By Rio Constantino
BIKES have been a great help to Ms. Hana, and in more ways than one.
Hana works as a nurse at her hospital’s Covid-19 ward. Before quarantine began, Hana took a tricycle and jeepney to work. Her regular commute was disrupted, however, when public transport was suspended early on during quarantine.
So, she began to walk. It took a little over half an hour to arrive at the hospital from her family’s house, where she lives with her boyfriend, and it took just as long walking back. Her hospital offered transport to its employees, but she often had to wait a long while for the bus to arrive at the designated pick-up spots. Either way, it was a tiring daily commute, especially at the end of a long shift.
To save time and energy, Hana looked for a bike. At first, she searched online rentals, but soon encountered a Facebook community called Life Cycles PH, where bike owners lent their bikes to frontliners in need.
By March 25, just a few weeks after the suspension of public transport, Life Cycles had already matched 220 bike lenders and borrowers. A month later, by April 5, that number had grown to 317, in the process helping out hundreds of doctors, security guards, grocery workers, and other frontliners. The Life Cycles page was how I first got in touch with Hana. It was also where she found a lender, and was introduced to the lender’s bike, nicknamed Rocinante.
It was a good match. Her long walk turned to a quick, 5-10 minute ride. The Life Cycles initiative was “100 percent helpful, especially for a frontliner like me,” says Hana. Soon, Rocinante would also help her in a manner few could have expected.
Several months into the quarantine, Hana tested positive for Covid-19. She suspects she got the virus while doing CPR on a critically ill patient, who had also tested positive. “I jumped over his chest and started my compressions, so while doing that I might have inhaled the virus.”
As a result, she was quarantined in the hospital until her RT-PCR results returned negative. Isolated with her symptoms—tightness of chest, unable to taste or smell—quarantine was a difficult experience, even traumatic, as Hana described it. Her prolonged quarantine, she says, was also partly a result of delays in circulating Department of Health’s new protocols.
The barangay also required two negative RT-PCR results before allowing her to return home. She felt discriminated against. The strict requirements, however well-intentioned, exacerbated the alienation she felt as a health worker.
The long stay at the hospital tested her fortitude and inner strength. During that time, an important source of support came in the form of her boyfriend, who would use Rocinante to ferry the supplies she needed during her isolation.
The bike-and-boyfriend team gave her a tenuous link home. “With transport halted by that time,” she says, “Rocinante made everything easy and convenient for him too.”
Thankfully, Hana has since returned home, and gone back to her normal routine. She wakes up, pedals to work, and checks her patients’ charts for updates. She makes the rounds, going about the ward taking care of her patients. At the end of the day—or night, because sometimes her shift begins after dark—she showers at the hospital before heading home, making sure to disinfect again before entering the house.
Day shifts are preferable, she says, because then she gets to eat with her loved ones. “My family always waits for me from work, lalo na if I’m from day shift. Sabay kami nag di-dinner [We have dinner together].”
Like many others, Hana wishes Metro Manila would be safer to bike in. She hopes for wider bike lanes, and better signages. Asked what her dream bike would look like, Hana says: “Ang dream bike ko eh ’yung kompleto lang siya sa gamit, and ‘yung okay lang dalhin sa kalsada. [My dream bike is one that’s complete with basic accessories, and is easy to use on the road]. That’s simple.”
(Names have been changed for privacy purposes, as nurse Hana experienced discrimination during the time she was battling Covid-19. Rio Constantino, a writer and volunteer of 350.org, an international climate-change nongovernment organization, has been writing essays on mobility and the pandemic.)
Image credits: Bernard Testa