Day Eighty Four

Today it is gray and it feels gray. For the third weekend in a row we were under a twenty-four hour curfew. No one except emergency personal and food delivery people were allowed outside from five o'clock Friday afternoon until five o'clock Monday morning. With five mouths to feed it does require a bit of advance planning. The first such weekend curfew started at five o'clock on a Friday morning having being announced at seven thirty the evening before. Clearly, there was no opportunity for anyone to prepare or stock up. Gladly, I had enough food in the house to last for three days; we only ran out of fruit. The following Monday there was chaos in the stores as people were not only replenishing but stocking up in the event of another closure without notice. The strict measures are a result of an increase in cases, many of which were imported by deportees from the United States, and the fragile state of the public health system which, simply, cannot cope with a large outbreak. It is likely that there are more cases as, like most of the states in the US, there are not enough tests available but the numbers are not bad when you understand that the population of Guatemala is slightly less than that of New York state.

In a country where some seventy-five percent of the population live below the poverty line the closure of the country has been very hard for many. The government has been distributing boxes of food to those too poor to have electricity in their homes. Those who use less than some nominal amount of electricity are entitled to a monthly bono familia, or family bonus, of about $135. They can access this money using an ATM or, in some stores. Families that need food are asked to fly a white flag and many do. Many ex-patriates are raising funds and delivering food, accompanied by the authorities, during curfew to families in need. Others, like myself, keep a supply of non-perishable food in the car to hand out as needed. 

At some point the president of Guatemala, a medical doctor, announced that people over sixty years of age should remain at home all the time. I understand that he wants to protect the elders however it is not always practical. The local grocery stores are not "carding" anyone but, if you look like you could be sixty or more you are invited to bypass the socially distanced line so age does have its benefits. Pricesmart (Costco to those of you in the US) is enforcing the president's directive so many of us are having to rely on personal shoppers for Pricesmart. Masks are mandatory and everyone is wearing one, even the occasional drunk passed out in an alley. The country's borders are closed as is the airport except for ICE Airways bringing the infected deportees. There are still occasional repatriation flights for those wanting to leave but no good way into the country.

The children's school has stepped up to the challenge and school is in session as it once was. The only difference is that the classes are held on Zoom. The good news is that all three children seem engaged by their classes that include, for the younger ones, gardening and art. Mishell has planted chard seeds and will soon have to transplant them into the garden. Cristofer is brewing kombucha and some other mysteries in the kitchen.

The board of directors of the school, of which I am a member, has concluded that schools will likely not open again until January which is the start of the Guatemalan school year. We are encouraging the school administration to plan for that eventuality and if it doesn't come to pass, so much the better.  Gladly, the physical layout of the school, including all the green space and access to a seventy-five-acre coffee farm, will lend itself well to the social distancing concept. We feel fortunate that the school is in a good position to weather this storm for a number of reasons. It is very likely that others may not.

This past week the school hosted a "publication party" in which parents were invited to participate. Students read aloud projects that they were writing. Cristofer wrote an interesting story about a poor, homeless boy. It was two pages without a single punctuation mark or capital letter. We just had a conversation about punctuation and he is doing some editing. Diego, the dreamer who is still mourning the loss of his first girlfriend well over a year ago, did a presentation on love. All three are very reluctant readers probably because books and reading were not part of their early years. If they  would read, writing would be a lot easier. Parents and guardians were invited to attend the publication party using Zoom. I tried to participate in two classes simultaneously using two different devices.

Beyker, who will be four on the seventh of June is totally captivated by his Zoom pre-school classes. He uses his grandmother's phone or an old iPad of mine to attend school and he has had to show his abuela how Zoom works.

One bonus of being advised, even forced, to stay home is that the ever enterprising Guatemalans have quickly started delivery services. And interestingly, beautiful produce that we have never seen before as it has been exported, now comes to the door. Perfect avocados, boxes of heritage tomatoes, perfectly ripe strawberries, just picked broccoli and cauliflower, mangos and much more. The pork butcher in nearby Ciudad Vieja delivers to the door as does the purveyor of fresh, organic chickens. The fish-man still comes every Monday with shrimp so big that I wish Estela was here to clean them. And, of course and thankfully, there is a wine distributor in Guatemala City that delivers several times a week.

The children are remarkable. It is likely that the younger three are probably painfully aware that if I tired of them they would have no place to go. But on the other hand they are really nice kids. They have taken on chores with no complaints. Several times a day one or the other of them will ask, "is there anything you would like me to do?" They put out the trash without being asked. They clean. They do their own laundry. And they "put" the table each night before dinner. I tell them that in English we say "set the table." After my houseguest left on a repatriation flight they volunteered to take over doing the dinner dishes. Very soon I found a chart stuck to the kitchen wall detailing which of them was supposed to do what on which night.

Many of us in Guatemala are following very closely the work of a local hero who is now the founder and president of a biotech company, Distributed Bio, in San Francisco. Dr. Jacob Glanville, "Jake" to those of us who know the family was born and raised in Santiago Átitlan, on the shores of Lake Átitlan where his parents owned a very popular hotel, the Posada de Santiago. Jake graduated from Berkeley and was the first recipient of a PhD from Stanford in computational immuno engineering. At Stanford he was a two-time Gates Foundation Scholar. He is featured in the Netflix's series, Pandemic, which, coincidentally, was released the day before the first coronavirus death was reported in China. Jake and his team have succeeded in "engineering" antibodies from the SARS vaccine to neutralize Covid-19. They have sent the antibodies to five different independent labs for testing to ensure that the labs got the same results. And yes, they did so now the testing has moved on to hamsters and, if all goes well, they hope to start human trials this summer. This is not a vaccine but a treatment for people who are sick with the virus. Jake and his team are optimistic that it could be available as early as September. If you are interested in knowing more google "Dr. Jacob Glanville" and check out his videos on YouTube. Here is a link to a short one that explains the work better than I can. Dr. Jacob Glanville.

In the meantime during the curfew hours Antigua is virtually deserted. This week the curfew is being relaxed slightly, no longer twenty-four hours on the weekends but from six in the evening to five in the morning every day.

But, except for grocery shopping and checking on the horse and the goat we are staying home and wearing masks whenever we leave the house. We hope you are too.