It is early fall here in Argentina. The grape harvest is over, and the days are starting to get shorter and cooler. Although today it is 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, this week has been cool, cloudy and rainy.

We will stay in Mendoza (a city of one million in western Argentina) until the quarantine lifts (maybe on April 12^th although it may be extended).

We are documenting our life while we and the rest of the world are in quarantine.

Life in Argentina

Argentina has a very strict quarantine policy. People are not allowed to be outside without a good reason that falls within government guidelines. If you violate the quarantine, you can be arrested or fined.

In Mendoza, there have been over 2,500 arrests or violations since the quarantine mandate began two weeks ago. However, it appears that most people are taking the quarantine seriously. We hope that Argentina’s early response to the pandemic will flatten the curve soon.

Currently, there are 1,265 Coronavirus cases in Argentina and 38 deaths. In Mendoza, there are 28 cases and 2 deaths. But these numbers change daily.

We have been confined to our apartment for the last 16 days except for a few trips to the grocery store. We cannot take walks or go outside to exercise. Our confinement will continue until April 12^th and may be extended.

Only one of us is allowed to leave our apartment to go to the grocery store which is one block away. The grocery stores are feeling the strain and shortening hours. Our store has installed plexiglass barriers between the customers and the cashiers. The cashiers wear masks or shields and some also wear protective gloves.

We are lucky that we are near a store stocked with what we need. If we had been luckier, we would be near a newer, bigger store with an international food aisle so that we could buy peanut butter, soy sauce, pasta sauce, Pepsi, chili powder, Oreo cookies, tortilla chips, and Mexican salsa.  We can usually buy the basics. However, one day the store is sold out of eggs, another day there is no bread or cereal, and another day no chicken.

When one of us goes to the store, we keep our distance from others and are dismayed that we think that all of these people are potential carriers. We don’t like this way of looking at the world fearing the unseen, suspecting disease inside of people, lurking on door handles, hovering in the air. Treating others “like they have the plague” wasn’t the way we wanted to learn about other cultures.

Every day we tell ourselves, today we will be more productive. Marc reads books on his Amazon Fire, but Kathy feels restless and cannot focus on anything but the news. You would think this would be the perfect opportunity for us to really work on our Spanish, but sometimes we just can’t concentrate.

We spend our days cooking, reading, and following the news on the internet.  We also participate in an online exercise class four days a week.  Every Thursday, we watch a lecture about American history on Facebook by Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor.

But sometimes we go down a rabbit hole and we miss our friends and family in the U.S. and the things we left behind like our house and garden. It’s easy to start feeling like we could get through this so much better if we had a car, if we could take walks, or if we had crafts or projects to occupy our time.

We wonder whether life will be better after the Pandemic.

Meanwhile, we’ve begun to wonder how life will change due to COVID-19.

After 9/11, we learned to take off our shoes at the airport, and we got used to cramming our shampoo into tiny bottles for travel. But how will this pandemic change us as a society? What can we learn from this experience and what can we change to minimize future pandemics?

We’re all seeing the clear water in the canals in Venice and how just a few weeks of slowing down helps our crumbling environment. We hope all nations can change their regulations to maintain these improvements.

We hope that our nation continues to respect teachers, medical workers, journalists, grocery clerks and everyone else classified as “essential.” They are doing their best in this “trying time.”

Medical schools are already graduating their nurses and doctors early; perhaps the next step is to forgive the student debt for these heroes on the front lines, who are putting their lives, and their family’s lives, in peril every day.

We are more aware than ever of the huge gap between rich and poor in the U.S. We hope that in November we elect representatives who will extend the social safety net to protect the working poor.

News reports show us the economic similarities between now and the Great Depression. However, during most of those terrible years, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew how to communicate with a nation that was listening for encouragement and reassurance.

What we fear more than the pandemic is the sickening feeling that many in our federal government care more about enriching corporations and wealthy people rather than protecting the rest of us. We cannot believe the staggering incompetence and cruelty of Donald Trump and the Republicans who support him.

Aside from the moments of fear and anger, most of the time we are grateful for how incredibly lucky we are. We have food, shelter, and each other…and we even have toilet paper, which makes us rich now? When it is finally safe to come out, we hope everyone can be better at caring for one another.

Future Posts

Since we are in quarantine and unable to venture out, we will not publish a blog next week. We hope to get back out and have more adventures after the quarantine is lifted. We hope you all are safe and healthy.