Filipinos #CopingwithCovid — Lia Feraren, Germany

I live with my two chil­dren. I am sep­a­rat­ed from their father and vis­i­ta­tion rights were a “legit­i­mate rea­son to leave the house” even at the strictest part of the lock­down. This was not the case in Aus­tria, for exam­ple.

As the num­bers went down, we were allowed to see one friend out­doors and at a dis­tance. The first peo­ple I did this for were my chil­dren who sore­ly missed their friends from school.

A few weeks lat­er, two house­holds were allowed to see each oth­er, out­doors and at a dis­tance. Am doing this too and it helps our moods to social­ize this way.

CB: Are you work­ing? If yes, are you work­ing from your home or do you have to go to your place of work?  Were you affect­ed finan­cial­ly by the pan­dem­ic? Did you lose your job? Did you get assis­tance?
LF: I am a trau­ma ther­a­pist with a pri­vate prac­tice. We were actu­al­ly offi­cial­ly asked to stay open as part of the med­ical sys­tem. I closed my prac­tice to face-to-face con­sul­ta­tions around March 13. So much was so uncer­tain then and I did not know how to keep myself or my clients safe. A few of my clients moved online but many just chose to wait until I reopened. I’ve lost income and, since I was not asked to close, am not eli­gi­ble for gov­ern­ment help. Friends of mine with small busi­ness­es received 3000–8000EUR with­in a week of request­ing for Coro­na-assis­tance. Larg­er com­pa­nies also receive “Short­ened Work” (Kurzarbeit) finan­cial assis­tance from the gov­ern­ment, with that, their employ­ees are paid 90% of their salaries for not com­ing to work. (Not work­ing, nei­ther home office, no charged vaca­tion days)

I reopened my prac­tice to phys­i­cal con­sul­ta­tions two weeks ago. It’s good to see my clients again. There is 2,5 m between us and I pause the ses­sion at 50 min­utes to open the win­dows if we are doing a 1 and half hour ses­sion. My col­leagues and I have had to come up with a hygiene con­cept for our prac­tice, for exam­ple, effec­tive­ly remov­ing our coa­tracks which is where peo­ple used to crowd.

CB: Do you go out? To take walks? To see rel­a­tives or friends? For exer­cise?
LF: We’re very lucky here in Ger­many. We were nev­er not allowed to go out, whether for exer­cise, to read on a park bench or to lie in the sun­shine, all as long as we stay 1,5m from each oth­er. I live near the riv­er and I try to run every morn­ing. It keeps me sane although doing it after 7:30am dri­ves me crazy. Too many peo­ple, and there­fore also too many incon­sid­er­ate peo­ple. Keep­ing dis­tance becomes dif­fi­cult.

CB:  Do you wear a face mask? Do you prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing?
LF: I wear a cot­ton mask where it’s required — inside stores. And a med­ical mask when ven­ti­la­tion is bad or I know I need to be in a store for more than 15 min­utes. They are also required when tak­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion but I don’t think we will be get­ting back into the sub­way any time soon. Yes, I prac­tice social dis­tanc­ing.

CB:  Please describe in a few sen­tences your dai­ly rou­tine.
LF: A lot in the rou­tine has changed because schools are still closed to most grades. The grad­u­a­tion lev­els returned first, fol­lowed by the start­ing years in grade school and mid­dle school. My two chil­dren will start in the last batch, in mid-June. Home­school­ing con­tin­ues.

It’s nice to be with my chil­dren a lot but also quite tax­ing and I also won’t be able to ful­ly go back to work until they are ful­ly back in school. In nor­mal times, they are old enough to be alone at home for longer peri­ods. Dur­ing this time, they are cop­ing well but also just feel bet­ter when I’m near­by.

Their rou­tines are more upside down than mine. They are 13 and 8 years old and used to take pub­lic trans­porta­tion to school on their own, walk to the bak­ery or to the stores them­selves, bike around the church square across from us. They are not allowed (by me) to do any of that now. They receive school­work every morn­ing from their teach­ers and answer it quite inde­pen­dent­ly though they work bet­ter when I’m around. Dur­ing the week, I make sure that we’re up at a rea­son­able time and that we have meals togeth­er. I cook all three of the meals and there are draw­ers full of snacks. We go shop­ping once a week next to the Eng­lish Gar­den, Munich’s biggest park that’s big­ger than Cen­tral Park. I leave them on a large pic­nic blan­ket in the park while I shop so that they have time out­side.

My younger daugh­ter is a gym­nast. Her team meets online twice a week on group video chat with their coach to train togeth­er. They do phys­i­cal exer­cis­es and dance but not the actu­al cart­wheels and hand­stands she does on her own. The coach does not risk injuries on the video train­ing and keeps the move­ments gen­tle. She’s awe­some and it’s great for the team: there is a sem­blance of nor­mal­i­ty, a feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty and move­ment and exer­cise.

