Where I'm living, in Mauritius, I've had the unique opportunity to be part of an experiment of sorts. To live out the premise of the movie Groundhog Day, except the cycle that repeats itself is a whole year rather than a single day.
On March 21st, 2020, the whole country went on lockdown due to an outbreak of the Coronavirus. School was cancelled, everyone was told to stay at home, and only go out for essentials like food and medicine, and only on specific days of the week according to the first letter of the last name. My shopping days were Monday and Thursday (letter D). Supermarkets implemented strict shopping procedures, with socially distanced queues wrapping around the block. Streets were virtually empty of cars or pedestrians, with most storefronts shuttered except for pharmacies. And like a lot of other countries, most adults were working from home or out of a job for a while.
The lockdown worked: within a month the spread of the virus was contained, and the number of active cases went down from nearly 400 to 0, with only 10 lives lost. The government then took a few more months to ease restrictions, out of an abundance of caution, and school finally resumed midway through the year. Restaurants, large gatherings, and even cinemas resumed operation (although I've yet to go see a movie). Masks were required to enter most places. Anyone entering the country was immediately quarantined in a hotel for 14 days. Every month or so we'd hear about quarantined individuals who tested positive, and breathed a sigh of relief that the system was successfully buffering their entrance into the public.
I'd say it took about 6 months, but the country eventually returned to normalcy, although certain sectors, especially tourism, took a huge hit and had to adapt to the new global reality. But in general we all felt Mauritius had evaded a major catastrophe, and the endlessly isolating reality that most of my friends and family were going through elsewhere in the world.
Now, almost exactly a year later, the cycle seems to be repeating itself. In early March, 2021, the virus infiltrated the general public again somehow. Even as fewer than 10 cases were detected, school was suspended for a week, and once the count reached 15, the whole country was put on lockdown again, for at least 2 weeks. This time an entire region in the center of the island, where my in-laws live, and the majority of the cases were identified, has become a containment zone through police roadblocks and barricades, with movement inside restricted to the bare minimum.
For the rest of the country, we've returned to the exact same situation of March 2020. I go to the grocery store on either Monday or Thursday (letter D). I get home, let my grocery bags decontaminate for a few hours and take a shower. The kids can't go to school. The roads are empty. We're not eating out, or going to parks, or visiting friends. The weekdays and weekends are starting to blend together. The community activities are held via Zoom again. It's all eerily familiar, routine almost. We've seamlessly slipped back into the procedures that were so bizarre a year ago, but are now commonplace worldwide.
I vividly remember a moment some time in February of 2020, when a colleague of mine sent me a picture taken in Italy. It was a socially distanced queue outside a shop, everyone standing a meter apart from each other. It was such a strange sight, and it conveyed to me for the first time the severity of the situation. At the time I hadn't imagined that this would become the standard everywhere else, but within a month, I was abiding by that rule twice a week, Mondays and/or Thursdays (letter D), week after week, month after month, until things became safe enough to stand close to people again. And now the year has been reset and the precautions are starting all over again.
But there's one major difference I'm experiencing this time around, which makes me keenly aware, with a mix of gratitude and guilt, of my situation of privilege. Nevertheless it has made a huge difference in my experience of the 2021 lockdown compared to last year. In August of 2020 we moved out of the small 2 bedroom apartment we had been renting from a family member, and into a house, this time with 4 bedrooms, a separate space to work, some yard space, proximity to nature and a large distance from the main road.
This new situation has removed a lot of the stress, restlessness, frustration, and claustrophobia that we were experiencing in the small apartment a year ago, trying to sleep and work in the same small room day after day, week after week, with the kids having such limited space to roam around in and play, or do their at-home learning activities. We survived, but we only had to deal with it for a few months. It pains me to think about families that have been going through the same thing for a whole year now, with little recourse.
So in this Groundhog Year lockdown experience, I'm feeling incredibly fortunate, and I'm compelled to meditate on how to make the best of this situation this time around. How to better handle stress, create healthier boundaries between work and home life, give attention to the things that matter, and nurture a sense of inner peace even when the noise and chaos of the outside world feels overwhelming. It's clearer to me than ever before how our environment helps shape our wellbeing. This house is on the edge of a forest teeming with wildlife, a mountain towering above, a view of the city below, and a sliver of the ocean in the distance. I'm trying to appreciate as much as possible the value of the natural habitat of our planet, and quiet morning walks holding my 7-month old. She wasn't yet born last time we had a lockdown. She's one of the precious pieces of evidence we have that, despite being caught in the repeating cycles of this global crisis and its immeasurably devastating results, we can all hopefully experience on some level, little moments of gratitude as life goes on.
