COVID 19 has threatened our existence and challenged the things we normally do as civil society organizations. I have the fear that should the pandemic extend to the end of the year, and if we continue to work from home, many jobs might be lost in my sector. We have to justify our existence as civil society organizations. This terrifies me!

This calls to action, the enactment of new policies to protect vulnerable workers in terrible times like this.

To work from home was to be a relief for some of us, I thought. But it was not! Home is home and not an office. I feel women in civil society organizations will be more burdened during this period especially having to juggle between domestic chores and work. Painfully also, our movements are restricted and family relations can not visit.

My daily routine has now been to first work on one of my tasks, attend virtual meetings, then play lego or tantrix and do the chores with my family (wife and three children), put them away to watch cartoons while I get back to work. We all take a nap; they get to read or listen to a story. Sometimes we do tree climbing and play football outside our compound.

Every day a press conference is live broadcasted, where the national commissioner of Police, the Chief Epidemiologist and the Director of Health play the principal parts. They are excellent at informing the population, telling people how to act and providing guidelines. They have become national heroes, as a matter of fact.

The corona virus has naturally had an impact on every Icelanders‘ life. My wife and I are elderly and are therefore part of the population at risk. We have very little contact with other people, but we go for a walk an hour every day. So many people have begun to go for walks around here, that there is a considerable amount of traffic on the walking paths. Therefore, we often go to the outskirts of Reykjavik, where there‘s hardly anybody.

Our son-in-law came home from abroad and had to spend two weeks in quarantine. So he is home by himself, and in the meantime our daughter is staying with us and our two granddaugthers are at their cousin‘s. This is the case for many people here.

The television and radio have changed their schedule to entertain people. For example there is a program every morning for kids between 10 and 16 years of age. It‘s a mix of fun and education for those who are at home.

The Minister of Education is encouraging people to read and a designated website ‚Time to read‘ has been made. Here people can log what they are reading and for how long. The goal is to beat the world record in reading.

A specific app for tracking of infection has been launched, inorder to find out who is in contact with whom, hopefully to find out how the people are infected with the virus.

Apart from that there is very little travel. We have all been encouraged to stay home during Easter and are all waiting for the epidemic to peak in a week.

Only two international planes a day with Icelandar to London and Boston, and I have noticed that Greelandair touch down around noon with two turbopropeller De Havilland aircrafts from Nuuk in Greenland and Copenhagen in Denmark. It seems to be the only connection with Greenland.

As I am waiting outside the apartment, two men meet on the street in front of me. They greet each other shaking hands. One of them catches my eye, smiles and yells ’mafi corona’. No corona here. I smile and shrug my shoulders, thinking it is far from true, but my limited Arabic does not stand a chance.

It is ten to six. It is the daily commute between the office at work and the office at home. The government has imposed a curfew at 6pm on weekdays and 12pm on weekends with substantial repercussions if not respected. Currently, this is the prime motivation for remembering which day of the week it is.

Whether it is the kitchen, the bedroom or dining room, all are now part of the workplace. Post-it’s on the bedroom wall and half-finished notes are everywhere. In Syria, Covid19 has so far mostly been evident in long working days becoming longer, while we hope for the best and plan for the worst.

From time to time, I dig holes in the garden and place in mandarins without no other purpose besides giving me a brief interruption from emails and meetings. However, as time passes everything flows together. Yesterday, I discussed unemployment assistance and hygiene support over skype while chopping a broken pomelo into pieces and burying it with soil.

We run a very active, international church in Miami Beach, the only to still hand out food (after the virus shut the city down), donated to us from the local health food shop, for people in need. We make sure the number of volunteers are below the ten, as stipulated by the government, while there is little social distancing among hundreds waiting outside. In the US, the financial plague is almost as frightening as the virus we are trying to hide from. In the long line outside the church kitchen, homeless people stand shoulder to shoulder with illegal immigrants and housewives and all of them prioritize their empty stomachs rather than the invisible virus ...

For employees and volunteers alike, there is no rest in sight. We try to check in with our approximately 400 churchgoers, which are more like a great big family far away from our native countries. Who has become unemployed? Who is sick? Who is unable to pay rent? Our services stream on Facebook, our meetings take place on Zoom, and our telephones transmit a steady stream of needs, concerns and prayers for all.

I lean back, bathed in the sun on a beautiful day off in Miami and warmed by the care and consideration that mark this new reality. We cherish life and cherish each other more than ever before.

I’ve been home since three weeks. Even during the summer I have never taken so many vacation days all together and spending the days is not a simple exercise. I said to myself ’Come on, there are many things that you have postponed for lack of time and now you have that time!’. So I painted all the walls, I arranged the garden, moved furnitures, fixed the warehouse, I thought.

Yes, because the hardest and most painful job has been to think, trying to imagine what the world will be like when the emergency is over. And I have not yet been able to imagine it. Maybe we will all be better or maybe not, surely we will all be more tired.

Today I went back to work. In total safety because I am alone. 900 square meters of silent solitude for the next few days, or weeks? Nobody knows. For now I am trying to find a kind of normality, but maybe normality was the problem.

It goes without saying that the corona affected everybody , for me I had the first month of work after 4 month of no assignments as a freelance and I couldn’t even find 1 day free and I refused some other jobs , in like a week jobs and travels went from postponed to cancelled and i had nothing in hand to do, but since we are all trapped in this I tried to be positive and search for alternatives, I started to document what is happening around me everyway possible , I workout online with a personal trainer, I wanted to go back to painting after 12 years and I did start painting again, I made croissant at home which was a small dream since many many years.

I dont know what I feel I try to ignore it because everything is uncertain , there is no deadline when this will be over and if you feel you will feel so bad for having no jobs ,