CB: Do you buy your own gro­ceries? What pre­cau­tions do you take?
LF: Yes, I buy my own gro­ceries. I wear a mask, dis­in­fect the hand­bar of the cart. In the first few weeks, I washed every sin­gle glass jar and piece of fruit I bought with soap but with the increased amount of data on the unlike­li­hood of sur­face trans­mis­sion, I don’t do that any­more.

Long-term pre­cau­tion: I stay informed. Ger­many has lead­ing epi­demi­ol­o­gists like Dr. Drosten who con­sult to Angela Merkel and the rest of our gov­ern­ment. I lis­ten to their orig­i­nal pod­casts and also to the orig­i­nal press con­fer­ences of the Robert Koch Insti­tute.

CB: Do you order food to go? What pre­cau­tions do you take?
LF: Order­ing food stress­es me because every restau­rant has their own logis­tics con­cept and it’s always a bit of learn­ing to see who’s tak­ing this seri­ous­ly and who’s try­ing to get by on the let­ter of the law. So we have three trust­ed restau­rants that we order food from. We go across town for ice cream because their hygiene con­cept is strict and on their web­site. Oth­er­wise, I find it eas­i­er to cook, from scratch or mixed in with frozen food.

CB: Do you shop online or do you go out to stores that are open?
LF: We have man­aged to stay with neces­si­ties from stores that are open, includ­ing books from small local book stores who found ways to deliv­er with­in the neigh­bor­hood when they were not allowed to open their phys­i­cal doors. I have chil­dren, though, and they’ve shot up once more. I have no idea how we’re going to buy new clothes and shoes now. Stores are open the­o­ret­i­cal­ly but I def­i­nite­ly don’t want to try clothes on in a store.

CB:  Do you wor­ry about the future? Do you have night­mares or bad dreams? Do you feel some anx­i­ety? Or do you sleep well and feel nor­mal as usu­al?
LF: I felt a lot of anx­i­ety in the begin­ning. Things were chang­ing and a lot was unclear. I feel well-informed now and that our gov­ern­ment is doing a pret­ty awe­some job so that makes me feel quite secure. And grate­ful, I know that this is not the same in many oth­er coun­tries.

Also, I’m a ther­a­pist, glad to know that all the years learn­ing self-reg­u­la­tion and focus­ing on mean­ing is help­ing me…

CB: What do you miss doing, with this pan­dem­ic? For eg eat­ing out, or going to church, or see­ing rel­a­tives?
LF: I miss a reg­u­lar­i­ty. Com­ing out of lock­down, rules change every week based on which sec­tors are open­ing up. Restau­rants reopened this week — only out­door tables, enforced dis­tanc­ing, you need to keep your mask on until your food arrives. It’s a good sign but anoth­er new set of rules to get used to. The chil­dren’s schools reopen in a month, there will be still anoth­er set of new rules. Before, you could only see your boyfriend or girl­friend, now you can see one friend but only out­doors and at a dis­tance, it’s dif­fi­cult keep­ing track of what’s allowed. Police don’t real­ly come up to you to ask if you are boyfriend/girlfriend but, as I said, I think our gov­ern­men­t’s doing a great job so I real­ly don’t mind fol­low­ing the rules as they are. I think they’re well thought-out and pro­vide good guid­ance.

I miss not hav­ing to be care­ful, not hav­ing a 1,5m radius in my head cir­cling around every­one around me.

I miss mean­der­ing, being in a book­store with­out a goal, pick­ing up stuff, look­ing at it, being able to put it back on the shelf with­out buy­ing it.

I think masks are nec­es­sary but I miss life with­out them.

I miss my chil­dren being able to see their friends with­out restric­tions.

I do miss hugs and beso-beso.

What I miss most: vis­it­ing fam­i­ly in oth­er coun­tries. It sad­dens me that I don’t know when I’ll next be able to be home.

• - we are so resilient when it comes to crises. Coup d’e­tats, typhoons, yeah, I’m sure we’ll sur­vive this…

• - I grew up dur­ing the Mar­cos times. I appre­ci­ate the free press we have here.

• - fam­i­ly is impor­tant. We keep in touch reg­u­lar­ly as a large fam­i­ly dur­ing this time and it’s been a big resource to me

• - humor is a huge resource. The online groups I have with my cousins and class­mates are a source of many laughs and help me feel con­nect­ed
• - I am a trained Mani­la jay­walk­er. There’s no way I’m bunch­ing up at the pedes­tri­an lights with every­one else…

And also now that I’m Ger­man:

• - it’s impres­sive to be in a coun­try led by sci­ence. I’m proud of when our politi­cians speak with ref­er­ence to data and stud­ies.

• - this is what it’s like to have func­tion­ing health­care. Being test­ed, being asked to stay at home if you have any symp­toms, all of this works because our health­care sys­tem works

And the best com­bi­na­tion:

• - Ger­mans like to com­plain, even though every­thing is being han­dled stel­lar­ly. As a Fil­ipino, I get to be pos­i­tive about great pos­i­tives.