On March 21st, 2020, the whole country went on lockdown due to an outbreak of the Coronavirus. School was cancelled, everyone was told to stay at home, and only go out for essentials like food and medicine, and only on specific days of the week according to the first letter of the last name. My shopping days were Monday and Thursday (letter D). Supermarkets implemented strict shopping procedures, with socially distanced queues wrapping around the block. Streets were virtually empty of cars or pedestrians, with most storefronts shuttered except for pharmacies. And like a lot of other countries, most adults were working from home or out of a job for a while.
The lockdown worked: within a month the spread of the virus was contained, and the number of active cases went down from nearly 400 to 0, with only 10 lives lost. The government then took a few more months to ease restrictions, out of an abundance of caution, and school finally resumed midway through the year. Restaurants, large gatherings, and even cinemas resumed operation (although I've yet to go see a movie). Masks were required to enter most places. Anyone entering the country was immediately quarantined in a hotel for 14 days. Every month or so we'd hear about quarantined individuals who tested positive, and breathed a sigh of relief that the system was successfully buffering their entrance into the public.
I'd say it took about 6 months, but the country eventually returned to normalcy, although certain sectors, especially tourism, took a huge hit and had to adapt to the new global reality. But in general we all felt Mauritius had evaded a major catastrophe, and the endlessly isolating reality that most of my friends and family were going through elsewhere in the world.
Now, almost exactly a year later, the cycle seems to be repeating itself. In early March, 2021, the virus infiltrated the general public again somehow. Even as fewer than 10 cases were detected, school was suspended for a week, and once the count reached 15, the whole country was put on lockdown again, for at least 2 weeks. This time an entire region in the center of the island, where my in-laws live, and the majority of the cases were identified, has become a containment zone through police roadblocks and barricades, with movement inside restricted to the bare minimum.
For the rest of the country, we've returned to the exact same situation of March 2020. I go to the grocery store on either Monday or Thursday (letter D). I get home, let my grocery bags decontaminate for a few hours and take a shower. The kids can't go to school. The roads are empty. We're not eating out, or going to parks, or visiting friends. The weekdays and weekends are starting to blend together. The community activities are held via Zoom again. It's all eerily familiar, routine almost. We've seamlessly slipped back into the procedures that were so bizarre a year ago, but are now commonplace worldwide.
I vividly remember a moment some time in February of 2020, when a colleague of mine sent me a picture taken in Italy. It was a socially distanced queue outside a shop, everyone standing a meter apart from each other. It was such a strange sight, and it conveyed to me for the first time the severity of the situation. At the time I hadn't imagined that this would become the standard everywhere else, but within a month, I was abiding by that rule twice a week, Mondays and/or Thursdays (letter D), week after week, month after month, until things became safe enough to stand close to people again. And now the year has been reset and the precautions are starting all over again.
But there's one major difference I'm experiencing this time around, which makes me keenly aware, with a mix of gratitude and guilt, of my situation of privilege. Nevertheless it has made a huge difference in my experience of the 2021 lockdown compared to last year. In August of 2020 we moved out of the small 2 bedroom apartment we had been renting from a family member, and into a house, this time with 4 bedrooms, a separate space to work, some yard space, proximity to nature and a large distance from the main road.
This new situation has removed a lot of the stress, restlessness, frustration, and claustrophobia that we were experiencing in the small apartment a year ago, trying to sleep and work in the same small room day after day, week after week, with the kids having such limited space to roam around in and play, or do their at-home learning activities. We survived, but we only had to deal with it for a few months. It pains me to think about families that have been going through the same thing for a whole year now, with little recourse.
So in this Groundhog Year lockdown experience, I'm feeling incredibly fortunate, and I'm compelled to meditate on how to make the best of this situation this time around. How to better handle stress, create healthier boundaries between work and home life, give attention to the things that matter, and nurture a sense of inner peace even when the noise and chaos of the outside world feels overwhelming. It's clearer to me than ever before how our environment helps shape our wellbeing. This house is on the edge of a forest teeming with wildlife, a mountain towering above, a view of the city below, and a sliver of the ocean in the distance. I'm trying to appreciate as much as possible the value of the natural habitat of our planet, and quiet morning walks holding my 7-month old. She wasn't yet born last time we had a lockdown. She's one of the precious pieces of evidence we have that, despite being caught in the repeating cycles of this global crisis and its immeasurably devastating results, we can all hopefully experience on some level, little moments of gratitude as life goes on.