The Pains of Living a Pandemic in a Third World Country

Fabian Bonilla
3 min readOct 28, 2020

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Who would’ve thought that we were going to go through a pandemic in our lifetime? For real, if you would’ve told me that I would have to predict if I was going to be in quarantine for seven months or that I would be eaten alive by a shark, I would’ve chose option B.

Nobody would’ve guessed it, considering all the technology that our planet possesses nowadays you would think that the pandemic shouldn’t be a situation that lasts more than a month. But the reality is we’re in October and there hasn’t been any real signs of improvement when it comes to the tallies and statistics.

Now, I’m not going to inform you about the situation because you’ve watched about it on the news on your daily basis, but you’re probably wondering, how are the other countries handling the virus? I’m here to explain the current situation that most latin americans are dealing with as for today.

As a honduran young adult I can tell that is certainly not easy, in fact is tough you know, especially when there’s so much injustice that surrounds you. Honduras has basically become a survival test were pretty much only the strongest will survive. And those that survive are very like to migrate in a future.

If you’re an european or american fellow living in a wealthy country be prepared to encounter a honduran on the streets in a couple months, if you haven’t encountered one by now, due to the fact that this quarantine has thrown a terrible economic crisis. If those countries are struggling with the pandemic, imagine the developing ones.

According to the Central American edition of Forbes.com, “the virus dropped over 2,000 deaths and 65,218 infected”, and this numbers were based on September, a month ago. When it comes to economy, Presencia Universitaria, which is an academical institution made a investigation predicting that “there will be 700,000 citizens that are/will become poor”. As simple as it sounds, besides our corrupt government, nobody knows where’s all that money.

And if you currently have a job and you from third world consider yourself blessed, or in case you’re an atheist, lucky. A honduran wakes up and thinks, how I’m I suppose to feed myself and my kids, and the ones that have a job are low performing, especially if you’re on a sales department for instance or if you’re running your own business.

On my hand, as a telemarketer I can assure you that a lot of Americans are struggling with the virus, that honestly gives me a bit of hope because it makes me think that we’re not the only ones that have to deal with this. Folks from the US are not in a position where they can afford to invest their money on luxuries that they previously had.

A central american has to deal with poverty every single day, when you’re driving on your way to your job, you can see a quite handful of fellow countrymen asking for food & money on the streets, it’s important for you to study in order to get a job this days, but still, getting a bachelor won’t guarantee you that you’re going to get one.

A good solution for this pandemic would be to get rid of corruption, but of course we’re not going to get rid of that in a short term future. Basically my country has been kidnapped by politicians who only care about themselves by takings loads of money from taxes, fees, donations from other countries, etc. to their personal benefit.

Recently, while reading an article, I looked through a phrase that really hit me the other day were it said ‘whenever you’re struggling, keep going’. No matter how hard the situation may be, it’s very important for you who resides in a third world country to stay positive, be consistent. persevere, you’ll get there eventually, things will become better. My lesson learned from this pandemic financially speaking is simple: work hard and results will pay off.

Why I’m saying this? Because even though no matter how hard the circumstances become, when you’re constant on what you do, you’ll succeed and that applies to every aspect of your life. You might not be you want to be right now, but you’ll get there someday.

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Fabian Bonilla
Fabian Bonilla

Written by Fabian Bonilla

Honduran that loves soccer, data, books, languages and now learning how to write articles.

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