every one is afraid that the hospitals will not be able to take care of all the patients.
'A woman? A foreigner. Oh. Ok.', I said, looking at Tvesa as casually as possible. Her smile disappeared. Oh no! I didn't want to scare her. I didn't want to create a panic. But she sensed my fear I think. 'Oh teacher, nothing is going to happen. That person is in quarantine. It's going to be all right.'
She smiled again and took a seat on one of the chairs at the table where all my paperwork was now in a pile.
'It's definitely going to be okay.', I replied.
I smiled at her, walking over to the blackboard hanging in my garage. For a moment, I wished she didn't have to see my face. Instead of me reassuring her, she reassured me. What kind of teacher was I?!
Quarantine? What does that mean? How does she know what that means? When I was 13, I didn't even know a word like that existed!
Little did I know, that within a few weeks time every adult person, every little child, no matter how old, would have this little word thrown in his or her face.
Quarantine? Our punishment and our best friend at the same time. In that moment, as I walked to the blackboard, I knew the world was about to change. I knew something big was going to happen.
Little did I know that it already would happen within the three hours that followed.
At the stroke of 4, I began tutoring. I only had two students. I knew the other students had stayed away because of all the Corona stuff. The news had already appeared on social media and the official news sites had also reported it.
Tvesa stayed from 4 to 6 and Lakshmi, a slightly older student stayed from 5 to 7.
Lakshmi and I; we both felt that we were not really in the mood to study, but still we quickly got over some physics exercises. Around 6:30, however, we started chatting more and a little before 7 o'clock she left.
It was scary: the way she left. It was like saying goodbye forever. She was telling me that I needed to eat healthy and watch after myself. That I should especially enjoy these days because we didn't know if we would see each other again. Her words scared me. But of course she is exaggerating, I thought.
I put the chairs inside the house. I had an open garage and never left the chairs outside for fear that thieves would take them and sell them for a few dollars to get some cheap drugs.
But at that moment I did not know that a little further from my gate, in the streets of Suriname, the word 'thieves' slowly but surely made way for the word 'quarantine'.
So, whistling, I walked into the house, closed the door behind me and plopped down on the couch. I opened facebook and there it hit me. What was happening in my country? I sat up straight and while I was scrolling through the posts, I called my sister's name loudly. She appeared from her room.
'Did you see it?', she asked. I looked at her with my mouth open. 'What are those people doing?'
'They're buying up stuff. They're hoarding.'
'But why! There's enough food for everyone!', I shouted.
She shrugged and with a nonchalant gesture walked into the hallway , towards the shower. That wasn't just nonchalance. She was trying to hide her fear, but I smelled the tension behind it. Fear. Uncertainty. My head was pounding and only now did it dawn on me.
All the scenes I had seen in the news so far, all the scenes I dreaded, all the scenes where I thought, 'This is abroad; it's not coming here.', all those scenes had reached Suriname. I had been praying for months now for all the people abroad that were fighting against Corona. The time to add my country to my praying list had arrived.
I stared at my phone, constantly switching the screen from various official news websites to facebook and then back again. Corona was in Suriname. Corona was in Suriname. Corona was in Suriname...
At the time of writing, I did not know that the situation would get worse. Although I still have hope that the old normal will return.
Praying for the world. Stay safe all. Stay healthy. Sending you all my love. ❤️
