Tomorrow is my official two month anniversary of lockdown in Merida. It has been an interesting experience to say the least with a few highs and lots and lots of lows. Like so many of us, I went from being a girl-on-the-go to a girl with nowhere to go. However, I am incredibly grateful that I was able to enter Mexico when virtually all other countries had closed their borders.
As the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to glow softly in the far, far distance, I wanted to write this post so that I don’t take the simple pleasures in life for granted once this finally ends. It has been an incredibly stressful time period and I have been scared of 1) getting very sick, 2) getting deported, 3) not being exposed to COVID now and then getting hit harder if/when there is another outbreak, 4) narcos gaining control of the city that I am in and/or being targeted for crime since I am an obvious foreigner.
Week 1: I was incredibly excited to be in Mexico and felt an incredible sense of relief. I knew that i was somewhere where I could stay for at least 6 months and, best of all, I wasn’t stuck on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. I spent the week shuffling from my AirBnb to the grocery store terrified that I was going to unwittingly give someone COVID and be the cause of an outbreak in Merida. I spent a lot of time sitting in parks by myself and trying to maintain the least amount of human contact as possible. I bought a yoga mat so that I could motivate myself to keep working out to online videos made by my gym in India.
Week 2: As I started to feel more relaxed, I began venturing out more and more. I had loose conversations with an older guy that I met in a convenience store while I was buying beer (god, I miss those days!) and started reaching out to the expat groups. I was only teaching 7 hours a week and spent a LOT of time doing zoom calls and drinking large quantities of beer. I started running to help ease anxiety and to try and burn off some of my beer calories. I also bought an Eiffel Tower puzzle at Wal Mart which I spent hours sitting on the floor doing with my door open, singing to Broadway musicals on Spotify.
Week 3: Loneliness was starting to really kick in. The streets of Merida were getting emptier and emptier. I was able to start increasing my teaching hours and spent lots of time trying to upskill myself. A dry law was put into place which meant no more alcohol sales. I started chatting with the old man a few doors down from me who sits in his doorway in the morning and at night. His 50 year old daughter was sometimes there and I could speak with her as well. They were often the only people I spoke to in English (besides my Chinese students) for days at a time.
Week 4: My final week in my first Airbnb. It was a tiny room with no kitchen and just a fridge and a microwave. The water pressure was terrible and there were bugs everywhere. The host would never help with anything and constantly treated me like I was an idiot. Needless to say, I was thrilled that these were my final few days there. Loneliness continued to get much worse as most of the streets were completely empty. It began to feel like lockdown was never going to end and that I was never going to have a normal life again. I watched a lot of episodes of Friends on Netflix and finished the short series Cheer.
Week 5: I moved to a new Airbnb which was slightly bigger and that had a tiny courtyard where I hoped to meet the other people living there (which is a whopping total of 5 of us). Turns out that one guy is a very strange American man who is banging the young Mexican girl that works at the restaurant across the street. She is incredibly loud and sometimes resembles a squeaky toy. My phone doesn’t get wifi reception in my room so I sometimes sit in the courtyard in the evenings. Unfortunately, the sounds of Spanish on Duolingo are drowned out by her moaning. I stopped going to the restaurant because I can’t really look her in the eye anymore. There are two guys who live together and have never ever spoken to me, even when we pass each other on the empty streets. They have random men come over all the time and I suspect that they are swingers. The final tenant is a Mexican guy who talks loudly on his cell phone all of the time and will randomly rush out of the complex. I am curious to know what he does and why he is here but he never talks to me either. Maybe it is because of the disappointment in finding out that my neighbors are all a bit odd (or maybe just think I am) and that they all have lives while I was sitting there alone for 50 days but things started to feel really, really hard. I did manage to “borrow” one of the outdoor furniture sets so I now the proud owner of a table and a bench! All hope was not lost though was I discovered that there is an adorable stray cat that leaves near the neighborhood market. An old man visits her and feeds her every morning and he is very chatty. Although he can’t speak English and my Spanish is horrendous, he helps me learn new words and really, really loves that cat. I started going to the market at the same time every day to get fruits and vegetables and began speaking to him from a socially-respectable distance. For anyone out there who is questioning the need to go outside frequently, keep in mind that I have no car and can only buy what I can physically carry. Fresh produce goes bad quickly here and I have a miniature fridge that can only fit a very limited number of items. I tried going for runs 3 days this week and was stopped by police twice regardless of the time of day or neighborhood that I was in.
