Chp 800. Lockdown Day 3: Donating for Mizoram

Today is the third day of the 21 days Total Lockdown, as ordered by our PM Narendra Modi to contain the exponential infection of CoVid-19 virus, and as I have mentioned in my previous post, our State Mizoram just had its first CoVid-19 positive case.

While my cousin Dr. Mahruaii along with a team of other brave doctors and nurses are now camped in isolation at State Referral Hospital Falkawn (ZMC) to combat this threat and treat other patients infected with the virus, the rest of us remained indoors.

Every place is shut and nobody is allowed to go out on the streets, even to buy basic necessities (the Local Task Force of each locality will help those in dire need), and here in my locality Chaltlang, a medical unit came yesterday and sprayed the entire place from roads and railings to gates and fences with disinfectants. It kinda felt like that HBO mini-series "Chernobyl".

Right now, the best thing to do is stay inside our house and pray, pray for our courageous medical staff who are risking their lives to fight this battle for us at the frontline. Apart from praying, there is another thing we can all do to help, without leaving the confines of our house - Donate to a volunteer's group

Yesterday I came across this initiative in Mizoram undertaken by a group of volunteers called "PPE Donation Campaign" at our Mizo Bloggers WhatsApp group. Our member Jacqueline is a member of that group, and she told us about how there are currently shortages of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for medical staff and police personnel in Mizoram. And so a couple of altruistic tailors and designers got together and volunteered to stitch the PPEs for them, and a charitable group was created to collect money for the material.



The group was initially meant for something else and consisted of a group of friends like Betheli, Jenny, Kimkimi, Lri, Hriati etc., who designed clothes and purchased retail materials, but when they heard about the shortages of PPE's in Mizoram, they realized it was something they could do. Soon, other volunteers stepped in, and currently at the time of writing this post, there are well over 300 tailors and designers across Mizoram ready to stitch PPE's for free!

Ruby Ngente, another founding member of the group and currently a medical intern in Nashik, Maharashtra, told me that they'll be supplying the PPE's to not just medical staff across different hospitals and police personnel across Mizoram, but even to the Local Task Force members, especially those who are responsible for checking incoming passengers at different check-gates.

Now don't ask me questions like why do WE have to pay for it from our pocket and not the state government etc. Politics is not my forte and I stay away from it. Maybe our state government is unprepared for this pandemic, just like how our country is, just like how Western super-powers like USA, Italy, Spain, Germany etc., are.

There's no time to point fingers, this is a race against time, and humanity is at stake. In fact just last night, our honorable Minister of Health & Family Welfare Dr. R Lalthangliana posted a message that a cargo plane will be landing at Lengpui airport today carrying PPE's and other critical medical equipment for the people of Mizoram. Great news indeed!







But according to reliable sources, the amount of PPE's will still not be enough for all those working in high-risk environment, especially if the contagion spreads further within Mizoram. Even ZMC hospital had tied up with Women's Polytechnic, Durtlang, and they will be stitching new PPE's for the medical staff of ZMC.

Now there are a lot of technical details involved in stitching a proper PPE, like the method of stitching needs to follow a specific protocol, along with the type of material used, etc,. However two doctors, Dr. Zorengi of ZMC and Dr. Doris of Synod Hospital are supervising these designers and tailors on how to stitch the PPE's.

So, in case you want to play your part for our Mizo community and help in this cause, you can donate money for the materials and logistics. Here are the details:

Account holder: Ruby Malsawmtluangi
Account number: 30695501933
IFSC: SBIN0007497

You can also transfer money to her via Gpay, Phonepe and PayTM on her number - 7262016458, rubytluangi@oksbi.

Just a warning though, if you are transferring money to her through Gpay, her Gpay account name is "Suga Sue it", lolzzz. Yeah even I initially thought something was wrong and I had to send a screenshot to my friends Jacqueline and Josie to ask if it was a legit account.



But yes, that is indeed a legit account :D

So when they were creating the group and deciding how to set up accounts for money transfer, Ruby said they could use her Gpay account. She forgot that she had saved her name in Gpay as "Suga Sue it". Apparently she is a huge fan of the Kpop band BTS, and hence the name "Suga Sue". Yeah it looks unprofessional, but at the same time extremely funny too. She's super embarrassed about it, but we need such laughter during these hard times.

So there is a WhatsApp group created for this, called VOLUNTEERS, and you can contact Betheli (8794807386) or Ruby (7262016458) on WhatsApp if you want to join the group. The group quickly reached its maximum limit in less than a day, so there are now different sub-groups based on different districts in Mizoram.

This volunteer group is completely transparent, and all financials are shared with every group member. This is a list of people who had donated so far till this morning. I have censored their phone numbers and amount donated.











At of the time of writing this post (0600 hours GMT), the total amount of money donated so far had crossed one Lakh rupees! Awesome!

Likewise, any expenditure made is also shared with everyone in the group.



The group not only consists of many designers and tailors who had selflessly volunteered to stitch the PPE's but there are many reputed doctors in the group as well. Even the Chief Secretary of our state is aware of this voluntary group and appreciates the action undertaken, according to founder Betheli. I thought I'll just mention that in case you have any doubt about the authenticity of the group.

