Amalia Castro Blanco and Jorge Cayón Rojas celebrate this February 14 differently.Amalia and Jorge have everything to be a perfect couple. Three years of relationship; They study Medicine in the same classroom, and even on the attendance list they are barely separated by a number; Fate brought them together and the coronavirus was not going to separate them.
Two meters away is not an obstacle to your relationship. She from the south of the city of Guantánamo and he from the north, how many times have they not had to walk from end to end to share, to love!
The pandemic certainly imposed challenges on them, reducing encounters, rethinking displays of affection, now electronically, using Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, because when life is at stake, the best way to express affection is to take care of yourself and others .
In 2020, these 22 and 23-year-old lovers were among the first to join the investigations, protected and walking from house to house, day after day, ready to face the new enemy wherever he was!
The biggest test came now, amid the outbreak of COVID-19. Amalia’s mother (the one who took care of herself the most and demanded others) tested positive and Jorge was a possible direct contact. He had to isolate himself. From January 10 they were lost from sight; but the new technologies once again made them accomplices: confessions, jokes, fights, fears… they filled the notifications and daily messages of their smartphones.
They were so up to date with each other that it was as if they had never been apart. For
luck (and due to the responsibility in the fulfillment of the sanitary protocols), neither of the two was infected.
So together, this time, they decided to do another grain of sand in the fight against Sars-Cov-2. They called everywhere, Faculty of Medicine, Hospitals, Health Directorate … and last Tuesday, February 7, they had the opportunity: they would work as volunteers at the Center for confirmed and suspected Guantanamo University of Medical Sciences.
The same site that three years ago allowed them to meet, summoned them to the high-risk task and they did not hesitate. For Jorge, the new task consisted of classifying, quantifying and transferring the clothes and accessories used in the institution to disinfect them and then reuse them; Amalia had the courier, through her hands all the goods that the family sends to the afflicted pass (medicines, hygiene, clothes, except food or equipment, prohibited).
From seven in the morning, and until night, lovers walk from one place to another, fulfilling their duty, disinfecting themselves at all times, lined from head to toe, only the eyes and the silhouette of the body allow them to differentiate. Lunch, afternoon tea, the corridors and the room are usually their only meeting point, and although it is short, they make the most of it: a glance, a gesture, the greeting from afar, knowing that they are well, is enough.
Amalia and Jorge are part of the more than 60 Medicine students (of different years and specialties) who have given up the comforts of home to help in this health contingency. Young people who, like many other professionals, risk their own health for that of others, as an act of immeasurable love, worth celebrating, telling and praising in these turbulent times of pandemic.
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