Things get more challenging when your screen is your only port to the outside world; and when you cannot go anywhere. But at the same time, you can use your computer to get connected with everything. Despite that, you would lose the ability to communicate your thoughts and feelings, and that makes communication difficult. Particularly in these circumstances, which are full of confusion and tension.
Before lockdown began, our schedules were overwhelmed with tasks, reporting for work. No one had the time for long phone calls and, when we met with others, our phones followed suit. Because we live in an age of rapid exchanges of messages, I did not need to call my friends and relatives to ask about their days. Instead, I could simply check their updates on Instagram or Snapchat.
Here we are in the second month of home quarantine, which is necessary to avoid the risk of infection with Coronavirus/COVID-19. This pandemic is threatening the safety and health of the entire world.
Most of the activities that we used to do, before the quarantine, were completely different. So our lifestyle has changed. However, we are trying to adapt to this new lifestyle to protect ourselves and others.
After the outbreak of this pandemic or the so-called “coronavirus” in Lebanon and the occurrence of its serious effects which cause health symptoms that could lead to death, all people were in quarantine and communication stopped between them. We did not have any communication ways except social media channels. This was very annoying because we know that social life brings all family members together. Therefore, this interruption had several negative aspects, one of which was not being able to participate in happy and sad family occasions. Thus we started having these events within the smaller family only. This led to loose social ties and divergence of families and communities.
It seemed to me like a dream, or rather a collective nightmare that suddenly occurred and dominated the world with its impact. At first, it was difficult for me to believe what was happening. What happened? What have we done? What are our sins? What is God testing us for? How can we resist this small body which scientists have been unable to fight?
Dear Diary,
For two weeks now, I was following up on the coronavirus pandemic spreading all around the world. It was very sad to see how this pandemic was directly affecting peoples’ lives as well as the socio-economic sectors. Worldwide, governments start taking specific measures for lockdown in an attempt to prevent the spread of the COVID19.
God created people different from each other in voice, shape and ambition. That is one of the mercies that we want to celebrate because we always try to shape our lives in line with our daily aspirations. Humans in their instinct are not satisfied with what they had planned for yesterday. They change their plans every morning according to their morning mood. This is not because God created humans as the most complicated creatures, but because we are talking about humans of Lebanon/specifically humans of North Lebanon. I’m a resident of North Lebanon where people have different lives, plans, responsibilities and priorities.
BY MARIAM DAHER, MAYSSA JALLAD, NIKOLAY MINTCHEV & ELISABETTA PIETROSTEFANI
The RELIEF Centre’s prosperity team is delighted to announce the launch of the Covid-19 diaries – a series of reflections about life in the context of the global pandemic that we are currently living through. As the pandemic hit, it changed our course of research in Lebanon. Travel plans had to be postponed until further notice because of lockdown regulations; fieldwork and research activities that the team had planned on the ground could no longer take place as envisaged; team workshops and assignments had to be moved online wherever possible. As we became physically fixed in the confines of our homes, our working lives moved to the realm of virtual online communication.
The impact of the pandemic, however, extends beyond work. In fact, it affects all spheres of life from personal health and wellbeing, to livelihoods, social connections, political engagements, and cultural activities to name just a few. Different types of infrastructures – from roads and sidewalks, to housing and internet connectivity – change their role and relevance in our lives. Our imaginations begin to shift in the way they envisage the past, present and future. The old routines of sociality become disrupted and reformed.
These transformations and disruptions present an opportunity to renew our thinking about prosperity. They allow us to produce new reflections and insights about what kinds of lives we want to live and what matters to us as individuals and as a community. At the broader societal level, countries across the world have seen the pandemic put pressure on economies, health care systems, and food supply chains among other things. In Lebanon, more specifically, the pandemic has come at a time of political and economic turmoil and exacerbated a crisis that was already underway.
The broader structural processes that the pandemic has instigated translate into specific types of lived realities for individuals, families and communities. This raises a number of important questions: how do we experience the structural dimensions of the ongoing changes in our daily lives? What are the challenges and anxieties, as well as hopes and aspirations, that are borne out of the bigger social and economic changes? What are the daily practices through which we manage our everyday lives in the context of the pandemic?
The Covid diaries present a glimpse of what daily life looks like as we move through the different stages of managing the pandemic, from full-on lockdown, to gradual relaxation of lockdown restrictions and return to ‘normal’ daily routines insofar as a return to an old ‘normal’ is at all possible.
Written by RELIEF’s citizen scientists in Lebanon, the diaries are portrayals of the vast range of experiences, thoughts, and activities that characterize everyday life. As readers of the diaries will undoubtedly notice, the attitudes and experiences depicted in the texts vary greatly among participants. While some write about their ability to make use of the lockdown to slow down, introspect, discover new hobbies, and enjoy their time at home, others talk about the opposite types of reactions – feelings of stress, anxiety and worry, resulting from the culmination of economic and social degradation as societies globally struggle to find coherent and efficient ways to deal with this pandemic. These diverse responses highlight the complex nature of our experiences in the present moment. As such, they invite us to reflect not only about the challenges we face, but also about the things we hold dear, and the things we can do to support the people and communities that we care about in these unprecedented times.
While the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds, strict measures have to be taken by authorities to control the spread of the virus and protect groups that are more vulnerable to the disease.
Cities that were throbbing with life in different part of the world were forced to shut down. Although the spread of the virus spotlights inequalities in the accessibility to basic services and rose different challenges for vulnerable communities who couldn’t even afford to stay at their homes, the lockdown also had unexpected benefits and positive impacts on different matters, from climate to people’s daily lives.
The changes and transformations that the whole world is witnessing as a result of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic has had severe psychological, social and economic repercussions and has affected people’s movement and life. The lockdown due to the quarantine has resulted in the absence of outdoor activities to minimize the spread of the new Coronavirus. This has created some fear of the future psychological effects on the mental state of individuals within the community. The physical and mental health conditions resulted by the stressful quarantine pressures, such as fear of virus infection, frustration, boredom, shortage of adequate medical supplies, lack of information, financial losses, and feeling of shame in cases of having the disease, widen the gap and increase the intensity of the crisis.
The RELIEF Centre’s prosperity team is delighted to announce the launch of the Covid-19 diaries – a series reflections about life in the context of the global pandemic that we are currently living through. As the pandemic hit, it changed our course of research in Lebanon. Travel plans had to be postponed until further notice because of lockdown regulations; fieldwork and research activities that the team had planned on the ground could no longer take place as envisaged; team workshops and assignments had to be moved online wherever possible. As we became physically fixed in the confines of our homes, our working lives moved to the realm of virtual online communication.