Week 6: This was probably my lowest week (at least yet!). Besides a few zoom calls, I had had no real interaction with other people for 6 weeks. I had no friends and was in a country where I didn’t speak the language. I was trying to learn Spanish as fast as possible but it was pretty hard when you have no one to talk to. I knew that my neighbors were not going to suddenly turn into sociable people and I gave up hope that anyone new was going to move in. On a positive side, I was killing it on Duolingo and rapidly moving up through the levels! In a moment of absolute desperation, I went onto Tinder to see if I could find anyone who lived here and would be willing to meet. After a French man asked me to fuck him and then “unmatched” me when I said no, I decided that it was a lost cause. I connected with one decent Canadian guy who invited me over to his condo saying that he had a swimming pool and a small group of expats that he hung out with. I got excited and then he immediately rescinded the offer because one of the other people said that no one else was allowed in. I began to get incredibly homesick for my life in India and fantasized about being back in Delhi and seeing my friends and team-members.
Week 7: When I felt like I couldn’t possibly take being completely alone anymore and the familiar tones of depression and anxiety were starting to creep their way back into my mind, I posted on a Facebook expat group for people who moved to Mexico alone and asked if there was anyone in my city who would to willing to meet. A few people responded from different parts of Mexico sending supportive messages and finally, one American guy reached out and said that I was welcome to come over. Although this is not normally something I would do, desperate times call for desperate measures. It was worth the risk because I finally found a friend – a fellow expat who also lives alone. I was still incredibly homesick for India and began to watch in envy as other people’s lives started to resemble some semblance of normalcy. I attempted to make banana cream pudding this week but without being able to get most of the ingredients and not having an electric mixture, I ended up making what can only be described as banana ice cream with oreos. It is strangely delicious though and I am addicted!
Week 8: Things are finally feeling a little bit better. The city is getting busier and busier every day as Mexicans have decided that this needs to end. The old American expats are still on Facebook screaming about how lockdown needs to last forever and calling everyone selfish who disagrees. I have had dinner at my friend’s house a few times and finally have someone who I can talk to about what I am experiencing here. It is nice to be able to make jokes about something that I saw on the way to Wal Mart or ask weird questions about life in Merida to. You are still not allowed to sit in parks although I see more and more Mexicans breaking that rule by sitting on the barriers leading into the parks. The police usually come and make people move though. There are still police everywhere you look and if you stay somewhere for more than a few minutes, they will come and make you move on.
What next? The city is in a weird situation. There are still very few cases of COVID on the Yucutan Peninsula and from what I have been told, the hospitals are empty. Most of the people that have died have had a long list of health complications and the people that are the most vulnerable seemed to have simply stopped caring. Old people sit in chairs in groups on the streets or in the parks without face masks while the young people scurry by to get home. The few Mexicans I have spoken to thing that this is crazy and want things to open back up. Merida relies heavily on tourism and all of the hotels, restaurants, gift shops, etc are closed and hundreds (if not thousands) of people are now unemployed. For a population where salaries are very low and people are unable to save, this can be a terrifying time period. In other cities in Mexico, drug cartels are handing out emergency aid which is going to come with a very high price tag in the end. Merida is scheduled for a soft re-opening on June 1st and I am counting down the days until parks open again.
I honestly have no idea what I am going to do moving forward. The chances of getting another job in tourism are incredibly small and I can’t really afford to move to the US without a job. My best prospect is to stay in Mexico and continue teaching English online. It is hard to get used to the idea that I am now “just an English teacher” but at least I am in a country that I love, the cost of living is low and where I am being intellectually challenged every day by attempting to learn a foreign language, discover more about Mayan history and learn about Mexican politics, etc. The past 3 months have ripped me apart to say the least. I left one home that I loved and tried to set up at least a temporary life in a new one (Zanbizar). I had finally learned my Zanzibarian students names and got used to teaching in a classroom when everything fell apart because of COVID. I spent 7 weeks feeling completely lost with no roots in the destination that I was in for an unknown point of time. No friends, no offline job, and not enough language skills to converse with anyone. I can’t even begin to explain how isolating that is.
My body is starting to feel the impact of limited activity. The scars of lung surgery 20 years ago have been hurting a lot lately and yesterday, it was so bad that it hurt to sit. I have found that the more active I am, the less it hurts and vice versa so lockdown is definitely triggering more issues. My knees hurt from exercising on concrete and doing too many high impact exercises (burpees especially ……) and each day I feel like my legs are starting to resemble burritos. I don’t even want to admit what my belly currently looks like 🙁
The past few months have been hard on everyone around the world and I feel deeply for the people that have lost loved ones, lost their jobs, houses, etc because of this and I want to finish by saying that I am incredibly grateful for everything that I have. Although my place is tiny, I have a bed to sleep on and a kitchen to cook in. I have a job that I love and I finally have a friend. As an added bonus, I also know an adorable old man/cat combo that I can say hello to 🙂
