Influenza: Don’t panic Escobita!

For me this story started in Berlin…

I was so happy checking by internet that no body stole my money (because an ATM had sucked my card) when a friend told me:
- hey Escoba in Mexico City there aren’t concerts, there are not football games neither schools - at the beginning I thought: - ¡this guy again speaking bad about Mexico!-.


Later, I saw the news (of course with my perfect German I didn’t understand anything but my friends translated the news for me). I was in shock, I couldn’t believe that my country, my city, my home was the main subject. When I sawed the people, the streets (which actually I know very well) I felt sad and worried. It was a weird experience since I had just gone to The Memorial to the Murdered Jews so that I had that feeling of sadness and no understanding.
Then I called David he told me: - don’t worry!, we are in phase 3 and its maybe a political movement-. Then, I kept watching the news (which were quite rawer than the Mexican news) until I left Germany.

The strangest feeling happened at Montreal where I spent one day because I lost my connection for coming back to Mexico (the reason was a little fire in Frankfurt’s airport). Here I was alone, meeting new people form everywhere, but for the first time I hesitated to say I’m Mexican since people just looked at me sometimes afraid, sometimes worried (actually people were nice if I consider what they saw in the news). I wrote this sketch for my blog drunk of that feeling:

I'm in Montreal wating for my departure, worried because I have seen the news, and here as in Berlin people talk about the pandemic illness that is affecting my country, my city. There's nothing worse that seeing the place where you are from, the place that you love in crisis.

I'm worried :(
Finally, I got Mexico and just to get on my nerves when I was landing the pilot told us that an earthquake was happening at the moment we were landing. While I was walking to the exit, I amazed of seeing too many people not wearing a cover for their mouth (I don’t know the English word for that stuff).
Now, I’ve been at home few days and I don’t fully understand what is going on, the information here is not clear, even the statistics. Most of the people don’t use nothing to cover their mouth, they (sometimes we (here I look pretty paranoic following the rules)) keep going to restaurants, they don’t even wash their hands often, most of the people want to believe that this is only a “fake” generated by the government to reactivate the economy, for instance in the net are circulating mails that assure that this has been a movement created by USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan (the G7 group). These mails are based on the conclusions of the last meeting they had. The conclusions are: The FMI would give 500, 000 million of dollar to the emergent economies, the global economy needs a change so, many people assure that the recent meeting between the presidents Obama and Calderón was for leading this suddenly emergency making Mexico the perfect place for lunching the illness (if that is true I think is not fair for our poor economy).

At the beginning was difficult to come back, because I really wanted to follow the rules (almost nobody has been doing it). In addition, I felt a bit sad for not coming back to my normal life in Mexico with my natural rhythm since everybody is at home, no cinemas, no theatre, no museums, no bars, no coffee-shops.

Now, I’m relaxed, I keep washing my hands when I get home or somewhere (I mean, I do it often), I sometimes use the “fake-shit” for my mouth, and now I see, in a different way, the fact that most of the people have to stay at home, because this situation has made us to turn into books, music, movies, radio, family, even, long walks in parks (since many malls are closed) for example my friends joined again in the “country club” weee!, for drinking “mezcal”.

PS. I wrote this in English to tell my friends abroad how the things are really in México. If someone see mistakes in my writing I really appreciate the comments.