16 – 22 March 2020
The first confirmed case of coronovirus in France (and indeed Europe) was 24 January 2020 in Bordeaux. The first case in the Provence-Alpes-Cotes d’Azur region was announced on 28 February. On Thursday 12 March the president Emmanuel Macron closed all schools and universities starting the following Monday until further notice. On Friday 13 March the prime minister, Edouard Phillippe banned all gatherings of 100 people or more (not including public transport) and on Saturday 14 March he also ordered the closure of all nonessential public places, including restaurants, cafés, cinemas, and discothèques, effective at midnight. By Monday 16 March Macron was so fed up with people not following these guidelines that he announced a full on lockdown starting midday Tuesday 17 March.
But first, I think we were all as nervous as each other at the prospect of homeschooling.
We had prepared.
We had created a ‘school zone’ in the house, organised piles of books, set some ground rules (uniforms would be worn, French only would be spoken on French days, we would more or less keep to the timetable at school etc), we had excursions and day trips planned.
We had talked about how this was a great opportunity to spend time with the kids, help them with their work and hang out as a family.
What’s more, we were in the luxurious position of having 2 non working parents, fluency in English, proficiency in French and enough devices and supplies to manage the flow of work. This put us in a better position than the vast majority of families we knew. For this we were grateful.
But the idea of full time homeschooling for an extended period was still daunting. And they could smell our fear.
How would we ensure that the kids French education did not come to a complete standstill? This was, after all, one of the main reasons we were here. (Along with travelling, which was basically stuffed, and spending time as a family, where there was a real risk that we would all overdose!)
How would we give everyone the attention they seemed to need (particularly in French). Ellie was pretty independent, but Jessie and Sena were basically full time jobs for homework.
How would we get some time to ourselves to do what we wanted to do (answer – we wouldn’t)
On Monday morning, the kids played their part. Up before their alarm, school uniforms on, breakfast and morning exercise (using the stairs, towels on the floor and Anthony’s bike pump)….and then straight to the ‘devoirs table’ for an 845 start.
We started trying to navigate through the myriad of online websites, distance education resources, emails and hardcopies the school had furnished us with in a flurry of activity designed to ‘help’ us through the next few weeks. They really tried hard, but their over delivery (often in the form of PDF files to be printed, filled out, scanned and returned… challenging when we don’t have a printer) soon had a tidal wave of messages flooding the WhatsApp parent groups as already fragile parents were overwhelmed by the torrent of work and incomprehensibility of process. People were clearly feeling the stress of the situation.
We jumped in. As usual with homework, Jessie was inundated with work to do, Sena had her fair share and Ellie got off relatively unscathed. We quickly learned that homeschooling would be OK, if only we had stuck with just 2 children. With all kids seemingly requiring 100% supervision and attention to get anything done, we rapidly realised we were short a responsible adult.
By lunchtime we were sitting the kids down and discussing how the most important thing they needed to learn for the next few weeks was independence, and we implemented a new 3 minute independent thinking rule before any questions would be answered.
We soldiered on.
PE class was held at 2pm in Place Precheurs – family cricket.
Back in class by 3pm. We hit a low at 3.30 and panic bought a PS4 online.
Pens down at 4.30 and we had survived our first day. We were exhausted.
The kids looked a bit tired too.
At 8pm we were glued to the TV screen, feeling like we were waiting nervously in the Principal’s office for our punishment. The media had made a big deal about the irresponsibility of behaviour over the weekend and now we would reap the consequences.
All non essential shops (other than food, pharmacies, fuel and tabacs) would be shut.
Anyone leaving the house would require a completed ‘Attestation’ – basically a self signed permission slip stating that you were either:
- Going to work where you couldn’t work from home
- Buying essential goods
- Getting health care
- Carrying out essential family duties – helping vulnerable people
- Out to do some solitary/family exercise or to walk the dog
This was required to be kept on your person at all times when you were out of the house. Hard copy only. Nothing digital please. We’re in France after all. Also, failure to have this attestation would result in pretty impressive fines.
Social distancing measures were to be rigorously maintained. No one should get to within 1.5m metres of anyone else.
This would come into effect at midday Tuesday. In actual fact it didn’t seem that bad. All of our activities would broadly fit into one of these categories – so we could carry on with our normal activities, make sure we kept a safe distance from others and make sure the kids kept their hands clean. Sorted.
Tuesday morning we hit the Sainte Victoire first thing to have a bushwalk before the midday lockdown deadline and before the government could clarify what they meant by solitary exercise. We collected leaves and flowers in our pockets for a weekend craft project and just in case it was our last time with nature for a while. The weather was amazingly warm and the colours incredibly vivid. It was a nice send off….
We were back hitting the books again after lunch, trying to decipher the mountain of work that continued to flow from our well meaning teachers to the kids. As the folder of PDFs mounted, we panic shopped again and were now waiting for a printer to arrive along with our PS4.
Our kids, however, had seemingly heeded our desperate call for independence of the previous day and were working noticeably better today. Winning.
More cricket followed for late afternoon PE – this time armed with our attestation (which, to be honest, felt a little bit like an ineffectual Nazi Germany).
We woke up on Wednesday morning 19 March to the news that Australia was closing its borders to non residents, slapping a 2 week quarantine on all incoming travellers and issuing a Level 4 Do Not Travel advice for the whole world. NZ had announced this over the weekend and now Australia was following suit. DFAT advice was to come home now, or risk not being able to come home at all for the foreseeable future as border closures caused airlines to stop flying.
Alarmed, we called our travel insurance company to confirm that we were still covered – the contact centre operator announced that we were not. Maybe we would be going home sooner than expected.
