Life in COVID-19 era

By Leonardo Micua

 

FOR the past two weeks of observance of the Enhanced Community Quarantine in our little corner in Bonuan, we didn’t dare to go out in faithful compliance with the order, except on Fridays when we had to put the final copy of The PUNCH for the week to bed, so to speak.

Like many others, I’ve been on a work-from-home arrangement but was always ready to cover breaking stories. Thankfully, it never came to that. There was never a time when we were compelled by circumstances to go out to dig deeper into a developing story with our media ID as our only pass.

We knew that all government offices only maintain skeletal forces these days with their bigger force also on work-from-home, and that there are checkpoints in every corner of the city on the lookout for violators of ECQ.

Instead of just whiling away time, I helped the missus to do home chores, which I failed to do in the past because of my busy work schedule.

My quarantine gave me time to tend to the ornamental garden, pulled some weeds, trimmed some overgrown twigs, watered the plants mornings and afternoons and replanted some good ones to make them multiply. Our guayabano and atis in front of the house need water in order to survive this sizzling hot summer and hopefully bear fruits soon.

At times, I swept the floor inside and around the house, washed the dishes while the missus fed the kitten.

Our labandera, who is four kilometers away from us, regularly comes to the house thrice a week, one day for ironing clothes. But the ECQ posed a problem. The police do not want her to ride her husband’s tricycle or ride at the back of her husband in a motorcycle.

I must confess that I was never grounded home this long ever since my wife and I came to Bonuan and not even when Martial Law was declared in 1972.

When I was finally done with the chores given by the missus, I get to open my iPad to pick up some bits and pieces of news and commentaries, which are, by the way, teeming in social media nowadays.

Fortunately, I never had to do any marketing at all or to buy essentials from the supermarket. Our son, who is also vacationing from work because of COVID-19, is doing these, guided by a list provided by the missus.  Remember, only one in the family can go to the market. Mercifully, the purchases were charged to my son’s credit card for now.

We still have enough rice to cook because two days before the ECQ, wifey already bought 25 kilos from a suki on Rivera Street. For canned goods, we have a stock that we think may last us for two or three weeks.

But it is the cooking gas and the alcohol that we need to disinfect our hands in this Covid-19 that we are in short supply.

We have no problem with supply of fish and vegetables. Every morning, vendors would press our doorbell to sell bangus, shrimps, malaga, pingao, galunggong and at times crabs.

Others sell vegetables like eggplant, okra, tomatoes, squash, ampalaya, talbos ng kamote etc, at prices a little bit higher than those in the market-street of Galvan in the city proper which is understandable.

Given this, my son would only drive to the market when necessary.

*          *          *          *

While city hall trumpets on social media that it has covered many barangays in their relief distribution, it was only after two weeks since the start of lockdown that we and our neighbors finally received food assistance,  delivered by a man from the barangay wearing a shirt marked  Bonuan Gueset. 

Pardon me, but we did not see a note in the bag indicating that the bundle of food package came from the Dagupan City government. Missus was in the kitchen when the man left the package in front of our gate, consisting of a five-kilo bag of C-18 Cagayan rice, five Young’s Town sardines, and five packs of noodles.  

We thought that at last, the residents in our area, especially those who have less in life will have food on their table that could tie them up for a few days. Remember that all cannot get out of their respective homes to earn a living.  Many, like the jeepney, tricycle, and the padyak drivers had been grounded in the confines of their homes and deprived of the opportunity to earn little to buy food for their respective families. “Walang kita, Manong. Gutom ang inabot namin,” said Randy, our neighbor.

Take also the case of masseurs and wards of the  Area Vocational and Rehabilitation Center who dared to leave their homes  Tuesday morning to serenade their affluent neighbors, belting out Tagalog medleys, beamed by a loud-speaker, begging for alms as the food assistance from the city or barangay was nowhere yet. 

In this kind of situation, where can they get their food during the month-long quarantine? The malls, where they are servicing clients, are closed, that is why they have to rely on the generosity of the local government which President Duterte ordered to help those displaced by the ECQ.

The LGUs were ordered to provide food assistance without requiring the would-be recipients to present their voter’s IDs, said Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Ano. This means, no one should be left out in the distribution line as all were similarly hurt by the lockdown.

We are hoping the lockdown will not be extended anymore so everybody can go back to work. But This will depend on how COVID-19 will temper from now.  

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