How the COVID-19 brought happiness to my family

13/04/2020 

Dear diary,

My sister had a curious vacation, she is from Colombia, she lives and works in Guatemala, and she was on vacation in Argentina. What a crazy time to travel, right? As I said before it is horrible how everything went wrong with the emergency that is living the world today, but somehow it brought happiness to my family and of course to me. My sister was on vacation in Argentina when the virus was an issue of “others”. She did what everybody should do when traveling to Argentina, drink wine and eat great meat. Argentina is one of those Latin-American countries where the coronavirus arrived first, but let’s take a look to the policies of this huge country. When my sister arrived to Argentina on March 7, the government wasn’t implementing anything against the crisis, it was until March 14 that Argentina made the schools close. On March 16, Argentina gave the first licenses to work remotely, and on the same day Argentina closed the frontiers, but do not panic, my sister was not trapped... yet. On March 19, the government of Argentina launched the preventive social isolation for the entire population, and yes, my sister was still in Argentina. On March 20, Argentina put maximal prices for basic goods, to prevent the abuse of those that want to take advantage of crisis, and yes, my sister was still in Argentina. On March 21, my sister finally got a flight to travel to Guatemala, because she was not worried about the virus, she was worried about her job and her boss.

She went from Buenos Aires to Panama, could you imagine? Panama! The country that works thanks to the flow of goods, services, and people. My sister was supposed to go from Panama to Guatemala, but Guatemala closed the frontier before my sister put a step on Panama. Guatemala is a great example of responsibility, this country took procedures even before when the first case arrived, and that is why today, the number of cases is not huge in comparison with other countries. Of course, that is great for Guatemala, not for my sister. However, let’s see what Panama did, or didn’t. Panama is very known for the curious method of letting people go outside, I am talking about gender classification. Some days Panama allows going to outside just women, and the rest of the days the men. Sadly, On April 1, Panama became the country with most cases of coronavirus in Central America, but as I said before, how are you going to close a country that “lives” thanks to the flows?

My sister found a flight to Medellin, I was happy because my sister was coming, but I was worried because of the risk that she represented. She was happy because she could work from Colombia, but she was worried because she left her computer in Guatemala and the only computer available was mine. Finally and after a long trip, she got home. We were very happy, but we could not hug her after 7 days, but we were worried because my dad is 75 years old, and my mom had some health issues related with her lungs. Picture yourself in that situation. My sister came just in time because on March 21 Antioquia had curfew, and Colombia was starting to close airports. Colombia did not has a lot of cases back then, and thanks god that after 7 days my sister didn’t showed symptoms. So not everything is sad about the situation, just that I have to share my computer. In conclusion, COVID-19 has brought pain and suffering, but somehow it brought my sister back, made my family unite again, and that makes me really happy.