Almost a full year after the first Covid-19 infection in the Middle East was officially diagnosed on 29 January 2020 in the UAE, the number of cases in the Mena region has crossed 4,835,531.
If you had told me twelve months ago that we would be doing and seeing some of the things that are now an everyday part of our lives in this crazy world dominated by Covid, I would have thought you were mad!
But fast forward a year, and the pandemic has altered the very fabric of our existence in the most unimaginable ways, shutting down so many things we hold dear, from schools to watching our kids play sports to movies to music concerts to the very notion of human interaction.
It is quite incredible how all of our worlds, both personally and professionally, have been turned upside down.
If you had told me I would not be able to visit my family, I would have said, never going to happen! But it has. If you had told me that I would be running a home school for two boys, I would have said ‘no way!” But it happened, for months, and let me tell you it was an experience, and nothing I ever got taught at journalism school!
Did you ever imagine a world where temperature checks would be carried out before entering offices or malls; where toddlers would cover their faces with masks as that’s what all the adults do; where window visits with care home residents, Zoom Bingo and PPE were the norm?
Here’s just a few more of the things I never, ever imagined would happen, not even in my wildest dreams:
– That my friends in the UK would be on their third serious lockdown in less than a year
– That work would erect glass cubicles for us all to sit in, and issue work from home (WFH) orders
– That WFB (working from bed) would become a thing
– That while it was a terrible year for most humans, it was a great year for my dog, who was barely alone for a second
– That the cats would get seriously sick of us being home, and now just give us constant side-eyes
– That my DH would be home for a whole year – and counting – swapping a life in the skies, hotels and foreign cities, for, well, the living room during our extreme lockdown in March/April.