Dawn hill walk, pre lockdown 2, when my bike was brokenish.
It’s what
we normally do- stay home during hot weather over the big holiday (New Year) in
April. So it was kind of the same. Stock up on food, stop homeschool lessons and trips into
town. Being at home together is cool and
relaxing compared to being out in the hottest part of the year.
But different
this time because it was with neighbours rather than extended family. Neighbours who were stuck in the village like
because of the lockdown that happened when 20th Covid case in the province was detected near
our market. And extended family were stuck outside the province due to the
Covid 19 provincial travel ban (April 7th).
A whirlwind
of pandemic related breaking news seemed to surround us along with some new and
surprising experiences, another difference to our familiar holiday.
 |
| 2nd year in a row- Easter at home! |
We already experienced a weird new thing back in March. They
taped us off from the rest of town,
along with our whole commune. No one
else in town had this, and we had never heard of it before so it was hard to
understand what it was at first.
Straight off that weirdness my mother-in-law had to suddenly
cancel her Khmer New Year visit. The fruit she picked and packed fruit
to bring us for the biggest holiday of the year had to be unpacked on April 7th
as travel between provinces was banned.
Disappointing for us (and devastating for others), but happy the
government drastically reduced the chances of the virus spreading.
 |
A couple of days later...
Next up another confirmed Covid-19 case was found near
our market on April 9th. At first
all we knew was that there were lots of uninformed people and chaos in our
village one evening. A family taken away, buildings taped off. Scary.
Then, like dominos the bits of news came out- at least one
case- the market shut but commune still open...no wait, now the village is
taped off and manned by uniformed official looking people.
Once the confusion settled we were left with a teenager
(he came for the afternoon but ended up having to stay 2 weeks), orders to
stay in our house (apart from twice a week out to get food), and no
access to a market, supermarket or ATM. The village is a smaller area than
a commune, so it was a more extreme lockdown than the first one and with no
market how would people make money and buy food?
 |
| April 10th? |
Around the same day, April 9th, cases in Phnom
Penh suddenly spiked.
” The COVID-19 situation seems to have fallen into a state of emergency as the MoH reported 576 new cases today, a number which exceeds the total tally in all of 2020.” April 9th, The Khmer Times
Siem Reap joined in Phnom Penh in having an alcohol ban,
and 8pm-5am curfew and schools were shut
around that time. Those
things hardly impacted me especially as I basically wasn’t allowed to go out at
all and didn’t have brain space for noticing, although these things would have
seemed significant to me before.
A few days later....
A friend from outside the village brought us some cash,
handed it over at the village border checkpoint. A few days later his commune and two others
in town went into lockdown, so was not able to help us anymore.
A few days later...
Milk, bread and toilet paper other friends brought to the
checkpoint for us had to be sprayed before members of our household were
allowed to put it on their bikes to bring it home. I didn’t dare go to collect these strange
foreign items myself. My walk back into
the village past the empty market and various checkpoints made me realize I’m
probably the only white person here and I didn’t want to draw attention. (The
walk also reminded me of things I’d read about April 17th 1975, I
wasn’t eager to repeat that feeling.)
A few days later...
A casino about 150km away found a positive Covid-19 person.
It shut suddenly with our neighbour inside (April 23rd). Was she going to have to stay at work for 2
weeks with no access to her bed, money, clothes, food etc?
The next day...
She tested positive too and was moved to a restaurant
(makeshift medical facility). (At first she thought she was being taken to a hospital in a bigger
town.)
Meanwhile other neighbours were stuck in a Red Zone in
Phnom Penh. They had even more
extreme restrictions than the Orange and Yellow zones in the capital, and
struggled to get food even before the government shut the markets down.
At that point we didn’t know if our lockdown would end in a
couple of days, or did we have 2 more weeks? Or was it five more days?
After much confusion the “lockdown refugee” who had been
camping in our yard was finally able to go home! He was so excited he came back
to tell us within the hour!
I think I had imagined that the end of lockdown would feel
exciting and freeing, but confusion was overwhelming as I mentioned
here.
The superficial sameness of it tricked me. Each day looked
normal, but the emotions that popped up at the end of the month said otherwise.
I felt scared to go past where the checkpoint had
been. After 2 weeks anticipating the
moment I could finally ride my bike again, it was a big anticlimax. First ride out I rode really slowly, waiting
for someone to stop me.
I felt surprised to see people going about their
everyday business and realised they had been doing that the whole time we were
locked up. I had known that of course, but seeing it was a different feeling. Even though some parts of town had commune
lockdowns I don’t know of any other extreme village lockdowns like ours. As far as I know others had access to shops
and banks the whole time.
I felt like our family needed some time at home together
to recover. Even though we had just done that for 2 weeks! But it was by
force, and with neighbours. And we all knew no one could come or go. I didn’t
realize I found that intense until it was over.
A few days later...
Restrictions lifted- travel between provinces allowed (apart
from worst areas such as Phnom Penh), and then the 3 commune in Siem Reap were
also freed.
Such a relief in some ways. People were stuck away from
their families, and limited access to food and money. But also, cases are still
going up, so we expected and indeed saw more cases once those bans were lifted.
At the start
of April: 2478 cases of Covid-19 in Cambodia and 15 deaths. The whole month
felt like a whirlwind of changes. Constantly surprised and having to readjust.
By the end of the month over 13,000 cases and at least 90 deaths.
Riding out
the hot season at home is what we usually do. Nothing new about that. But
seeing a child barred from going home for 2 weeks, and the feeling of not being
able to access money and buy food was a bizarre surprise.
 |
| Finally back inside Angkor Thom after not riding for over 2 weeks. |
No comments:
Post a Comment