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Early morning 06:30am on the 15th of march I went on a repatriate duty flying to Maldives..
It’s a 7hrs flight from my base Qatar Doha to Maldives.
When I say 06:30am flight , it means I woke up and prepared myself for the flight at 02:30am.
Too early to eat anything, I reported for duty and during the course of flight, we happened to have a customer who was showing signs of Covid-19( feverish,blocked nose and sore throat), flying back to his country Maldives from Madrid Spain (Red zone). (He was declared negative as per the test after 4 days).
As a supervisor I had no choice but to handle him and isolate him as by that time the flights were already going half than the usual days.
From the Air, message via Coms was passed to the Maldivian health authorities that a possible Covid-19 suspect local will be landing 05hrs and 30mins from the moment the call was made.
After landing even though the aircraft was full of their own people, they were so scared to even open the aircraft door to begin with.
Everyone was inside the aircraft for more than 3hrs after reaching the parking bay and there was no response from their health authority.
After a lot of commotion they finally came,and took the passengers off and did some investigation..
Later they decided to take me and one of my colleague out of the aircraft after all procedures were completed with the aircraft , for being in contact with customer.
The customer coughed on my colleague’s face on ground without covering his mouth and by hanging his mask on his neck.
And as for me I had no choice but to handle him,serve him and to check on him.
We were supposed to rest in the flight and return to our base after a two hours halt on ground. Unfortunately me and my very young and new colleague had to get down for further procedure.
Before going any worse. I’m so done with eating aircraft food, so I don’t eat aircraft food , and was planning once we land in Maldives, maybe I will grab something to eat, so I was kind of starving to wait until we land.
Never knew it will be the longest time of my life to be kept starved and the first food served was after 38hrs from the air into Maldives and that too cold food and thrown at and something a foodie like me can cry rivers with the look.
I work for a very good company but here it’s about a country’s lack and panic and not knowing how to deal with the pandemic or the virus, and where another country cannot interfere just because a company’s employee of their country were not treated right.
So to make the whole long story little shorter, I felt nothing was happening right, the fear of being stranded in a foreign country, the agony of being treated like a virus when all I did was help bring their people back to their homeland.
If I count,there was nothing and absolutely no fault of mine to be there in that position.
First off taken to an island for isolation, then after getting all bitten by bed bugs in that island the company fought with them and brought us back to the hotel we usually stay when we fly to Maldives on duty. Surprisingly all medical teams were from India as their country does not have medical teams to handle this pandemic for them.
In the morning it was -one cold bread, plain omelette and with a dry sausage.
for lunch-cold rice with cold chicken curry and some cold salad. And dinner repetition of lunch.After all the painful experience, the only one thing that kept me calm was my FAITH in my LORD. My company did all they could within their power to bring me and colleague back to our base. We finally landed into Doha after 6days of a very hard and unexplainable experience.But never raised a voice or there was no hatred for Maldivian’s or their Govt. simply because it’s a time nobody was ready or even prepared and it’s a pandemic where unless there is a vaccine there will be no end to this chaos. After returning to base even though a little traumatised started my duty again by taking people home.
Every other person I met, from flying in and into the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, the people flying back home, losing their job and being quarantined at those places and heading home, there was one common story, how all this mighty nations were shaken and struggling to handle this pandemic.
How poverty and bankruptcy is becoming like a daily show, how people are losing their Jobs and becoming jobless by evening after finishing their shifts.
From everyone, all I hear was how badly quarantine places were handled and the quality of the food being very poor, despite them being such a rich and powerful country.
But there are some who accepts the fact that it’s beyond a solution now. While some still choose to scream, yell and complain. Doha is economically the richest country in the world right now after it went ahead of Helsinki, and in the quarantine centre they are serving vegetarian casserole from the aircraft catering company. And it was true because many of my colleagues who were quarantined because they had positive cases on their flight all said they ate vegetarian casseroles for 25days because that is the length of quarantine here in Doha. So ,YES !! to summarise all of the above stories I shared, it breaks my Heart to see how POOR our people are behaving in this pandemic.
We never had the luxury, don’t even know what luxury is, even if given the chance, we will not know how to enjoy as we never had that luxury of a first world country.
Yet we act as if we walk in the clouds every day and feasted all three meals of the day in our life span.
We pretend as if there was never a day of struggle in our personal lives.
We pretend as if we only walked in flowery path and showered with TLC.
Those of you who travelled by train and reached Nagaland, you should be thanking God that you did not get stranded in another state but reached your homeland, so instead of complaining about the food or biscuit you received, pray for your fellow Nagas who are waiting for a train to take them home and still suffering.
Pray for your fellow Nagas who are stranded and still looking for hope to reach home..
The day you reached Nagaland,the food the people made with love and waited for you is the best our people can afford so please stop complaining.
Not every one of our mothers are the best chefs, so lets us all stop pretending as if we grew up in a Michelin star kitchen.
Wake up my dearest NAGAS. We have nothing and we are behind everyone else in this world.STOP pretending and help our own people in fighting this pandemic together.
Kenile Kath
(Kenile Kath is a cabin crew of an international airline and is based in Doha, Qatar.)