Welcome to the blog everyone. I hope it will be both interesting and useful for you. I have no idea what I will write about everyday buy I am sure I will find something.
We are living in strange times. We have never seen a virus cause such chaos on a global scale. The Spanish flu, from January 1918 to December 1920, infected around a quarter of the world’s population. There’s surely only a small percentage of the world’s population that were alive during the Spanish Flu. We don’t know just how big the total impact of COVID-19 will be, but it will certainly be big and long-lasting.
Belarus has gained quite a lot of attention in the Western media recently. Unfortunately, this attention has been negative. Even the BBC pushed one news story to the 7th highest (and therefore 7th most important) news story at that time. It was about how the Belarusian football league is the only league in Europe still playing.
I have watched two Belarusian games. One of the games was at FC Minsk and the other was at Belshina Bobruisk. I even tried to follow FC Krumkachy, but after the scandal involving BATE, I was unable to find any strong feelings for them. This is in stark contrast to Aston Villa (if you haven’t guessed already, ‘stark contrast’ means something similar to ‘big difference’).
Dinamo Brest’s ‘virtual’ fans. There’s even a vintage Aston Villa top.
Back in the streets of Minsk, I have noticed an increasing number of masks being worn. People of both genders and all ages are wearing them. More and more people are aware of keeping the distance and most buildings have hand sanitiser available. I am surely not alone in hoping that these measures will help stop the spread of the disease.
My personal hygiene habits have changed; I wash my hands more regularly than I used to, I walk when I used to take the bus, and I have started to do something different at the end of my morning shower - I make the water as hot as I can for 30 seconds then as cold as I can for 30 seconds. I read somewhere online that it can help your immunity. I’m not 100% sure about this but I do know it helps me to wake up!
Personally, I am not very worried of getting the virus. Even though I had some chest issues last year, I have faith in my immune system and in the statistics surrounding my age group. In fact, there is a decent chance that I have already been infected with the coronavirus. I felt unwell for around 12 days at the end of January and beginning of February. I didn’t have much of a temperature but I felt very weak and had a strange dry cough. It was a cough that got deep in my chest and gave me a short, sharp pain whenever I coughed. Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t very nice, that’s for sure.
I would like to finish this first post with a few comments about the attitude of the people here in Minsk. I have interacted with lots of people in the last few weeks, from students to shop assistants, and have been extremely impressed with everyone’s calmness. I was going to say “very surprised by everyone’s calmness” but that would have been a lie. In truth, I’m not that surprised. In my 9 years of visiting and living here I have witnessed Belarusians cope successfully with more than one crisis before and I am sure we can cope with another one.