NOTE #14 WHEN MY WORLD BECAME SMALL

‘My seven-year-old son Mikel is supposed to keep a diary about his life during the Covid-19 quarantine, the end of which is not in sight. His first entry is:  "Ich werde schteben" ("II will die") and underneath he draws a skull. He writes nothing else. I try in vain to shield my children from the media, for whom nothing else seems to matter anymore except the statistics of the dead and infected. The damage has already been done, the seeds of fear sown. It haunts the children's minds at night. Andreas, the most sensitive of them, woke up screaming yesterday and begged me: "Mum, you have to do something about it! The virus is going to kill us." In the morning, he doesn't remember anything.

I wrote these words eight months ago when I still hoped that the nightmare would end at some point. I still hope today. But I have doubts about the human and economic price we will all pay for it. The situation surrounding Covid-19, which is keeping the whole world in check, is becoming more grotesque every day and my world is getting smaller and smaller. The man I love lives 150 km away. A distance that is growing day by day, given the increasing bans and restrictions on our freedom of movement.

Now I only travel in my mind. Back to the Waorani Indians, the Himba, the Sama Badjao and the Dhuka. To all the nomadic indigenous peoples I visited and grew fond of last year. I wonder if they too have long been aware of the situation. I don't want to think about what will happen if the virus actually reaches these people. Will it wipe them out, as the flu brought in by us ‘white people’ has done to so many indigenous peoples? But then I think of the wisdom and medical knowledge of the shamans I met on my film trips, and the thought reassures me. Perhaps they will cope better with this disease than we do.

Another new day has begun in what is now the second lockdown. The constant feeling that it is Sunday does not leave me today either. Only I don't have a holiday, but despair at the amount of work expected of me as a divorced mother. In addition to my home office, which I have been accustomed to for years, I now have a new, unfortunately unpaid job as a private tutor. I have no vocation or patience for this and find myself constantly on the brink of despair. Even as an artist, my wings have been clipped. Where can I fly when there is no horizon in sight?

Mikel is now eight years old. He can hardly remember a time before wearing masks. Covid-19 has become an integral part of his little child's world. He has remained the little philosopher he always was. Out of the blue, he asks me one day. Mummy, what would you wish for if you only had one wish? I don't remember my answer, but I do remember his: ‘I wish I didn't have to live with coronavirus my whole life.’

I promise him, try to sound convincing, but feel so helpless. Then my gaze falls on Mikel's diary entry for today: ‘I'm looking forward to my birthday.’ Fortunately, there is still hope.