Life on the Road during Covid-19 - Part 2
A month ago I wrote an article about how the Coronavirus crisis has affected
myself and other people living in vans especially those abroad at the time and those
whose van is their only home. Now a month later what new challenges have we
faced and where do we go to from here?
I
am in Morocco, I arrived in February and spent the first month travelling
around exploring the country. The lockdown started on 20th March and
was initially for a month. On 18th April the authorities announced a
further month of lockdown and so here we are into month two of our restricted
lives.
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| Out for a walk in Imsouane |
My
partner and I feel very lucky to be somewhere where we can have a nice walk
every day without meeting another soul, somewhere where food is cheap and the
shelves are not half empty due to panic buying and where the weather is good
every day. We have been imagining what it would be like to be stuck in the van
with the rain pouring down day after day. Luckily even in the UK and Ireland
where we are originally from the weather has for the most part been fairly
good. Unfortunately life for some van dwellers has not been though.
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| The only bar in Imsouane now shut since the lockdown |
Many
full-time van dwellers have had harassment from the public for being on holiday.
People have had verbal abuse and rather nasty notes put on their vehicles
telling them to ‘go home’. Many van dwellers have had to move from where they
were safely parked and social distancing to a new park up, others have had to
call the police and get the council involved. The council for the most part
have been helpful and sympathetic to the plight of people living full-time in
vehicles. Many have issued notices that people can put in the windscreen of
their vehicle to tell the public that they are allowed to park and live in
their van at that location.
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| Councils in the UK issue van dwellers with official notices to let the public know they can park there |
The
headline of a recent DevonLive website article was titled ‘New Age traveller
waits out pandemic at Torquay beauty spot in unusual vehicle’. The news website
had received an email from a reader which among other things said, "Maybe
your readers would be interested why these people are permitted to flout the
rules in this difficult time, while the rest of us have to stay and home."
For the record the vehicle was hardly unusual, just a self-built campervan!
Another
similar article from the BBC had the rather unsettling headline 'I'm scared
I'll return to find my home burnt out'. It detailed the struggle a young woman
living in her van was facing. The woman, who is a frontline worker, was
receiving abuse on a daily basis and she felt vulnerable in her van and was
finding it hard to sleep at night. People were accusing her and another van
dweller at the same spot of being there on holiday. As well as the police
stepping up patrols in the area so as the van dwellers felt safer, a local
councillor has been supporting the pair and posted on Facebook to inform the
community they both had a legitimate reason for being in the car park.
What
is clear is that some people do not realise at all that there are folk that
live in campervans and motorhomes full time. That these vehicles are their only
home and that the vast majority of van dwellers, just like the general
population are obeying the social distancing guidelines and are staying at
home. It is true that there was a sudden wave of motorhomes heading off to
‘escape’ the lockdown at the beginning of the virus outbreak. This has, no
doubt stuck in people’s minds and now they think everyone in a van is on
holiday.
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| Our parking place has been free from any hassle |
Friends
I have living on traveller sites are also getting frustrated, like many of us
are, with other people not obeying the social distancing rules. On site where
you often share a toilet and possibly a shower block and washing machine it is
doubly frustrating as you have no choice but to come into contact with the others
who are not playing by the rules. A friend on a narrow boat has had walkers, on
their allotted ‘exercise time’ walking along the tow path with seemingly no
care for the fact they are well within two metres of her on her boat. Another
friend on the canals had the same problem until the waterways authorities put
signs up on the tow path asking people not to walk on the parts where boats
were moored.
As
is so often the case in today’s society, there seems to be an ‘I’m OK Jack’
mentality with the view that ‘I’m doing the right thing and other people are
doing the wrong thing.’ It seems few people take the time to think about anyone’s
individual circumstances and people are happy to report other people for what
they see as ‘wrong behaviour’. Worryingly the term ‘covidiots’ has entered our
vocabulary in recent weeks. Whilst some of the behaviour may well be wrong and
against guidelines, humiliating individuals is certainly not the right way to
tackle the situation. It should probably be more about shaming the behaviour
itself.
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| Graffiti in Imsouane telling everyone to stay at home |
Back
here in Morocco the wearing of facemasks became mandatory while outside, early
in April. There have been thousands of arrests for not wearing them as well as
arrests for people breaking social distancing rules and being outside when they
shouldn’t be. Here in Imsouane where I am staying it seems to have become
fashion to wear a facemask around the neck! People do not put it on their face
when they pass you nor do many even put it up when in the shop. The only reason
to make them put it up is the sight of a policeman.
