An ordinary day, of farm work, during the outbreaks of MERS-CoV, translated…
“The taros will rot away if we don’t harvest them, muala, come help”, on this morning, as I was getting that egg pancake out of the pan, kayngu came in, left these words, and then, left.
I’d, gulfed down my breakfast in a hurry, gone over to the workers’ shack, tuned out, the taros are already, set into the baskets, my mother, my eldest, second, and third aunt are all, there, moving in the stools, ready to split up the harvest.
“kayngu was in the fields at five in the morn, and there’s still that final row of it left”. My eldest aunt pointed to the distance, kayngu’s tiny form, the back bent, head lifted, then bent over again.
In my flipflops, I’d, stumbled across the rocks, from time to time, entered into the field, the originally large like the umbrella leaves of the taro, don’t know when they’d become, curled over, with the edges, burnt and yellowed, looking, quite, pitiful.
“There wasn’t enough rain that’s why they’d become like this”, then, kayngu fell, silent again. Stayed focused on the till, loosening the soils around the taro, I knew there was more she wanted to say, but, there were, the shortened sentences and words that finally, came to her tongue, and rolled out.
The summers like the rollercoaster, first, the water provisions stopped, then, the electricity shortage, “well, at least there’s, not the outbreaks!”, as these words came, then, the cases of confirmed contractions rose to three figures per day. The cities and towns stopped, the classes stopped being held, no dining in, work-from-home, what we saw from the news, the papers from before, like that delayed assignment that we had to do, and we can only, make up for, one by, one.
like this…
My aunts gathered around in a circle, put on their gloves, with a tiny sickle each, started, shaving off the tough exterior of the taro, getting rid of what’s rotted away, and, tossed the good pieces into the baskets. And, they would blurt out sentences in the mother tongue, and everybody would burst out laughing, and I can only, laugh, awkwardly.
“put on your gloves, or, you will itch like crazy when you touch the taros”, kayngu turned to tell me, her voice, steady as it’d always, been. Kayngo, with her finger against the knife turned the taro around, and, shaved off the rotten parts of the taro away, and, I can’t tell which one’s rougher, kayngu’s hands, or the skins of the taros.
Normally, we don’t see my aunt at this time, after the daughters were all married off, they’d lived in the three houses neighboring each other, my eldest aunt usually followed my uncle out as he is a trucker, my second aunt, a nurse, my youngest aunt would go to work at a nearby factory, and because they have different schedules, they’d not gotten the opportunities to gather. And it’s now, giving off that illusion of the New Year’s holidays to me right now.
illustration from UDN.com
Everybody’s hands flew, the taros piled up higher, higher, and higher, “normally, how long does it take mom to do it alone!” my youngest aunt complained. “Third stage alerts…mask up………if you have a fever, go to the hospitals right away…………”, the public announcement in the village came from afar, the air vibrated, like the alarms, buzzing off. Everybody stopped working, it’s just, that we can’t hear the warnings clearly working in the fields, the sound got severed off from time to time, we’d, tilted our ears to the sounds, then, returned back to what we were working on at hand, then, continued carrying on in casual conversations.
And so, this, is how this family stays with its normal routines during the outbreaks, and, because life doesn’t stop moving forward, because we’re all living in the epidemic, and people are cherishing these, ordinary moments they get to share with their loved ones, more than they used to.
Life, the Obstacle Course 