All the materials sent and received are also updated to the group.







And the work of stitching the PPE's started this morning. Here are some of the volunteers from Aizawl, Kolasib, Lunglei, Champhai etc. in action. I feel so proud of them!

















Aizawl cutting crew on their way to cut the materials.



And so that is currently how things are right now. Absolutely great work from all these wonderful souls and special thanks to Ruby and Betheli for feeding me information for my blog. Please feel free to donate for the cause.

Like I said, the group is just a day old, and so you might not have heard of it before. But the work they are doing is exemplary and it would help a lot if you can also share this post or tell your friends who may be able to help.

Keep the spirit up Mizoram, the fact that normal people are rising up to fight this virus in any way that they can, shows that we have already won half the battle. God bless everyone!

Chp 799. Day 1 of 21 days Lockdown

I'm sure by now all of you know about the 21 days Lockdown order given by our PM Narendra Modi to combat the highly contagious CoVid-19.

[pic source: pexels.com]

Today is day 1 of the nation-wide lockdown, though technically it is day 4 for those of us in Mizoram as our State Government had already declared a lockdown since Monday, and Sunday was a "Janata Curfew". Think of the past three days' lockdowns as a rehearsal to the real deal that started today.

I have never seen some of the WhatsApp groups THIS active before. I guess most people are just bored at home with nothing to do except socialize online. I check my friend's WhatsApp status every 5 minutes or so now, and there is always a new update every time.

I never check Facebook Stories or post a "story" though, because to be honest, not all Facebook friends are real friends or people I know personally. But when it comes to WhatsApp status, if I have saved your number and you have saved mine, it means I know you pretty well and am comfortable about sharing my status with you, a few exceptions being the gas delivery agency number etc. :D :P

In fact, I have un-muted many of the status I have muted before (if you spam me with 20+ status updates and most of them aren't even that funny, or if you're a guy who keeps posting your selfies, then you go straight to the mute section). I un-muted most people because I was bored. And I'm sure people did the same with me as well, because I usually get around 150-200 views on my WhatsApp status updates, but these past few days, they easily crossed 300 views, lolz!

My sisters and I along with my nieces video-call each other every day too to while away the time.

With Day 1 of the 21 days about to get over, I have decided to spend the next few days doing something useful and worthwhile (more details coming up in my next post) and I'm also trying to blog every day for these upcoming 20 more days.

But the one thing I'm planning NOT to do or refrain from doing, is to forward CoVid-19 related news to the WhatsApp groups I'm in, especially news about infections in Mizoram. Why? Simply because we are already surrounded by enough depressing news. We don't need to keep going further down that dark path.

Take today for example. Mizoram got its first CoVid-19 positive case, and every single WhatsApp group was busy sending out information, most of them contradicting information. People were not only forwarding the names and locality of the person (extremely unethical and illegal), but were also forwarding wrong names!

I decided not to get involved anymore because, frankly speaking, there's nothing you and I can do about it. Doctors and people from the medical staff have told us what to do, and that is to stay indoors and wash our hands all the time, and THAT is what we should be doing. It doesn't matter if there are 100 new patients in Mizoram tomorrow (God forbids that happens), as long as we do as we're told, things will turn out right. Spreading such information is only going to make us more depressed and cause unnecessary panic.

Meanwhile the people who CAN do something about this are the doctors, nurses, lab assistants, technicians, every single medical staff right down to the ambulance driver, the hospital sweeper and gate chowkidar, they're the ones who are fighting this battle for us. The real HEROES in the frontline.

Today, my dear cousin and neighbor Dr. Mahruaii packed up her bags and she along with her colleague Dr. Lalremruata left for State Referral Hospital Falkawn (ZMC) to look after the new CoVid-19 patient. She along with a few selected medical team will be posted in the hospital indefinitely to handle anyone who is CoVid-19 positive. They're not allowed to come home even to take a long nice hot shower.

They're the ones we should be praying for, that they remain safe from the dreaded virus and that they're able to perform their duties properly. It especially pains us a lot knowing she is working at such a high risk environment. This message from my uncle, Dr. Mahruaii's father really brought tears to my eyes.

Apart from these doctors, let's all give a big round of applause to all the nurses and support staff at ZMC too, and keep remembering them all in our prayers.

[Pics source: Ramteii]

By the way, the above photo has been circulating among our Mizo community as my cousin Dr. Mahruaii and her colleague Dr. Lalremruata. Many of my friends are using it in their WhatsApp status too. It really feels good to know that our entire community is supporting them, but actually... those two in the picture above are not them, lolz. The two people above are the nurses who are assisting them, and their names are Muansanga and Angela. Remember those two names too. Remember them in our prayers.

And because of them, their bravery and sacrifice, all is good, so far.

With this, I'll end my post for today, and see you tomorrow for my Day 2 update. Like I said, I got a lot interesting posts coming up. This is also a challenge to all my Mizo blogger friends out there to get back in front of the screen and start blogging again, now that we don't have any excuse to give for not blogging.

Stay safe everyone. God bless.