A postcard from a paradise still in crisis
Photography Ana Ionova
In October, Brazil surpassed 5 million confirmed coronavirus cases, and more than 150,000 total deaths. Yet in Rio de Janeiro, life dances on undisturbed
By Ana Ionova
“Açaí! Açaí!” The only sign that something was amiss was the face mask covering the hawker’s face, as he lugged the heavy cooler along Copacabana beach. Around me, families lounged in the baking sun, children building sand castles under the shade of umbrellas. Groups of teenagers laughed loudly and dove headfirst into the waves. Dogs happily splashed in the shallow waters.
It was my first dip in the ocean in over six months. When the pandemic reached Rio de Janeiro in March, it had put an end to this daily ritual that I loved so dearly. The sand and sun and water were still a couple of blocks away, but, for those months spent in quarantine, it felt like they might as well have been in a different country.
There, on the beach, it was as if everyone around was living in a parallel universe. People laughed, chatted, drank beers and took selfies. It was as if coronavirus wasn’t still ravaging Brazil, claiming over a 1,000 lives per day. It was as if it wasn’t still spreading with alarming speed and wreaking havoc on people’s lives.
I had spent the last six months reporting on the pandemic, passing the days talking to people who’d lost their fathers, sisters and nephews because there were no critical care beds. I listened to doctors and nurses, exhausted from shifts at overflowing hospitals, recount tales of helplessly standing by as patients struggled to draw a last breath without a ventilator. When I came home from reporting outside, I dunked my clothes in bleach and doused my microphones in disinfectant. The rest of the time, I stayed home, waiting for this to be all over.
For a few weeks at the beginning of the pandemic, Rio de Janeiro grew unnervingly still. The beach hawkers — normally peddling everything from açaí to caipirinhas too-tiny bikinis — were suddenly replaced by military police, expelling anyone who stepped foot on the sand. Just a few weeks before the lockdown, we were covered in glitter and packed into narrow streets in Rio’s old centre, dancing behind Carnival floats to the throbbing drums of samba. Now, the city was deserted and quiet.
In those early days of the pandemic, a ball was already forming in the pit of my stomach. I knew that Brazil, with its fragile health system and its gaping inequality, would not be spared. I was bracing for the virus to sweep through the country with lethal force. I worried about how the government would respond, under the leadership of a far-right populist. I couldn’t even imagine back then how bad it would get.
The number of cases surged quickly, first to thousands and then to millions. Still — far too early — bars, gyms, restaurants and shopping malls reopened in the early weeks of June. Joggers and cyclists, masks uselessly strung around their necks, poured back onto Copacabana’s tiled boardwalk. People were tired of the pandemic. They needed to work, to get back to their lives. Everything went back to “normal” — or at least people pretended it did. The numbers that were once shocking became the new normal.
That day, I took another dip in the ocean and stretched on my canga, letting the burning sun dry my skin. It felt good to be outside, to breathe in the salty air. I had missed the ocean more than almost anything else during those months in isolation.
But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that things weren’t back to normal. I couldn’t shut out all the stories of pain and loss I had heard over the last six months. Beyond this strip of sand and ocean, I knew the pandemic was far from over. And it felt selfish and reckless to pretend otherwise.
When the sting of the sun became too hot to bear, I put my face mask back on and walked home, back into quarantine.
Ana Ionova is a freelance multimedia journalist based in Brazil, where she reports on human rights, politics and the environment.
