Fights, Flights, and Faces of a Pandemic
Lives were turned upside down, dreams changed, and survival was proven to be their greatest feat.
By Dani Nakpil (Mandaluyong City, Philippines) and Katt Briones (Melbourne, Australia)
January 31, 2021
Beeps, alarms, the smell of antiseptic and blood.
There are orders coming in from every direction, asking for equipment, tests, and IV bottles, from colleagues and seniors alike. Albert is trying to help as much as his exhaustion allows him, having been placed on another double shift. Or wait, was it really just double? He has lost count.
These people need my help, he thought. Every day may just seem to be the same cycle of overwork and exhaustion, but at least he’s doing his part to serve the country, and his countrymen fighting for their lives.
He makes his way out of the hospital and spots a plane overhead. There is a small pinch in his heart as he watches it disappear into the clouds. Like many people in his chosen field, nursing has seemed like a ticket out of the Philippines. For him, it means joining his mother in the United Kingdom to build their family’s dreams together.
What worsened the nightmare that is this pandemic is he and his friends being unable to board a plane out due to the previously imposed deployment ban. Not long enough, the government has lifted the measure but only allowing 5,000 health workers to fly and work abroad every year. As unfair as it may seem, Albert still finds a glimmer of hope in the new development.
He then adjusts his face shield for a better fit and begins the journey home.
The plane now flies over Laguna. Maurice looks up, recognizing her former employer’s logo, and lets out a sigh of relief. She hopes it’s one of her colleagues-turned-friends aboard the aircraft, attending to passengers, so they can at least have a paid flight after months of flight attendants being on stand-down, no-pay leave. Probably a cargo, she guesses, as the plane glides out of her view. It hasn’t been easy. Maurice’s Messenger inbox remains full of her colleagues’ messages ranging from optimism to hopelessness.
Just months ago, she had been living out of a luggage, pulling it on its wheels as she hopped from one country to another.
She remembers donning her trench coat during winter, walking from the terminal to the hotel’s service bus in high heels. Short layovers, jet lag, and homesickness were her life. She never thought that one night, she would fold the same coat, tucked away in the suitcase she used to carry.
She looks back and casts a small smile at the trolley she now has, carrying the heavy LPG tank she is due to deliver to the nice old lady down this street. It‘s not so bad, she muses, making her way to the gate. The rubber shoes she now wears to deliveries definitely are a better treat for her feet - she hated those damn heels. At least these sneakers were comfy.
Hours later, the pilot begins the cargo plane’s descent into Melbourne. Kathrin watches it in wonder from her apartment window, being the very first plane she’s seen for months now.
It’s not close enough for her to see anything on it, but she imagines it to be from home anyway. Christmas is approaching. This time last year she’s already been completing her pasalubong shopping list, eagerly talking to her dad in Manila and crossing off the days until she can see him and the family again.
Her computer beeps, signaling a new e-mail from Outlook. Her phone hasn’t stopped with the notifications either - calls from her boss, her boss’s boss, the project consultants. There’s also the occasional retweet or post from friends detailing the incumbent government’s latest display of incompetence, and messages congratulating her for graduating. She takes one last look at the plane, wishing she can do something, anything, to see them back home.
An incoming MS Teams call forces her to snap out of it. She joins the conference call with the same five people. Her fancy new job title is on the participant screen next to her name. The novelty has worn off, she thought. Years ago, she would have given everything she had to be where she is now. Today she wonders if this - the homesickness and the feeling of being trapped - is all even worth it.
Who comes first?
The story of this young nurse is nothing unfamiliar. It’s even one of those stories that make you ask how come healthcare workers in the Philippines are underpaid. According to a recent report by CNN Philippines, nurses are crying for the issuance of their delayed hazard pays and salaries, months into the fight against the pandemic.
Albert Tejano Jr. graduated with a nursing degree in 2019 and planned his life ahead without knowing what’s coming forth. He said he was eyeing joining his mom in the United Kingdom to finally help her build their dreams for their family back here. Albert’s mother has been working as a caregiver for 12 years in the UK.
