What should be done?

I consider myself a very optimistic woman, I’m one hundred percent positive, but days like this one show me the horrible things that happen around many people in my country.

I told my son that my brain is so crushed with so many situations today that I don't know what to write about and he just told me, "Just write about what happened to you today." and that's what I’m doing now.

Since the beginning of the pandemic many things have changed in the country. The president took a series of measures to help people keep their already deteriorating economic situation and family into something more bearable for their livelihood in these difficult days.

One of the things that he implemented was to not charge for some public services such as home telephony, they suddenly stopped charging me personally. Although my home phone payment is domiciled to a government bank, they stopped passing on my debt. Almost a year after introducing the no-charge policy for this service, I realized that they cut the phone service at my house, now I only have Wi-Fi and that’s why I decided to find a customer service office to find out why this service was cut off. Because if they decide to remove Wi-Fi later, I don't know how I'll be here on the platform, I just won’t have a way to do it. Worst part is that I won’t be able to continue having the income from this page.

I talked to a neighbor who has been paying for home phone service for four years and had their service cut off, we decided to go together there and we left very early, at 7am we waited for public transport to take us to the city center. This transport took us to the new bus stop and from there we walked to the city center where the customer service office is located. It’s the same office that was closed last week due to the radical measure that the government implemented in the country, work one week rest the next.

Last year, because of the voting in December, the government withdrew the radical measures and set the entire month free. People immediately took to the streets without covering their faces and keeping the distancing measures, they gathered at parties in their homes and on the streets. This crazy idea of ​​withdrawing the radical measure so that people would believe that there was no longer an infestation of the virus allowed the cases of deaths and those infected by COVID to increase drastically.

 This week is a working one and once we are in front of the office we have to wait in line. It’s long, there are many people. It’s 8 am and we must wait in a line until 9 am when 100 numbers will be distributed to 100 people who are the ones who will be attended, after that number is attended those who remain simply have to return another day this week.

There was a man in a walker, he must have been in his 70s, and he didn't get a number, so he had to leave. The guard told him that without a number he couldn’t pass and so this man took his way back to his house with his walker. There are no exceptions, everyone must line up and get their number.

After obtaining my number, which by the way was 89, I had to stay in line, waiting for 5 people to enter at a time to be attended inside the office. Meanwhile we continue in line with the remaining 95 people, outside the concrete structure, under the 9:30 am sun, over 35 ° C.

Two hours have passed and I stop, it’s 10am and my legs are stiff, I can't move freely, I get out of line and my neighbor walks me a bit to regain movement in my knees. Once they move better, it occurs to me that we call my nephew who works in their bakery to come and pick us up and we go to his house, it’s 10 minutes by car from this place. My neighbor is my nephew's uncle and he tells him that my legs are too sore so that he comes back to come get us.

My brother came instead of my nephew, it was already 10:30 am and he took us to his house. I asked him to come for us at 11:15am to get back in line, as we are among the last 10 people left to be served until the office closes at 1pm… But it happens that my brother went to the country and left my nephew to take us there… But he also leaves.

And nobody comes for us, all we can do is stay there, we lost the chance to return, and my brother came back at 1pm, just when the office closed its doors. So he takes us to the bus stop to take us home.

 His house and ours are in opposite directions. The shortage of gasoline and its high cost mean that he can’t go very far from home to conserve gallons of gasoline for important things. So my brother can only take us to the bus stop.

So we go home, with a sense of loss of time, a failure to meet the objectives set. But at the same time I come back with a disturbing feeling in my mind, all these things that I went through were also experienced by many people who were there, unmet physical needs, waiting in the bright sun, not having enough money to buy liquids and rehydrate. There is no public toilet for the elderly who take medicine and must cover these needs.

All this and even more things that I don’t imagine can happen to people. The kicker is that the people who went inside left sad with the information that the officials who attend them have their hands tied, because the system did not operate, it couldn’t operate. They can’t fix breakdowns because there is no material or personnel to carry out those activities, there is nowhere to pay for the service and other negative things that they were told inside.

This is how I feel. A feeling of helplessness. My country is falling lower and lower, there is no way out of this situation as long as we continue with the same people in command and at the head of the country.

It’s a country so rich in so many natural, renewable and non-renewable resources, gold, diamond, oil, coal, wood, gas, iron and so on… many other gifts of nature and we simply live in a decadence that increasingly immerses us more and more in a bottomless pit.

Along with impotence, fatigue and the feeling of not being able to control the sensations of my body since I am close to 60 years of age, with more than 45 years of working in areas of health, where my body was deteriorating little by little and nowadays, not having the necessary resources to end up with a dignified life, it’s simply degrading for me and for each of the people I saw today in a similar situation, and even worse, than me.

I can only move on. With my positive way of seeing difficulties as ways of coping with life and demonstrating survival skills, my positive way of taking things as calmly as possible and studying possible solutions to all these difficult things that I went through today. I plan to return to this office but taking other precautions, and I will be able to talk to them and have them explain to me, even if they don't solve anything, why they cut off my home phone service.