Covid-19. What’s going on in Jordan?
Between military curfew, social distancing and quarantine, Jordan also tries to face the virus outbreak. While Italy is remembered through Dante’s collective readings in Amman, we try to remodel our work from afar. The story of Marta Malaspina, Head of Mission of Un Ponte Per in Amman.
The last message on the WhatsApp chat created by the building’s administrator, asks each of us to write down our own fruit and vegetables shopping list. Tomorrow our neighbour will organize a collective order that someone will deliver directly to our house. At the moment this is the only way to shop here in Amman, and it is rumoured that shops will close again soon.
Until a few days ago I didn’t even know all of my neighbours. Now we have a group chat to check that all of us are doing well, we exchange information on the latest updates and new government measures, as well as funny pictures and videos to try and play down the difficulties of living in isolation and under curfew.
The virus that has brought more than half of the world to its knees, has arrived in Jordan a few weeks ago. A pandemic that has managed to collapse the most efficient and accessible health systems in the world, such as those of some European states, in this corner of the world presents an even more frightening scenario.
In Jordan, the national health system, public and private, cannot completely respond to a crisis of thes dimensions. The Jordanian health system, indeed, has been already impacted by several humanitarian crises which erupted in the Middle Eastearn in the last twenty years.
In light of these considerations, the Jordan government was among the first countries in the world to decide to take extraordinary and particularly restrictive preventive measures in order to contain the spread of Covid-19. After King Abdallah II decreed that the country would go under Defense Law on March 18, on Saturday March 21 we have welcomed the arrival of spring in an unusual way.
At 7 am the sirens resounded across the kingdom announcing the start of the curfew.
An order imposed by state and military authorities, which led to the suspension of all activities. Schools, banks, public and private offices, all kinds of shops, even supermarkets and pharmacies have been closed.
After 4 days of total blockade, the government seized city buses to distribute bread and other essential goods directly in the neighbourhoods of Jordanian cities. On Tuesday a limited reopening was granted to little neighbourhood grocery stores to purchase primary needs goods. The movement of cars is still prohibited and immediate arrest is provided for anyone breaking the curfew. Airports and all borders remain closed: Jordan is an armoured country.
In this context of extreme closure, the greatest concern for humanitarian workers like us is to find ways to continue supporting the most vulnerable sections of Jordanian population and the refugee communities, including minorities.
With the spread of the infection in the country, we too, like many other NGOs, have been forced to remodel our intervention, remaining operational where possible, while respecting the limitations necessary to guarantee safety for all.
The humanitarian crisis caused by the spread of the virus unfortunately presents unique specificities with few precedents. Here in Jordan, the perception is that of experiencing an emergency in the emergency. The government immediately asked for support from all humanitarian actors in the country, and all together we are trying to take part in this humanitarian response with the means at our disposal.
These are days of intense work for the Un Ponte Per mission team in Jordan.
The efforts are aimed at continued coordination with the other international NGOs, our local partners, donors, UN agencies, sectoral working groups coordinated by UNHCR, in order to be able to develop as soon as possible an operational emergency response plan, to an emergency that is also strongly impacting on the economic system.
We are currently focusing on two issues. On the one hand, guaranteeing financial assistance to families who live below the minimum poverty threshold, and for whom the only sources of income are linked to occasional day-to-day work.
On the other hand, with a team of psychologists, we are sustaining the mental health support system created in response to the Covid-19 emergency. We are activating a hotline dedicated to emotional and psychological support, with the aim of accompanying those who already live in vulnerable situations, to recognize and express emotions in this moment of crisis.
At the same time, we try to transform into online activities the field activities ongoing before the spread of the infection. Support groups, training courses and awareness campaigns on issues on which Un Ponte Per in Jordan bases many of its interventions: the inclusion and strengthening of persons with disabilities and mental health problems, as well as the protection of women from violence, and children education.
The most difficult thing to bear is helplessness: not being able to reach everyone who needs special support right now.
Like us, the many other Italian expatriate colleagues in foreign missions have in large part refrained from returning to Italy because they do not want to abandon these countries at the time of the crisis.
We want to stay and support countries that have welcomed, hosted, and thought a lot to us and with whom we have built bridges of solidarity and unique bonds over the years.
The announcement of the total curfew here in Amman was unexpected.
Many of the older people have remembered the dark seclusion times they lived in these lands battered by conflicts and wars for many years. Many Palestinians have smiled bitterly thinking about how many quarantines and forced separations they have already had to live far away from their occupied land, where the threat is not always as loud as this virus.
Many people have asked themselves how to fight this new invisible enemy, trying to stay united, while remaining distant. Jordan is a warm land with a thousand nuances, inhabited by an extraordinarily welcoming and generous people. Social distance is a difficult concept around here, where the sense of community is particularly felt, and often helps to overcome any barrier.
Thinking of the many hugs denied in recent times, I remember the triplets of Dante Alighieri’s fifth canto of the Inferno in the Divine Comedy, which a few days ago, we used to express our closeness to Italy from Amman and to celebrate our distant country also from here.
Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,
seized this man for the person beautiful
that was taken from me; and still the mode offends me.
Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,
seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,
that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.
Dante, with his words, reminds us that the power of love does not allow any loved one to not reciprocate the love.
It reminds us that we are all interconnected and that especially in this historical period we cannot allow anyone falling behind. The strength lies in recognizing a common response that involves everyone, acting together to support and take care of each other.
We can “cope”, as we say at Un Ponte Per, only altogether.