Let them all tell you what happened - Mercedes Pescador

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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.

      I’m Nicole. I’m 18 years old, I live in Maracaibo city. When the media announced that we had to take precautions, it was Friday 13. I’m not superstitious, but the coincidence was quite shocking. That same day I quit my job in a supermarket because I had got a better job, due to start on Monday March 16th. The news of the quarantine affected me deeply. I couldn’t imagine that, except for the food, health and transport sectors, no one would be allowed to go to work.

      So, I spend these days with no job and at home. I don’t do much here: I wash clothes, I clean, I pass the time playing with my mobile phone, I read the news or I fight with my siblings when they don’t do the chores.

      In our country, most of us ask God for the day, when all of this ends, to come soon

      An intermission with no return

      Jorge Enrique Caro Niño

      Berlin, Germany

      Scenographer

      And all of a sudden, with no warning, the show of the world and its tragicomedy were going to be interrupted: a planetary event that, on a different scale, would be just an anecdotic stellar dust speck…

      I was in Munich, working for a theatre scenography. With just four days left to the premiere, the director told us that everything would be closed. My personal downfall got even bigger. I thought: «Four months ago I was living in Spain and I had a partner, and now this!».

      The theatre was getting ready to snooze and I was experiencing, on a small scale, the living metaphor of what was gradually happening all over the world… It was surprising to see the technicians run through the stage like a lawless God, each one of them dismantling whatever they had in front of them. And when they were gone, what was left was a desolated scenario: props, equipment, cables, curtains and lights, all of it abandoned to their own fate. The stalls and the stage looked now more like abandoned modern ruins.

      That indescribable feeling reminded me of Polidori’s book about Chernobyl, when he narrated that overwhelming abandonment of the city of Pripiat in just one day. I wondered if the future might remind us in the same way, the abandonment caused by a pandemic of global fear …

      I heard the rough muffled noise of the metallic fire-resistant curtain, which always falls down slowly making that characteristic noise, like a bunker beyond the grave. From then on, the theatre would be left empty, physical and symbolically, and in silence: the stalls and the stage are now senseless meaningless spaces.

      And the same has happened to the world: the curtain has fallen during an intermission with no return, and the world was left with no audience. In a cosmic second, the stage of the world became fragile and meaningless and, in my mind, I thought I heard the echo, non-existent really, of a voice which invited us to go to the foyer during an intermission which had no near end.

      Today

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