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Women in Art

by Charles Gladden BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Mar. 14,...

FROM THE PUBLISHER

PublisherFROM THE PUBLISHER

Facebook and other social media have made experts of many people in many things. In the age of social media, we humans are looking for entertainment, more than information per se. At least, that’s my opinion. (Incidentally, I am not a participant in the social media world. I have made my living and raised my children through my income as a professional writer.

Now then, on the matter of the coronavirus, which is threatening to send some of us crazy before it actually infects and kills us, they say the best advice is to stay home and wait out the COVID-19’s regime, which may be several months. The going crazy part comes from being locked up indoors, at least for me. The stay at home advice, however, is the absolute soundest you can follow.

Take me. I am on a kind of lockdown by my children, because they are afraid if I get infected out there, I will bring it home, and my wife’s rheumatoid arthritis makes her immune system very vulnerable to animals like the virus.

When the lockdown was imposed on Monday evening, I threw a tantrum. And so on Tuesday afternoon, I wangled a solo drive to the Ladyville area to get some breeze.

I went into a supermarket (cum gas station) to buy water for myself and one of my workers, and it struck me that the door knob for the supermarket was the type of surface where COVID-19 lives for many hours, waiting for innocent people like me to latch on to said knob. With the virus on our extremities for hours, when we touch face, nose, and so on, we become another victim of the monster.

Well, I had to open the door of the cooler inside to get the two plastic bottles of water, and it struck me, hmm, the virus possibly transferred from the door knob would be transferred to the plastic bottles, a surface whereon it also has a shelf life which is so extended as to be deadly.

I had sanitizer in my vehicle, so I was alert enough to sanitize my hands after the door encounter, but, unfortunately for me as it turned out, I also had my cell phone in my vehicle, and cell phones are also a surface friendly to viruses, as I’ve been told.

When I get to Lake Garden, my hands are possibly contaminated with plastic bottle virus when I transfer the bottle to my worker, and so is my phone.

When I return to Belize City after an hour or so, I immediately wash my hands thoroughly downstairs, after again sanitizing, but I do not pay close attention to my cell phone, which I take upstairs with me into my bedroom.

About two hours or so later, I use hands which I have used on door knobs to operate my cell phone, which has not been properly sanitized, and then, when I am half asleep, I become conscious of placing fingers in my nose. From the supermarket to the cell phone to yours truly’s nose. Trauma! And it will be days and days and days before I am sure I did not mess up myself, and worse, the better half.

For sure, the best thing, beloved, is stay at home. But that is very, very difficult. How did life ever become this scary? Who is to blame? What did we do to deserve this? If there was ever a time to pray, surely this is it.

Part II 

So, we have a medical crisis. For real. Well, we also have an economic crisis, which is made worse by Wednesday’s national state of emergency. We’re talking about hungry Belizeans, some of whom will now begin to starve.

The two leaders of the major parties are multimillionaires. They don’t know about hunger, desperation and starvation.

Kremandala is located in a tough area where life is rough for many people. For all these decades, our reputation is based on the fact that we have created the greatest native economic activity on the Southside of Belize City, which is to say, west of Southern Foreshore and King Street.

Suddenly, Kremandala has been laid low. As I explained in Tuesday’s newspaper, my four Kremandala children have been meeting daily to confront this catastrophe.

The PUDP have been moving slowly where making food available is concerned. They have concentrated on law and order. They took out all the Southside gang leaders and incarcerated them. Prediction: new, younger leaders will emerge, probably have already emerged, because the hunger is growing.

Too many fat cats are sitting at the PUDP conference table. And the church people who give lip service to the Christ have not said a word or done a thing to address the hunger. Meanwhile, Belize’s rich are looking to protect their riches. Chester is in the middle here. I wish him well. But, hunger don’t have no sense. Real.

Power and blessings to the people.

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