The days before

January 2020. The world starts excited a new year that it´s going to change as we know it. For now, it´s just January with no clear news about what´s happening in China.

The volunteers were coming back from the holidays in our related countries and the boiler was still broken since Christmas Day. The broken piece was already at home but they needed to put inside the boiler. I spent ten days in Spain and entering my room was like going into a freezer even when the sun was 'heating' it all day. On the ground floor, it was hardly noticed because the heating was coming from the house downstairs and it was also the kitchen, but upstairs it was unbearable. I could sleep because of the duvet, that seemed light but it wasn´t. To continue with life wasn´t possible. We also didn´t have hot water and, even boiling water, our biggest (and only) pot was still small. We could go to the showers of our organizations but they also had some problems.

In my office, there were four portable radiators that were given to us as soon as they realized how was our situation. After sixteen days, we finally had the boiler repaired... the hot water still took a few days to work as normal and the heating was giving some more problems.

After a couple of days, Sabine noticed some bedbugs on her bed (yes, bedbugs, you read well). But it wasn´t just her, they were in at least three more rooms. The landlord didn´t take responsibility but our organization organized fumigation for Monday.

On Saturday, Lenka, Sabine, Ádám, and I were watching Guardians of the Galaxy vol.1 (James Gunn, 2014) in the living room. When it finished, we stayed there, listening a hundred times the last song (Come and get your love by Redbone), we started a conversation and sometimes silences. We talked about our childhood memories (even when we are still so young), nightmares, lions, and kind bedbugs on Sabine´s room because she wasn´t bitten and later we discovered that actually, she was the one with more bedbugs. I only felt as comfortable as that night on a few occasions. It was our house. Home. It was our little family. It was beautiful and simple. Thinking about it after all makes it more special. Watching movies together on weekends is definitely being one of the things I´m missing the most.

And we still had to put some more suitcases.

On Monday morning we had to leave our rooms empty. It was really sad because we still had seven months of placement. To look at the bedrooms as hollow, as lifeless when it was still our lives...

The living room disappeared under seven volunteers' belongings, worried about what would happen if we would need to empty it too and where we were going to keep all of that. On Monday it was the first fumigation. On Monday it was the first episode of an ending story.