My name is Leidy A., I live in the city of Bucaramanga and I want to tell you a little bit about my life during this pandemic in these months.

I am a single mother and I have two children, they are 19 and 9 years old. My youngest son is in the third grade at San Bernardo School.

I work in Mercagan (a famous restaurant in my city) and from March 18 we were sent home following the orders of the national government due to COVID-19. We were quarantined from March 18 to April 01, the first days at home were desperate because I live with my little son in a studio apartment and I don’t have a TV so the day was a bit long just waiting for the night and looking out the window to distract us. I found out about the situation of the country and the world on the radio and sometimes on social media and worried that it would become of us if this got out of control like in other countries. I was afraid of seeing death in the streets, or my neighbors taking out their flag because we would not have anything to eat with. I thought how would I pay rent? What would I do if the food that I had bought for that month finished? It was really days of anguish and anxiety.

At the same time, I was a month without seeing my mom and sister who live in the same neighborhood for fear that they could catch it. My mother is 53 years old, she worked in a house helping with the chores and thus helps my sister and the medicines of my stepfather who suffers from diabetes and has sores on one of his legs and can hardly walk. My sister is a single mother too. Two children, 4 and 6 years old. Lost her jobs due to the pandemic, sent them home without money or anything.

Thanks to the solidarity of the people and to God who has provided us with food to subsist. From me, I tell you that in my work we were 13 employees and now we are only 5 we dispatch per address, and they pay us half a minimum wage because the orders are few. They hardly call us, so they reduced staff and wages.

I agreed to work like this, I needed money to pay rent and food, because of this and as I earn a little it is not enough to pay for transportation, I have to walk an hour to get to work and another hour on foot to return home with tiredness. Another day not wanting to return.

There have been very difficult moments, my mother has not been able to work, sometimes I am afraid that with so much worry something may happen to her, it has been distressing to see them with so much need to see how they are harassed to pay the rent and they cannot go out to work.

There are days that it leads to a high level of stress. Thanks to God and to the solidarity of the people we have had food.
I also tell them that a month ago my son, they sent him the school works by WhatsApp and I admire the lack of understanding of the teachers; not all of us have the resources to have Wi-Fi, they send us many works and I must get to my work to download them and then send them to my sister so that he could transcribe them and return them to me again so that I finally got to the teacher.

For him it has been very difficult to study, we must ask that they give us Wi-Fi for periods to send jobs. This is my story of how COVID-19 has impacted my life and that of my family. Thanks to the Lord my family is full of need but all alive.

I ask God for a day to dawn and all this is over.