At home but far away: Trini librarian's struggles in quarantine

As countries around the world took drastic measures to close borders in a desperate attempt to shut out covid19, many Trinidadians living abroad struggled to return home. IJANAYA JACOB-BROWN, who lives in Africa, tells the story of her journey home and her experiences in self-quarantine in a four-part series. Today is the third article.

Strangely enough I haven’t cried since I’ve been home. I talk to my mom on the phone in another room. I video chat with my friends. I feel like I’m still in the first stage of grief: denial. It’s lonely being in a room by myself. Even though my mom and brother are here, I feel lonely because I can’t touch anyone.

It’s a weird, isolated feeling. I see the world outside my window, but I can’t go there. I’m just stuck in a room, and it causes a lot of anxiety and stress. Everyone says, “Get a routine,” but everything is so confining, I don’t want a routine. I feel like if it wasn’t for teaching my classes online and my friends calling me online every day, I would go into a deep depression. I can’t see the children I teach because with child protection policies at my school, we’re not allowed to video chat with our students.

I record myself reading picture books to my children and imagine their faces. I am working on my handover to my successor. I read. Right now I’m reading The Testaments by Margaret Atwood.

I force myself to shower. When you don’t have anywhere to go, you don’t really feel to shower.

I am organising shipping my things home. I’m trying to find my lost bag and recover some of the money from all of my cancelled flights.

Last night I went to bed at 7 pm because I was too depressed to eat or stay up. I felt I might as well just sleep. I still don’t know if a lot of this is from the lack of sleep from travelling frantically from country to country and jet lag, but I think it’s a combination of sleep deprivation, severe anxiety, panic, coming down from that but now having something new to cause anxiety. How do I pack up my life half a world away from this room where I am sitting? A friend had to pack up my apartment for me.

In a world of uncertainty where things change by the second how do I plan for a future? I feel paranoid about every little thing I feel. I cough, and I think, Oh no, am I getting it? Did I expose myself travelling through eight countries to get here? Then I find out my cousin in England has covid19. I know someone now who has it.

I feel grateful I am here in Trinidad and not in Sudan because the protests are starting up again. A lot can happen in a month when you are trapped in a country. It would be scary stuck in Sudan.

I know that anxiety of an unclear future is hard on everyone. We have no control over our health or our lives, and we now have to process that far too quickly. One minute you feel like part of the world; the next minute you’re isolated in a room locked out of this world – and even most of your own home. It is terrifying. You just don’t know how quickly things can change. We take for granted the ability to travel freely and have access to the world.

We take for granted coming home. I think a lot about those people who desperately want to be here and can’t get in now. It’s sad and terrifying. In trying times, home is what gives us a sense of comfort.

That feeling of isolation, the lack of control and helplessness keep hitting me. I am a very independent person. Not having that feeling of mobility and freedom of access makes me depressed. I think about people in my situation in self quarantine; people who got trapped and were travelling as the world changed. We feel like pariahs because we did something that was so natural before, which is travel.

Through this whole process of coming home, I felt less than human. The kind police officer in Bengui, who helped me through his country gave me the most comfort.

Now, as I’m home, I feel a bit of relief from the stress of being locked out of Africa, but now there are a whole new set of problems I have to sit in this room and deal with. Time moves very slowly in this room, and I am thinking how long is this going to last? I am terrified of getting sick. I’m terrified of what quarantine looks like out there if I do get sick.

Sometimes you have to deal with one or two stressful issues at the same time, but this is bombardment on a whole new unprecedented level. I still have nine days of quarantine left.