It’s
an odd mentality the people that are more concerned with getting a fine from
the police than catching or passing on a deadly virus! I know there has been
many reports that say the wearing of a facemask is not necessary or that they
don’t work and so maybe many of these people believe that. It makes me feel a
little uncomfortable when in the close confines of the village shop when there
are others in there not wearing masks. The shop here is very small!
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| Mandatory wearing of facemasks while outside leads to us being inventive with scarves |
One
of the big lessons of the Ebola crisis in Africa was what it taught about the
importance of helping local populations to adapt their behaviour through a good
understanding of infection dynamics. World-wide epidemiologists have used the
term ‘social distancing’ without really being able to explain clearly what this
implies. Both physical distancing and cutting down on social contacts are
implied in the term but it says little about how it is done. Ebola-affected
villagers in some districts of Sierra Leone during the outbreak in 2014-15
started to call the disease ‘bonda wote’ meaning ‘family turn around’ or
‘family stand back’. They quickly understood that they needed to make proxemics
adjustments to group activity, and family life to reduce the risk of infection
At
the beginning of April there was about 700 cases of the virus here with 40
deaths, by mid-April there was 2000 cases and 127 deaths. Now at the end of
April there is 4360 cases and 168 deaths. Without a doubt by shutting
everything down early they have made great progress in stopping the spread of
the disease at the same accelerated rates of some countries.
The
illness has been slow to reach Africa but there is reason to suspect its
eventual progression could be the biggest disaster for developing countries in
our lifetime. The greater youthfulness of the population in Africa might
indicate lower death rates but this will be affected by co-morbidities. People
with compromised immune systems seem to be at greater risk, so infection is
likely to be dangerous for people with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, anaemia,
malaria, or malnutrition. All these other issues are more prevalent in Africa
than Europe.
African
health systems are generally poorly equipped to cope with a huge spike in
respiratory cases. There are in fact ten African countries with no ventilators.
In Morocco they are trying to increase the amount of critical care beds from
1640 to 3000 to cope with the crisis but this will still only make 1.5 beds per
100,000 people. In the UK there are 6.6 critical care beds per 100,000. Morocco
has also began manufacturing its own ventilators with 500 invasive and
non-invasive types set to be ready in April.
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| Our walks take in the deserted beach |
In
April there were two ferries running to Sete in France and two to Genoa in
Italy taking motorhomes and campervans. These ferries were exclusively for
campervans and motorhomes. All the backlog of people waiting in Tangier wanting
to return has been cleared and most other people in campervans have their safe
place to stay whether on a campsite or on friends land. There are to be two
more ferries in May although the dates have changed and nothing is guaranteed
as the ferry company has to get authorisation from the Moroccan authorities on
a case-by-case basis to run.
There
are also still some people free camping here in Morocco. They don’t seem to be
getting any hassle, certainly those local to us anyway. The difference here
than to the UK is that people realise that now all borders are closed it is
near impossible to get back to the country you come from. I have not heard of
any situations here where van dwellers here have been told to “go home”.
Despite rumours on social media of locals not wanting tourists around I have
not seen any evidence of that or heard any first hand stories where someone has
had any abuse just for being a tourist or foreigner.
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| Our walks also take in the deserted streets |
There
have been articles in online magazines and newspapers as well as YouTube videos
from people all over the world that have ended up staying much longer in a
country in their campervan due to the lockdown. The stories are of people in
campervans trying to return home or how they are coping staying put. The
vanlife movement is very much an online movement in as much as it is not really
a community like the New Traveller movement. Much of the connections people
make are online as well as the groups they are part of. There is a lot of
people that are part of the van life scene that have blogs, make videos for
their YouTube channel and take photographs for their Instagram feed.
The
BBC reported on a vanlife couple with a baby who had left the UK to start a
yearlong road trip but raced back to the UK before the borders closed. “We made
it back in the nick of time” they say in their interview. Advanture magazine
have an article on a Dutch couple who say, “We decided that the only country
that would be safe for us to continue living in a van would be back home in
Holland”. They go on to say that they started to hear Moroccans were blaming
Europeans even though they had not experienced this themselves and that they didn’t
know what would happen if one of them fell ill.
A
popular vanlife channel on YouTube had six videos from its creator all with the
title ‘Stuck in Morocco’. The videos give details of the family’s issues with
trying to leave Morocco amid the first couple of weeks of lockdown. Interesting
in parts and also with some good information but personally I have to question
the terminology being used by all these privileged westerners during the
crisis.
