70 Living Between Lockdowns: A COVID-19 Journey Across Two Countries
Chris Aramouni
During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was in both Lebanon and Canada. When the pandemic began, I was a 16-year-old student in the second semester of 11th grade. Restrictions and lockdowns were on and off until things started to look better in the second semester of my first year of university, when I was 18 years old. Experiencing the pandemic in two very different countries gave me a broader understanding of how people respond to crisis in different environments.
I remember sitting in class hearing gossip about a new deadly virus originating in China and moving toward our shores. Images of hospitals in Wuhan, China were spreading across social media. It was scary. Within days, we started hearing of reported cases in Lebanon and rising death tolls. School was suddenly shut down. At first, this was cause for celebration; I had a big presentation to prepare about sustainable refugee houses I designed for a UNHCR conference, and I thought the day off could be spent working on it. Little did I know that one day off would turn into two, then three, and eventually extend until the end of the school year. At first, there was panic among our politicians. The whole country shut down in mid-February 2020.
One strange but memorable rule I remember was a new law in Lebanon to prevent the spread of the virus. To avoid overcrowding in supermarkets, cars with license plates ending in odd numbers were allowed on the roads one day, and those ending in even numbers the next. Drivers with the wrong license plate for that day would be fined. Fortunately, my family could go to the supermarket every day since we had one car ending in an odd number and another in an even number. Soccer practice was cancelled, restaurants shut down, and people were scared of seeing others. My sister decided to move in with my aunt, while my mother and I moved in with my grandparents. From February until May, fear was at an all-time high. We stayed home and didn’t even go see my sister and aunt. We bought a sanitizing gun to clean all our groceries and clothes before entering the house. We also wore face masks and gloves.
At first, it was fun to stay at home with family. We played card games from 6 to 10 pm every night. I used to make fun of my grandmother for always losing; my grandfather and I were rivals. By May 2020, fear started to fade. My mom, sister, and I moved to our chalet to spend the summer there. All of my friends also went to their chalets, and we would spend our days together swimming and playing soccer, and our nights playing cards and watching movies. The resort where our chalets were located was like a quarantine village. Everyone agreed to stay within the resort and not bring outside guests to keep us from getting sick.
In August 2021, my family moved to Canada. Everything was fully locked down when we got here. Social gatherings were not allowed and masks were mandatory. We spent our days at home doing online school, reading, and watching movies. Sometimes, I would secretly invite over friends I met in online class, just to feel some human connection again.
The pandemic had many challenges, but some good came from it too. The most challenging part for me was not being able to go out with friends or practice the sports I loved. It was also very difficult to make friends in Canada, since I had just moved here. Meeting people online was harder than in person, which made it lonely to be far from home. However, being at home all day gave me time to read many educational books, take online courses, and practice surgery skills. This helped me become a well-rounded person and made my transition to adult life easier. But virtual schooling was hard. People never had their cameras on in class, and daily banter between classmates was non-existent. Because I was new to Canada, this made the experience feel even more isolating. It wasn’t a good way to get to know people or learn about my new country. I only met a couple of people through breakout rooms, but overall, my senior year was lonely. It also made it hard to stay motivated enough to attend class. In my opinion, virtual schooling has some negative long-term effects. Some students missed out on the high school experience and didn’t develop the social skills high school usually helps build. This might make it harder for them to meet new people and start conversations with strangers. From my experience, it definitely took a few months to get comfortable making conversation with strangers after COVID—and I consider myself to be social!
After taking an anthropology course in university, I noticed many course themes that connected to my COVID-19 experience. For instance, we learned about how pandemics always begin with blame. In this case, everyone around me was first blaming the Chinese for eating bats that carried the COVID-19 virus. This is similar to what we studied about theBlack Death, when entire communities, like Jewish populations, were wrongly blamed and persecuted. Unfortunately, Chinese people experienced a lot of hate and blame, none of which was warranted looking back at it. Another course theme was secrecy—doing things we don’t want others to find out about. Personally, I used to invite friends and cousins over to my house, when it was permitted to have guests in Ottawa, and kept it a secret from people I knew would take offense, such as my uncle and his wife. These experiences made me realize that even in modern pandemics, human behaviour tends to follow similar patterns: fear, blame, secrecy, and eventually, adaptation.
