Wenceslao: Covid times, 1

Wenceslao: Covid times, 1

THURSDAY afternoon, one day before the announced implementation of a “possible lockdown” in Cebu that had some people missing the word “possible” in the announcement:

I drove my vehicle to the store intending to use it in my effort to replenish supplies, only to be told that traffic was a problem from the Bulacao area to Tabunok in Talisay down to Minglanilla, the usual “choke” points. “Mora’g pista sa Tabunok,” somebody told me. Another offered an explanation: People were in a rush to go home to prepare for the “lockdown.”

I decided to instead do things without the vehicle and rode a “ trisikad” to the highway. Traffic flow at our portion of the highway was only slow going to Tabunok. There seemed to be no problem going to the town proper. I stood on the sidewalk to get a ride only to realize that the passing passenger multicabs and tricycles were not about to accommodate more people.

“What the heck,” I told myself. I used to jog-walk from our place to the jurisdiction of the next local government unit, so why not walk to the town proper? On the way, I passed by my “suki” bodega of grains to buy a sack of rice and a sack of corn grits. A black SUV and a truck and some people were immediately visible in the bodega, meaning that panic buying that began a day before had eased only by a bit.

After paying for my purchase, I resumed my walk to the town proper to buy food from a popular branch of a fastfood chain there. It was then that I noticed the others walking with me along the sidewalk. Workers, I thought, judging from their muscular build and the bag slung from their shoulders, probably containing a spare T-shirt and a “bawon” for lunch. They were among those stranded in Bulacao and chose to walk all the way home.

Jollibee at the town proper was open, but the staff no longer allowed people to dine in. I washed my hands with the hand sanitizers placed in a bottle on a stand near the door after which the guard took my temperature using what I call a “temperature gun” aimed at my forehead. I bought take-out food for my boys and french fries and soft drinks for myself that I told the staff to wrap for take-out but which I actually consumed seated on one of the deserted chairs and using one of the deserted tables inside. Nobody reprimanded me for it.

I was already tired, so walking was no longer an option in going back to the bodega to get the sacks of rice and corn grits that I had purchased. I proceeded to a corner not far from Jollibee and saw two habal-habal drivers, a man and a woman, there. I picked the more accommodating, the woman, who brought me to the road that branched off from the highway near the bodega. One side of that road was where tricycles going to the interior were parked. There, I rented a tricycle whose driver gladly accepted, thank God, the fee to bring to my store the sacks of grain that I had purchased.

It wasn’t a lockdown yet or enhanced community quarantine to prevent the spread of the virus that has caused a worldwide pandemic. But the displacement it caused was like we were preparing for World War 3.

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