Little Baby Lockdown: Covid Diaries

For those of you who do not know, I live in Riga, Latvia and a few weeks ago, the government announced emergency measures were returning because Covid is on the rise.

I have been shocked to see how quickly we went from almost 0 cases this summer to over a thousand cases a day with dozens of deaths. The wave rose so sharply that it was more of a reverse cliff dive than a wave. We got hit by the Covid tsunami, and it is not pretty.

Luckily, our little family has been unaffected directly by Covid, but we all know someone who has had it, and some who have died. Latvia is a small country, so what might sound like a small number to you is quite high here. In fact, we have the highest death rate in the EU.

So now we have a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.. If you are walking your dog close to home, you may be out later, but we haven’t really risked this much. So Karu is home doing schoolwork from the bedroom, I am working in my office, while Rita occupies our living room as her home office.

Another change is that Latvia quickly descends from the never-ending light of summer to the always-dark autumn quickly. Even in my 4th year here, I am shocked by how suddenly the sun sets. It gets light around 9 a.m. and dark by 4 p.m. That will continue to get shorter for another month.

Combine the lockdown with the darkness, and you have this very strange combination that makes a person stir crazy and depressed.

Wolt (our food delivery service) is still operating, and most stores are open, but no entertainment and no restaurants or bars doing much. We are impatiently waiting for the 15th of November to find out if the restrictions will continue or not. The picture looks and feels pretty bleak.

November is usually a month of celebration for Latvia. We have our national hero, Lāčplēsis Day on November 11, followed a week later by our Independence day. This used to mean basically a month of dark but merry times. There would normally be celebrations all over the city with markets and festivities. Now, it is just the darkness.

I shouldn’t say it is all bad. We rented a car last week and drove out of the city to rural locations to get some fresh sights and fresh air. But there was always this idea of “we have to be home by 8 p.m.” hanging over our head. I should probably write about the good adventures, but here it is.