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05/10/20
 
About Curare Corona Diaries
A Collection of Diaries in the Strict Sense of the Term
On March 18, 2020, the editorial team of Curare. Journal of Medical Anthropology launched a call for (auto-) ethnographic Corona Diaries in the strict sense of the term which record what is happening in one’s own environment. More than 100 authors from at least 25 different countries participated in the project. The diaries will be […]
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Djibril I.M Handuleh
30/10/20
“The hospital turned into a ghostly place with few nurses and a resident wandering around the wards.”
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, March – July 2020
I’m a psychiatry resident from Somaliland, a self-declared territory that unilaterally seceded from Somalia in 1991. Previously I lived in difficult situations and complex emergencies like the civil war in Somalia and also during field work with Medecins sans Frontieres in places like Nigeria1. I moved to Addis Ababa in late 2019 and I was […]
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Lilu
29/10/20
“We were a bunch of headless chickens trying to answer the most urgent of the questions.”
USA, Ohio, 21 March -23 June 2020
Daily temperature taking in quarantine, Photo by the author. I am a fourth-year medical student living in Ohio with my partner. I was in China with my family from January to end of February, and witnessed the unfolding of the entire event. As I returned to the U.S., the disease began to wreak havoc in […]
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Rachel Genn
28/10/20
“There is so much more to this than simply real life.”
United Kingdom, 26 March – 27 April 2020
Picture drawn by daughter Y. I am writer and Creative Writing Lecturer at Manchester Writing School. I am at home with my partner X (male 50) my daughter Y (female, 12) and my daughter Z (female, 9). Home -schooling is happening and both X and I are trying to work from home up to now. […]
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Francesco Diodati
27/10/20
“Many people I have come to know reminded me that they lived almost in isolation also before the Covid-19 emergency.”
Emilia-Romagna, Italy, 20 March – 29 June 2020
I’m a PhD student in Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Milan-Bicocca. I had been doing ethnographic research on care labour for elderly in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, for one year. I’m writing from a city in Emilia-Romagna, where I’ve lived with my girlfriend, Giulia, and her flatmates, Fabrizia and Gabriella, since the beginning […]
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Andrea Bravo Díaz
23/10/20
“When we lose our elderly, we would have no strength.”
Ecuador, 10 March - 30 June 2020
A Waorani leader. Picture taken by Andrea Bravo Díaz. I am an anthropologist, from Ecuador. Recently back in my country, after finishing a doctoral degree at University College London. While in Ecuador, I have been collaborating with a health project among the Waorani, working with the Institute of Public Health at the Pontifical Catholic University […]
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Eugenie Reidy
23/10/20
“‘We’ve got a moat’ – Coronavirus in an Island State.”
Tasmania, Australia, 15 April – Late June 2020
Photo: Eugene Reidy (MERCURY 20 March 2020; cf. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia-tasmania-idUSKBN21714C). I’m Eugenie Reidy, 37 years old, Australian. I trained as an anthropologist and worked in international development before becoming employed by a Sydney-based organisation that supports Australian Aboriginal communities. I had my first child in December 2019 and moved to the island state of Tasmania for […]
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Ivo Mišur
23/10/20
“We are now living in a disaster movie and it just begins.”
Zagreb, Croatia, 19 March - 23 April, 28 June 2020
My name is Ivo Mišur. I’m 31 years old mechanical engineer from Zagreb, Croatia. I live with my wife. We got married last year. We are currently together in apartment on a second floor in west part of town called Stenjevec. I spent all corona period there. My other close family doesn’t live in Zagreb […]
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Nicolas Langlitz
22/10/20
“Time will come to a stop.”
New York City, Maplewood, NJ, 15 March – 24 April 2020, 18 August 2020
I’m professor of anthropology at The New School in New York. As the COVID crisis hits and administrative meetings multiply, I have the bad luck of chairing the department. I started this diary when the university had just closed its campus and all meetings were moved to Zoom. This semester I’m not teaching though. Two […]
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Lee Brando
22/10/20
“This pandemic has shattered some of my territorial, political, and habitual boundaries.”
New York City, 13 March – 25 May 2020
I am a second year PhD student in anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York City. My research interest is in pain and telehealth, situated in the Northwestern United States region. Ironically, my fieldwork for this summer was supposed to be in Seattle (the first U.S. epicenter for COVID-19). I have […]
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You-Kyung Byun
21/10/20
“Being Asian in the time of COVID-19 in a Western country is tough.”
Berlin, Germany, South Korea, 19 March – 27 April 2020
Already half a year has passed since the start of the pandemic of COVID-19. Dramatic changes have occurred ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments have imposed restrictive measures to stem the spread of the pandemic. However, in each country, the public responded differently. As an Asian minority in Germany, I could compare […]
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