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| Just one of the many guesthouses in Imsouane that have had to shut |
A
recent report by Cléo Marmié highlights how the coronavirus lockdown has forced
some of the tourists and foreigners stranded in Morocco, to adopt the rhetoric
of migrants. According to the researcher, thousands of these people stranded in
Morocco turned to social media, using a discourse of border, migratory
injustice and discrimination. The situation has pushed those who are yet the
privileged ones in this world, with passports authorizing entry, without
formality or with a simple visa, to act like vulnerable migrants.
European
citizens experienced being kept waiting, as well as uncertainty and a feeling
of dispossession in the face of diplomatic and administrative decisions, whose
impact on their lives and their freedom of movement sparked their outrage. The
study concludes that the Covid-19 crisis has highlighted intrinsic inequalities
of migration, the differentiated value of lives and the selective emotions when
one faces the intolerable.
For
us here in Morocco we are very aware of the privileged position we come from
and in fact still find ourselves in. We have money in the bank and we have families
in the UK and Ireland that can help us out if our money runs out. We have had
assurances that we do not need to worry about trying to extend our visa as the
Interior Ministry has said we will be able to leave without penalty when the
borders re-open. We are safe and healthy and know that in time we will be able
to get back to Europe.
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| Regular visitors to our parking spot, the sheep and goats! |
Meanwhile
we are taking each day as it comes and still managing to find things to do
every day. For me learning an instrument is helping immensely as it is
something that is different most days. I can feel myself progressing with it
and so most days bring something new, either learning something new or a
feeling of actually making it sound better than the day before. I have been
writing my blog and updating my website and easily been filling my days.
My
partner has been writing songs and has been practicing the instruments that he
plays. He has been cooking a lot and devising some new recipes and tweaking old
ones so as he can use the ingredients on offer here. One of his new dishes has
been a vegan Shepherd’s Pie which he is immensely proud of. He has also been
taking more walks that I have as it’s getting a bit hot here now for walks in
the day time and no-one is meant to be out after 6pm without good reason.
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| Cooking takes up some of our time |
Boredom
and keeping busy also seems to be less of an issue among my traveller friends
than some house dwellers I know. Maybe it is because many are artists,
musicians and generally creative people anyway, even if they have quite mundane
day jobs normally. With easy internet access as a form as escapism as well as a
good resource for looking things up, most people I know seem content to be at home
doing their thing.
Money
worries and job security are things shared by everyone but it seems that my
travelling friends are used to living on a tight budget. They seem to generally
feel that things will work out in the end. Many have had issues with the
government website to apply for benefits though, as I’m sure many people across
the UK have. Some have also had issues with the agricultural jobs that were
advertised but actually seem to have gone to specially flown in migrants due to
the fact that they will work in worse conditions for less money.
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| Another walk out in the hot sun |
As
April draws to a close the holy month of Ramadan starts. Muslims here were
saying that it already felt like Ramadan as everything was so quiet. In
Morocco, like many other countries mosques are closed and as a result,
Moroccans will be unable to perform Taraweeh prayers that are usually conducted
in mosques after the Isha prayer. During the holy month, Muslims wake up early
to eat a pre-dawn meal called suhoor, and break their fast after sunset with a
meal called iftar. Breaking of the fast is usually a communal affair with families
and friends usually gathering together to break the fast. It is common for
mosques to host large iftars, especially for the poor.
Giving
charity and zakat, which is one of the five pillars of Islam, is encouraged
during Ramadan. In many countries, charities will deliver iftar meals to the
poor instead of serving them in Ramadan tents or mosques. For safety reasons,
religious and health experts have advised using online methods to donate to
NGOs helping those affected by the outbreak.
So
what do we see as our plan for the future? Well it’s hard to tell as we are
relying solely on the authorities in various countries making their countries
more accessible again and the Covid-19 coming under some sort of control. Africa
has not become the epicentre of the virus yet but we do think the possibility
of that is very real. Although sub-Saharan Africa will suffer the most it will
no doubt touch Morocco too. We hope that by the time Africa starts to really
feel the worst of the virus Europe will have some sort of control over it and
restrictions will be lifting for us to be able to return.
We
would hope to be able to get back into Europe and then obviously quarantine for
fourteen days before mixing with anyone. It may be that we have forced
quarantine in a designated facility which is fine by us, the hard part will
actually be getting a ferry crossing to Spain! Next month I will bring you
another instalment of our life on the road during the crisis.
The
views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily the
editorial stance of the publication.
Sam
Wilkinson – 30 April 2020
Sam
can be found at:
Sources
for this article:
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