With the advent of the Corona virus. Curfew has been imposed in Sri Lanka, to encourage people to stay at home in order to prevent the spreading of this disease.
Curfew is not a new word for Sri Lankans, we faced it in the 1970’s - 1980’s during the Southern Insurgencies, Then again in the 1980’s - 1990’s during the 30 year war. Once again in last April during the Easter Sunday attack.
Despite being used to such conditions, Self Isolation has been a difficult or rather annoying for the inhabitants in this Island.
A Corona patient recently discovered by the health authorities, has been travelling around his village despite warnings given by the government to self isolate, so the health authorities had no other option but to put the entire area into self isolation for the safety of that village, only to find out that a family member of that patient had been the next victim.
The Sri Lanka police has to make a special effort to stop people from loitering along the streets, as some people started carrying medical prescription with their humble motorbikes or trishaws just for the sake of travelling, which is a rather strange phenomenon despite the Government implementing a scheme to provide rations and medications to the door step.
Why has self isolation been a problem ?
The immediate answer one may give is poverty, which maybe true to an extent, as people living out of meagre earnings by doing day jobs have been the worse affected. However the truth is slightly different.
Sri Lankans aren’t very efficient introverts, though you get a few who wouldn’t mind it, the inhabitants are almost always community driven, from tenements in Colombo to communities in the villages to workers in trade zones, people tend to move in clusters.
Even Agricultural work is done in groups. There has been a custom in Sri Lanka known as ‘Attang’ where people who have finished working in their fields would voluntarily work in fields of their fellow villagers without any pay, again grouping of individuals.
Month of April brings the traditional New Year among the Sinhala and Tamil communities, where traditional games are been organised and people in villages flock in large groups. So we are a community driven Country
It is already evident that one of the ways to prevent the spread of this disease would be to self isolate as human beings are the carriers of this unseen enemy, yet with great reluctance people stay in their own homes until it reaches a breaking point, which had shown some increase in domestic violence in the Country.
However after going through several other South Asian media I realised that this may be a common occurrence in our sub continent, and if someone comes up with a solution to motivate self isolation among these inhabitants, it would be a better option than reprimanding them.
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