Once again I have little in the way of an update. The only real news I have is that Amras and I – along with all of our colleagues – have been moved to more comfortable quarters rather than being kept down on the crew decks. This is a process that actually started a few weeks ago with the crew deck below us, and concluded yesterday with the officers and entertainment staff shifting. It probably doesn’t sound like much, but having a slightly nicer (slightly bigger) space to come “home” to at the end of these long strange days makes life much more bearable for all of us. Keep in mind that until now we’ve all still been in our crew rooms, which could be equated to a much smaller version of a college dorm (actually for our first month and more on this ship Amras and I were in a bunk cabin…but I digress). This has not been a party cruise, and most of us are still wandering about slightly zombified just taking everything one day at a time.
Other than that life goes on as normally as possible. Amras and I are having a great many good moments working on our recording project (more on that at a later date), and I am nearly a quarter finished my Titanic embroidery – my goal to complete that quarter before April 14th remains a possibility.
As far as actual news goes – well, like I said I have little. About the biggest thing is that I have been given reassurance that I will be paid for all this, which is a great relief as up until now we were not sure. Also, we were told this morning that some of our sister ships on the West Coast (fyi, our ship is on the East Coast right now), will be shuffling about some people in order to move the bulk of the south east Asian crew onto one ship in order to take that one ship back to South East Asia. That’s a long slog with potentially a lot of people onboard and I definitely wish them luck and dearly hope it works out for them. For those of us hanging out on the east coast though, this means very little except that somewhere someone is doing something. It’s a step in the right direction, albeit one that does not affect us directly right now.
We were brought supplies by one of our sister ships day before yesterday, those supplies will be in quarantine for 72 hours as an extra precaution. And yes, you read that right, we were brought supplies, because we were unable to call into Florida to pick them up ourselves.
So we’re still simply here. Rumour has it that all the people in my specific position will likely “be home in the next week or two” but we have no idea how or when that’s going to take place.
And now we get to the “vent” part of this….the below is mine, and mine alone. I speak for no one but myself.
There is something else I need to reiterate here: we are a global industry.
We are a global industry that no one wants to help. I find it infuriating that while certain countries are more than happy to take the billions of revenue and tourist dollars that this industry provides when times are good, they are unwilling to assist that industry when times are hard. They have turned their back on 90,000 people who simply want to get home, who simply want to know what’s happening to us, and why? Why have they done this thing? Politics. Straight up. Politics. Because we do not flag in their country, no one cares about anything else. No one cares that we are 90,000 people, many of whom are healthy. We’re not theirs so why should they help us. We don’t specifically pay their taxes (As though that’s the fault of the crew members?), so why should they help us.
We are not their problem.
No one wants us to be their problem.
This is an ongoing attitude that I am seeing more and more of, even among my family friends. There are some people that I will never look at the same way again because they have strongly expressed this attitude.
And it is this attitude that is one of the biggest factors to us being stuck in the position that we’re in. Our own countries borders may be open to us (though not in all cases), but getting there requires us travelling through other countries for a short time. We are being barred from doing so, because of politics, because of selfishness, because of people who do not care that the big bad corporation they are so disgusted with is made up of thousands of thousands of real people. I challenge anyone who has this “what’s in for us” attitude, who truly believes it and sides with it through all of this, to spend one day onboard, to feel the incredible onslaught of emotions that comes from being stuck out here, that comes from knowing that you’re safe, you’re cared for (and the company is doing a wonderful job of taking care of us!) but also knowing that you are indefinitely separated from your families, your loved ones, in many cases your children.
Imagine what it feels like to be told that you are not “worth the risk” of being let into a country even just to go home. Take a moment and really really think about that. Let it sit. Imagine what it would feel like if you were on the other end of that. Imagine how much that hurts and on how many levels.
We are, like everyone else at the moment, in constant state of emotional flux; in addition to being far from home, uncertain of our futures, feeling forgotten by most of the world and rejected by the rest of it.
There was a ship in 1939 called the H.M.S. Louis. She departed Germany enroute to Cuba, full of passengers bearing paperwork to allow them to flee to safety in the states. Cuba said no. The US said no. Canada said no. No one wanted them. No one wanted to help. That ship was turned back because of the same “we only need to protect our own” attitude that is rising so much in the news.
Please, if you know anyone who is on the “who cares about the cruise industry because they don’t pay our taxes” bandwagon, please try and remind them that we are people. We matter. That this is not the time for politics, that this is not the time for nationalism or any of it. We are all supposed to be in this together. We are all equal in our fear and our confusion.
Please…remind them – and yourselves if necessary – that we just want to come home.