In February of this year, he got accepted in a hospital in the UK, where his cousin also works as a nurse. Albert thought his dream was finally going to materialize. However, the coronavirus pandemic happened, and the government implemented a deployment ban on nurses and other healthcare workers.
There were two voices in his head, and the longstanding debate among nurses like him began. Will he join the frontlines in fighting this war, or wait until he can leave and work where nurses are properly compensated?
Despite his worries, doubts, and fears, Albert started serving in a COVID-19 isolation ward of a private hospital in October.
“I cannot be happy in the clean ward, knowing that there are people needing my help.”
Albert said the nurses are understaffed in the isolation ward and he cannot be reluctant to serve with them. Each day has become more and more fulfilling for him, even when people around him started to discriminate against him because of his job and daily routines. He said he just tries to understand.
He adds that being a nurse in these trying times takes more than what it usually does from him as a person, but it is worth it. He explains that it is not only a physical bout but also a mental battle for every patient. Treat the man, not the disease, he emphasizes.
“They can’t have any family with them. You are all they have.”
Albert even shares a story of a patient who has been swabbed for five times but still tested positive for the virus. This is on top of the rising medical bills in the hospital. Some patients even incur millions-worth of payables.
“It’s been very discouraging for most of them.”
He said the least he can do is greet them during rounds and be as accommodating as possible. It will leave him speechless and ever so inspired when patients would leave thank you notes on their bulletin boards as they leave the hospital.
Albert says it is impossible for them not to build a bond with the patients, but it is also their success once they’ve been treated.
Despite being proud of what he currently does as he serves his country, being with his mom never left Albert’s mind. As he tends to patients, he remembers his mother who has been tirelessly serving other people in a different country to provide them a good life.
This time, he thinks that maybe, the answer to the question of who comes next in his life has already been answered.
“I’ve done my part for this pandemic. This time, it’s my mother’s turn. I think she needs me more.”
He is done serving the nation. It is time he serves his family.
Dreams can change, and that’s okay
She is beautiful–the type that joins beauty pageants. She is soft-spoken and accommodating as well–some of the reasons why people think she is fit for the job, why hers is a glamorous one. Flight attendants are pretty like Maurice, and they live the dream of traveling the world for a living.
But according to Maurice herself, people should be rooted no matter how glamorous their job seems to be.
When the pandemic hit the world, the tourism industry was one of the most affected sectors. Maurice Maureen Avila lost her job in one of the local airlines in the country. She was saved from the first retrenchment in June, but to be laid off during the second wave was even more painful, according to her.
“It was more painful because we thought things would be alright.”
She admitted that this turnaround caused her world to crumble. Maurice would cry herself to sleep for two weeks. She said it was difficult. She didn’t let other people know about the news until she was ready. She said it wouldn’t be possible for her to recover if her family wasn’t there by her side.
After letting herself grieve for some time, Maurice woke up one day and told herself with the resolve that life must go on. She must go on.
Being the breadwinner, she had to pivot and find ways to earn money. Not long enough, she and her boyfriend found themselves investing in an LPG business.
“The business became a distraction. Slowly, I was forgetting about the sadness I felt.”
She said it wasn’t a problem for her changing courses in life, although it was a challenge. She used to carry a suitcase on a daily basis, but it has now turned into a trolley as she delivers LPG with her brother in their village.
There were times where she would still get sad as she sees the Instagram stories of her former colleagues, but Maurice chooses to be positive and grateful about her current situation in life.
She said this pandemic has taught her to risk and go out of her comfort zone. Another important lesson she learned is that God’s timing is perfect and that every blessing belongs to him- including your dream.
Today, Maurice has started to recover as she starts working again. She is an accountancy graduate. She said she is not sure if she will go back to being a flight attendant because, by the time the pandemic totally clears, she might already have a different life.
Destination Anxiety
Kathrin Rae Briones doesn’t remember a time in her life that she has ever stood still. From childhood, it has always been a race to get from one goal post to another, with these just changing forms - medals, admission into her dream school, publishing her first book.
