Drive-by Veggies
Next month, we’re publishing a few stories about our experiences of the COVID-19 lockdown. Here’s a sneak peek!
On a group Zoom chat last night, my cousin told us about the food situation in his part of Sri Lanka.
“A curfew has been enforced here,” he explained. “You can’t leave the house at all.”
“How do you get food?” I asked, confused.
“Well, they lifted curfew for a day, and we tried to get what we could then. We’ve been rationing what we have.”
“Rationing?!” I asked, alarmed.
“Yeah. So, when the curfew lifted, Amanda, Chathura and I shared our grocery lists and split up. We went to different stores to try and get as much from the list as we could. They managed to get some stuff, but I was in a line outside a supermarket for two and a half hours that didn’t even move.”
“Are you going okay with your rations?” My sister asked, concerned.
“Yeah, so far, I am.” He replied.
“What do you do when you run out of food?”
“It’s not too bad. There are trucks that drive by every so often. They sell fruit, vegetables, and other essentials.”
“But you can’t pay by card right?”
“Yeah, it’s cash only.”
“How on earth do you get to ATMs if you’re under curfew?”
“Well, now there are mobile ATMs that are on trucks too. So you can withdraw cash from them when they drive by.”
“That’s wild,” was all I could really say in response.“Yeah. I miss the luxuries though, you know? There’s no way you could get a bag of something like pasta right now.”
I thought guiltily about our supermarkets in Sydney, where pasta is now back on the shelves thanks to shopping limits on customers buying dried goods.
I feel grateful for the privilege I’m experiencing here in Australia. Thanks to my family overseas, I can truly understand this. I just wish there was more I could do to help them.
Do you have loved ones overseas in quarantine/curfew/isolation? What steps have you taken to help deal with the distance?