A few days after we were ordered into lockdown here, with terrible timing, my laptop presented me with the black screen of death. I tried everything I could think of, followed all the advice available on the internet, this and that trick with the plug, all the key combinations, had a look and poke about inside, but it remained stubbornly dead. 

I was thankful that I’d recently replaced my dodgy old phone, at least I could use that to keep in touch with family and friends. Then, only a few days after the laptop died, I dropped my phone which landed right on one corner and shattered the screen. That was not a good day! 

I had a long wait until the computer repair shop reopened and as soon as it did, I was there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t good news, the logic board was caput and had to be replaced, an expensive repair. It took a couple of weeks but finally, here I am again. The phone screen can wait.

Covid 19 update:

People in the UK have been asking how we are managing here with the virus situation. It’s not great, is the short answer but I’m not in any way surprised and, from watching what was happening in Europe, I was to a certain extent forewarned and forearmed. 

Brazil is up there with the USA and India for cases of Covid 19 and the numbers¹ continue to rise. Despite this (and Bolsonaro himself confirmed as having the virus), the President is keen for the country to open up again, so more and more things are going back to normal.

Not that the lockdown rules were that well observed in the first place, not in the country as a whole, certainly not in the village. Bolsonaro’s attitude didn’t help. Health ministers who disagreed with him were dismissed or resigned. Rallies were held, where he spouted rhetoric the polar opposite of the World Health Organisation. The State Governors, following the advice of scientists, had their actions blocked or revoked.

All this created a very confusing message, which encouraged people to cherry-pick the bits they liked and discard the rest. Many behaved like it was business as normal. Visiting friends and family was fine, no risk to anyone. Have a party, gather in groups, not a problem. Frankly, I’m amazed the village has only had 3 confirmed cases, though it’s likely there have been unreported cases. We can’t know because there is no testing².

The clinic, where my husband does his dialysis, has removed all the extra provisions that were previously in place. The only thing remaining is that everyone has to wear a mask. There have been cases of the virus at the clinic, so Neu does his best to keep his distance from the other patients but it is not always possible and the lack of special measures has left him feeling quite vulnerable. Of course not going simply isn’t an option.

Neu’s hospital appointments were, understandably, cancelled back in February and we have no idea if, or when, they will be rescheduled. It must be incredibly worrying for people who were at the beginning of their diagnostic process or with ongoing treatment but it isn’t really a problem for Neu. We have been changing his dressings at home for years, we know what we’re doing. Looking on the bright side, not having to go into Fortaleza twice a month is a big financial saving.

Schools have been closed since March. Initially, we were told it was for two weeks but the closure got extended and then extended again. The school has sent a reasonable amount of work to us via the internet but some of my son’s friends live in places where there is no phone signal and no internet, so even if they have a phone or a laptop, they can’t access the work. At home, the internet connection isn’t great and my son’s laptop is old and slow but it’s useable. I also have years of teaching experience, so can help him, though his chemistry and maths homework seriously stretches my brain cells.

At the end of June, with lockdown easing, it was forecast that schools would re-open to pupils as normal in August. This was worrying from the perspective of keeping Neu safe. No matter what social distancing measures were put in place within the school, our son has to take a hot and overfull bus to and from school every day. With more students than seats, children have to stand in the aisle for each way of the 30-minute journey, making the transmission of the virus between them very much more likely.

The Director of the school told us he is still waiting for clear information from the State Government about what special measures the schools will have to take but he believed that provision would be made for us to continue homeschooling because of our circumstances. Then the expected date for the reopening of schools was put back once again anyway. Once again we don’t have definite return date. For those children and parents who are desperate for the schools to reopen, this must be frustrating news but my son is more than happy to remain at home.

To protect low-income families from any loss of income due to lockdown, the Government has been paying an extra benefit of R$600 per adult (or R$1,200 to single-parent families) per month. This goes to all adults receiving the Bolsa Familia (a benefit like income support) and those over 18 not living with their parents. 

Most legitimate artisanal fishermen live on a staggeringly small income, so this extra payment has, in many cases, more than doubled their money. No matter how hard they work, times have not been kind to the any of the artisanal fishers on the Brazilian coast.

Whilst Covid hasn’t actually stopped the fishing here, it did delay the start of the lobster season by a couple of weeks, exactly the time when the lobster are off this stretch of coast in their greatest numbers and when the men usually get the best catch. When the season did begin, it was found that the normally sandy/rocky sea bed was smothered in seaweed. This cover, possibly caused by global warming, further reduced the lobster catch, which has been in steady decline for many years due to industrialised overfishing and warming seas. 

Last year the fishermen were stopped from fishing and the fish price fell due to the oil spill which washed up along the Brazilian coastline from the end of August. The origins of the oil are still unknown and consequently, the problem is ongoing. The Brazilian Government’s lack of action and shambolic attitude to the disaster was a forewarning of their Covid response. There has been little in the way of health checks on either the effected people or the fish and many of those affected are still waiting for the emergency payments that were announced when they had to stop fishing. 

It has to be said that there is a lot of dubious activity around all these benefits but that’s nothing new. It seems with every benefit there are gaps in the system you could drive a truck through. Many who have no right to the benefit walk off with thousands, while others who clearly have every right, end up being lost in that same system, forever chasing payments that should have been made.   

It is rather ironic that, despite the Government’s handling of the pandemic, there has been a rise in Bolsonaro’s popularity in the village, specifically because of the money. Perhaps those new supporters are unaware that Bolsonaro argued against the benefit, calling for a much lower rate (R$200 rather than R$600) and for a shorter period. I suspect these new supporters will evaporate as soon as the payments stop. The North East of Brazil was the only region where Bolsonaro didn’t win in the election.

The economic forecast for Brazil can’t be good, at least in the short term. Tourism is obviously going to be very badly affected this year at least, probably for much longer and so many places, particularly in the North East, depend very heavily on tourism. The international tourism industry is a sector of the economy that the Brazilian Government has been actively trying to grow for a number of years.

A guesthouse owner here, said he was confident that the problem will be solved by those Brazilian’s who would normally holiday abroad, now travelling within Brazil. While I admire his optimism, I feel it’s misplaced, especially after I looked up some figures which simply blew my mind.

This is a direct translation from the Brazilian Government’s website written in January this year “Brazilian tourism continues to rise. From January to December 2019, the number of national arrivals at the country’s airports grew 1.8% over the same period in 2018. There were 97.1 million passengers travelling in Brazil last year, almost 2 million more than registered in 2018 (95.5 million).” When the piece was published, the Minister of Tourism, Marcelo Álvaro Antônio, was confident that tourism would continue to grow. Maybe, but not this year and probably not the year to come either.

We are a long way yet from the end of this road.

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Notes:

¹ According to Our World in Data when shown over a 7 day rolling average, Brazil still has more than 33,000 new cases daily, with 2.12 million cumulative confirmed cases, bearing in mind that the real figure is likely to be much higher as the testing rate is so low.

²According to an article in the BMJ Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) are quoted as saying “that a lack of tests and inadequate testing was not helping the authorities prepare for the crisis or give its people the right message about the need for caution and social distancing. The non-governmental organisation earlier reported that testing is being rolled out at an incredibly slow pace in Brazil, with 7500 tests per million people, which is almost 10 times fewer than the US (74 927 per million)”

³ As a comparison, I looked at the UK international visitor numbers for 2019 which are recorded as being 40.86 million. Considering how much larger Brazil is than the UK it stands to reason the number of tourists is so high and that the tourism industry is still actively trying to grow.