I started this log on day 15 because I didn't think this pandemic would be this long when the shutdown began.
This is my journal, telling about my own experience during the response of pandemic covid-19. I'm not expecting people today will be interested to read this post because we all are experiencing the same thing. But, imagine when people in the next decades or centuries find this post. They will know how scary and horrible this pandemic was. Hopefully, they will learn from us, from our mistakes, how worst we have treated out planet.
I think these days will be recorded in human history as one of the deadly plagues in the world, just like Spanish flu in 1918, the Black Death in 1346, and some other pandemic ever recorded in the world history.
This is the crisis which my or even my grandparents' generation had never seen. A plagues that put all aspect of life in the world at hold. School, offices, even shopping center are shutdown. Public transportation are restricted. People are encouraged or in some area are even imposed to stay at home and apply physical distancing. Gathering event for any purpose is banded. Street, offices, school, shopping centers are vacant. Yeah, it is that bad.
I don't really understand how this pandemic started. What I remember is that around early January I watched a news on TV which broadcast a news about an outbreak of mysterious illness in a China province. The reporter said that people with pneumonia had swamped hospitals. The media called it mysterious disease. They did not have the name yet. At that time, I did not think this disease would concern me since it happened so far away from home. I just skipped the news, I think.
A few weeks later, more news on TV or online talked about this disease. Then, all of the sudden, it became the world's headline because it spreads so fast and took up the whole province named Wuhan. That day, They had the name for this disease, it is corona and caused by corona virus. The Chinese government locked down the city. Unfortunately, it seemed to be too late. Day by day, more countries reported more cases. Once a case in a country was identified, like a curse it began to spread so rapidly and massively, and soon it became out of hand.
Nevertheless, when one by one every country in almost every continent reported cases, not a single case was detected in my country, Indonesia. Instead of feeling relieved, people were suspicious that something wasn't right. It couldn't be right. Public began to question if the zero case indicated that there was no case or we failed to detect the case.
On the second week of Mach, our government eventually announced the first two cases. Only then, all the necessary actions were taken. My school took action before the government released a mandate. The director had decided to shutdown the school for 3 days for general cleaning. Students were expected to come back on March 16, 2020. Unluckily, the corona virus, then called covid-19, got worse. Governor had imposed schools shutdown. From 3 days, my school shutdown was extended for another two weeks. That is how I ended up staying at home for 15 days. And it is not confirmed yet if we can return to school next week. We are still waiting for the development of this crisis. Eventually, a horror that once I thought was far from home, so sudden it appeared in our back yard.
Amid the continuous spreading of covid-19, our government called for working and studying from home. Something almost the whole world have done. That is what I have been doing in the last 15 days. We, teachers, send the assignment home online. The next day students returned them online too, and the teacher check it, correct it, and send back the feedback. Now, online and distance learning is part of our routines. Teaching-learning must go on amid this pandemic. Children are entitled to education regardless any condition. Thus, we have to make sure that education stay available for them.
Every morning, started around 7 a.m. I'll prepare my laptop. I Open my email, chat and Drives to see how the teachers and students are working on the home learning. I'll coordinate with all the teachers to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible. Sometimes, we discussed when we experience a problem. It is not easy to conduct a distance learning, especially for young learners. We have to maintain communication with parents as well, so learning is running as we expect it to be. Holding a distance learning for your learners is not without challenge. However, the biggest challenge is not designing the lesson and creating the most suitable task. When it all started, our biggest obstacle comes from internet access. We experience connection disruption all the time. It makes sending, uploading, and downloading the materials we needs taking forever to complete. This situation requires a high quality of patience. We are trying the best we could, so the kids will keep studying during this pandemic.
In the early school shutdown, I still went out to go grocery shopping. On the first week, I even took the commuter to have a meeting with the principal at school. I still had some courage left to do it that time. Until three days ago, I went cycling in the morning around the residents not far from my village. But now, I have to abandon it. The government has urged, if not imposed, to stay at home, encourage physical distancing, and has advised against Venturing out of our house, except in urgency. More people are infected by covid-19 every day. It has reached over 500 people in this country. That't why, it takes the whole country to control this pandemic. Everyone must concern about it and follow the government mandates. We are in this together. Otherwise, it would be hard to put this disease under control. We all have to work together to put this genie back in the bottle.
Let's all raise our hands and pray that this pandemic will be over soon and never come back. For the sake of our kids and their education, and for the sake of humanity.
I'll continue this log next week to see if I'll have been able to go back to school, or still teach and learn from home. I really hope it is the previous. Amiin.
Stay clean, stay safe, stay at home!
