A Night, Day, and a few Months of Crazy

On Friday, March 13, 2020, we were in our weekly Bible study 

when the adults started receiving texts and notifications that the city 

was going to go on lockdown for 24 hours starting the next day.

Not really grasping how crazy the town might be (because it was only going to be 24 hours),

we stayed and visited awhile before we all slowly started leaving the house where we were gathered. 

We got to the grocery store in our neighborhood, and of course craziness ensued.

The pictures don't do it justice, but inside and outside in the streets felt like 

Black Friday at a Wal-mart.

However, unlike America, the most popular item to fly off the shelf 

was not toilet paper. 

 

Water and eggs were the things quickly disappearing.

We also went to the fruit stand, and their crates were quickly emptying.

Doug and Kylie walked about a mile to find us eggs while we waited in the car, 

and then we headed home.

March 13, 2020

That night it rained, and everyone except medical workers were snug in their homes.

The streets were eerily quiet, 

And then a large amount of rain fell that the drains couldn't keep up with.

Thankfully no one was driving because the water slowly kept rising.

March 14, 2020
 

And you probably guessed that 24-hours was not the end of our lockdown.  

At midnight, we were informed we would be starting a 72-hour lockdown.

The government said we could go out and get food, but it had to be done on foot.

I guess it was better for people to get their heads around a little amount of time, because

After the 72-hours, they added 5 more days.  At the end of those 5 days (on March 24th), 

the government said the lockdown would remain until April 1st, and citizens would be arrested 

if they were out for any other reason than getting food on foot or seeking medical care.

On April 1st, they added 10 more days and said that schools would be back by April 16th.

But even in the middle of that 10 days, on April 5th, a 48-hour mandatory lockdown 

(no leaving the house) was mandated.

On April 23rd, for Ramadan, the government said people could move around to see family, but there was an evening curfew.  Still no restaurants, no airport.

Long story short, it was 46 days before I got in a car again. 

On May 11th, everything in the country opened except for the airports.

A surprise at the end of Ramadan (on May 23rd), we had another 72-hour lockdown to keep people from gathering and celebrating.

We squeezed in a graduation party on May 28th before we were locked down again from June 1st-June 6th.

(I'll continue blogging to catch up with all of these dates, but I wanted to chronicle the Covid response by this country's government from March to June in one place.)