We had been watching events deteriorate over the last few weeks and had been having conversations about what we would do if the world shut down. We did not, to be fair, anticipate anything as drastic or fast moving as what we were seeing here, but we had decided that we would assume that France was our home until the end of the school year and we would stick it out here. We had a house, we had a functioning market downstairs, we were settled and it would take us a couple of weeks to move in any case (i.e. we have a dog and a bunch of stuff here with us).
We had nowhere to go in Australia and no reason to rush back. It also felt like Australia was a couple of weeks behind Europe in any case, so we would literally be jumping from the frying pan into the fire to return. And who knows, if the world settled down in the next few months (optimistic) we might even salvage a trip on the way home (unlikely but possible).
So we would stick it out. Provided we had medical insurance.
On Wednesday the city closed the Sainte Victoire and there were mutterings of cyclists behind fined for being too far from home. Things here were only going in one direction.
On Wednesday evening we got clarity from our insurance provider that we were in fact covered should the worst happen here. We were still in the game. Despite the sensation that the world was closing in, we would stick it out.
On Thursday morning Qantas announced the closure of all international and most domestic routes, resulting in 20,000 people being placed in temporary unemployment. Governments around the world were seemingly fighting to outdo themselves in providing aid to small businesses, large businesses and individuals to cushion the blow of what would be an inevitable, sudden and savage downturn. Trillions of dollars of aid were released around the world, hundreds of billions of dollars in Australia as governments scrambled to manage both the escalating healthcare and economic crisis.
We began to face into the fact that, if and when we decided it was time to cut our losses and come home, we may have to row there ourselves. We began to mentally compile ‘what if’ budgets in our heads. What if we couldn’t get home until Christmas? Could we cope with that? Did it change our position? Was it already too late, even if we wanted to go home now? (Probably).
Adult ruminations over, we had more pressing things to worry about in any case. Our first day of homeschooling in French. In a desperate attempt to keep the kids french education alive, we had implemented our own series of draconian measures to ensure our kids spoke the maximum amount of French possible today. We would bribe them with chocolate. Any English would result in chocolates being taken away, bonuses would be awarded for efforts over and above the baseline.
Everyone threw themselves into the challenge. From 8.30 – 5pm our house turned into a Francophone (or at least franglais) house of learning. Chocolates were won and lost, a few tears were shed and amazingly, at the end of the day, everyone ended up with a single chocolate to have after dinner. Incredible how these things work out. Afternoon PE was spent at the local Parc de la Torse, our nearby oasis of trees, grass and gurgling stream to get us back into nature.
That evening, cycling was officially banned as an exercise option (not sure why). Anthony panic shopped and bought an indoor trainer. Who said this lockdown business was bad for the economy?
On Friday, Italy overtook China as having the most deaths from covid-19, and all the containment measures to date still appeared to be having little impact. The fact that a developed country some 200kms from us could be struck down in this way was a source of constant fear to us, and underscored the seriousness of the situation France, and the rest of the world, was facing.
In other big news on Friday, Netflix announced that they were reducing picture quality and bandwidth in France to give its seemingly already inadequate internet network a break and those working or studying or working from home a chance to get things done. The whole country almost mutinied as a result.
On Saturday Spain topped 1,000 deaths and the US recorded 5,000 cases in a day. Across the world, countries and states were going into lockdown. Coronavirus, social distancing and restrictions was all anyone was talking about. That and homeschooling of course.
Australia appeared to be lagging the rest of the world with schools still open and Bondi Beach as packed as the Parisien parks were last weekend. Everyone knew it was going to change.
What we still didn’t know was where it would stop.
On Sunday morning we made our daily pilgrimage to Parc de la Torse to get some fresh air. Somewhat expectedly, the park was shut, and with it our last legal access to green space around the town. This was going to get harder before it got easier.
We went home and panic shopped for gym gear at Decathlon and wondered what next week would bring.
Some general observations after Week 1
- The speed with which this situation is evolving is mind blowing. What was not even ‘on the radar’ last week is a reality today and over taking talk of strikes and climate change. Planning feels almost impossible and we’ve just had to try and stay half a step ahead of it as best we can
- We have access to great fresh food – the markets remain open, as does our favourite boulangerie, Hats. If anything, we feel we need to shop more, not less, to make sure they stay open (and, let’s face it, we’re not spending our money on anything else)
- There is a vague sensation of being a ‘frog in a pot’ – slowly being heated up to boiling point before you realise what’s going on. We remain comfortable with our decision to stick it out… but at what point do you (try to) cut your losses and get out. And is that even possible with an ageing Border Collie…. and where would be any better?
- The psychological impact of potentially not being able to go ‘home’ is real. Regardless of whether we planned to or not, it’s a bizarre feeling that we may not be able to get home if we wanted to or needed to.
- Walking outside and seeing almost no one on the street takes a lot of getting used to – in Aix this is a product of both the containment but also the fact that the tourists, students and many expats have all gone home
- Despite some people making a real effort, the French are fundamentally adverse to queuing … particularly at a distance. If you are waiting at a safe distance to go into the boulangerie (for example), expect to get queue jumped a number of times
- Just the fact of being told that you’re not allowed to access green space anymore makes you crave it like a drug
- Whilst the logical part of the brain may rejoice at the opportunity to constructively spend the time in the house on name your favourite self improvement activity, the reality is that being stuck in the house is essentially demotivating… and requires a significant effort to overcome
- It’s amazing at how resilient the kids are… they literally take anything that is thrown at them in their stride. What is really lovely to see is how they have got closer through the last month or so of spending a lot of time together
- … and yes, despite the fact that we are all cooped up in an apartment, family relations are still good… except that Bonnie continues to look clinically depressed.
In this fast moving world, who knows what next week will bring????
Joseph Family Adventure 