The most recent goal post was Australia, where she moved in 2018. She just hit the three-year mark at her dream employer and the restlessness just took over. She applied for a second Bachelor’s degree in IT and got in.
Since then, the year 2020 has been marked in her calendar. It was the year she would graduate, become a double-degree holder, get the promotion promised by the company that hired her as a part-time project resource. It was the year she wanted to conquer the world.
Instead, she was glued to her computer because Melbourne was affected by the pandemic too, by far the hardest-hit city in Australia. The blows came one after another, starting with the landlord who lost their job and became unstable as time went on. The person went from friendly to abusive in a matter of weeks, treating Kathrin like an emotional punching bag because she had no one else to talk to. As she lived with this landlord, and there wasn’t any available property in the suburb with the same price point, Kathrin felt she had no choice but to deal with the increasingly clingy and abusive behavior.
“My other friends warned me it was getting alarming and I should leave, but I didn’t listen,” Kathrin said, shaking her head. “I mean, the rent was cheap, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, and I always paid on time. Some days I didn’t even have to see her, so I thought I had nothing to worry about as long as I paid my dues.”
June was when she finally had enough. A second lockdown was enforced with even more restrictions than the first. The landlord, not having friends nearby, would expect Kathrin to cater to her needs and drop everything at that exact moment she asked. If not, Kathrin would be ‘punished’ by way of yelling and her possessions being thrown on the floor.
The last straw was when Kathrin politely refused an invitation to talk because of an ongoing work call. To punish her, the landlord decided to pull the internet cable, deliberately break a door, and scream bloody murder blaming her for the damage for twenty minutes straight. Kathrin packed up and placed frantic calls to family friends who lived nearby, who then helped her move to an apartment in the city.
Being away from that had been a relief, but the months of experiencing abuse on a daily basis finally took their toll on her. Kathrin failed a subject from the resulting trauma and sleepless nights. Failing a subject meant she had to renew her student visa for an extra term. That was an added headache as even visa services were locked up indefinitely when Metropolitan Melbourne declared a Stage 4 lockdown. She had to get fortnightly counseling sessions over the phone, and when the PTSD-induced nightmares wouldn’t stop, she had doctors prescribe her Valium just to have a proper night’s sleep. Her workplace was understanding and accommodated her even if she had to do an extra term part-time. Fortunately, it had been smooth-sailing since then. The promotion was given as promised when her final term ended.
Kathrin recognizes that she still has it loads easier than friends back home. The job paid the bills, she had savings, and the opportunity she had now was something she could only dream of two years ago. What she did not imagine nor take into account was the gutting homesickness and absence of a safe space that seemed to be the cost of this dream.
“I used to think of this as my happily ever after,” Kathrin muses. “I’d be in a foreign country, secure, and I would have all the freedom in the world because there were no extended family members putting their nose in my business as I did in Manila. But the previous trauma tainted all that and I just feel unsafe now.”
The realization that the grass here wasn’t as green as she imagined hit her hard. At times, it felt like she was trapped, like she was not allowed to dislike where she was now, because she had wanted this. Complaining would make her ungrateful and reeking of privilege.
The pandemic forced her to stay still, effectively giving her the epiphany that it wasn’t the goals that had kept her running. It was the high from getting to the ‘finish line’ that did.
She had since taken the advice of her therapist to sit down and take control of the destination anxiety that had taken over her life. No destination nor goal or state in life was perfect, and maybe not having a next destination was a good thing.
Maybe it meant contentment could be found here and now, and she just had to learn where to look.
To say that the pandemic turned everything upside down would be like declaring water is wet. However, it is worth recognizing the different levels that it has affected every single one of us, and worth noting that everyone is doing their best given the situation. We face grief every day from losing people, loved ones, and normalcy as we always knew it.
As we are ushered into the new year, the same uncertainty awaits us. The only consolation is the fact that we face this all together as we rebuild our lives.
We survive, dream again, and hope again because that is what we are made of.
