On March 10, 2020, I arrived in the Mexican state of Oaxaca for what was meant to be a two-week stay. I had just spent three months in San Salvador, which was the longest I had remained in one place over a decade after abandoning the United States in 2003 in favour of a life of manic itinerancy.
In the months preceding El Salvador, for example, I had gone from Turkey to Italy to Croatia-Bosnia-Croatia-Bosnia-Croatia-Bosnia to Turkey-Albania-Greece-Spain-Georgia-Armenia-Spain.
When the coronavirus pandemic put a stop to the mad dash, I was in the Oaxacan coastal village of Zipolite. My world promptly shrank to a matter of kilometres. Checkpoints were installed around the village and I was issued an ID that enabled me to travel once a week to a nearby larger town to get groceries.
One of the checkpoints was placed directly in front of the apartment I had rented, and entailed an ever-present assortment of volunteers, policemen, and soldiers. The sense of claustrophobia was only enhanced by the fact that I had to step over a rope every time I went outside – and that I was not permitted to enter my house without a facemask, despite my desperate appeals to logic.
Of course, it was rather horrifyingly insensitive to whine about being stuck at the beach while the rest of humanity confronted the apocalypse. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.