With the opportunity of being awarded with the WHO-TDR Postgraduate Scholarship, I am currently a student at the Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Indonesia from Bangladesh. Here I am taking the international program in Public Health (MPH), majoring Implementation Research that is co-sponsored by UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and WHO. My stay here in Yogyakarta is almost 6,000 KM away from home and for the first time I am in overseas study leaving my only son, parents, wife and the sibling. More or less I miss my family, although that feeling is always paramount for my son. However, the recent emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact in my overseas life here. But undoubtedly, it’s a quite new and unique experience that I have been going through these pandemic days and managing my daily life independently.
Not only limited to here, all around the globe we are passing through a difficult situation in this current pandemic caused by the COVID-19. In this reality, many around us are being affected with several mental and social issues even without getting infected directly from the virus. These ultimately are believed to have contribution in affecting individual’s typical life, which consists of self-care, productivity and leisure. But true that as human being we have also the long history of facing and overcoming this kind of crisis with various potentialities.
Needless to say, these pandemic days are not like the other typical days that I passed though at the beginning in my life at Yogyakarta. All on a sudden it’s been a big change in life style that is brought by COVID-19. I used to love attending the scheduled classes at campus, joining library, meeting friends at favourite coffee shops, praying at mosque and performing compulsory outdoor exercises at the main building (Graha Sabha) campus in the evening everyday. But unexpectedly, my routine in daily life changed remarkably due to this pandemic; as on campus activities were announced to be closed. Apart from that, I was completely out of direct communication with the closed ones here in Yogyakarta, rather became dependent entirely on virtual medias. Accepting all these restrictions in day to day life and isolating myself from all kinds of social gathering was like an unimaginable reality. Due to the frequent deterioration of global and local situation, I felt down and was desperately looking for some sorts of alternative options to adjust with this sudden changing lifestyle as much as possible.
But, to be compliant with the rules of social distance at the time of COVID-19 pandemic, there is nothing better substitute other than staying at home. However, I was fortunate enough since my enrollment at UGM to have been in touch with some excellent local people at campus here in Yogyakarta. By that way, I started to be familiar with the typical tradition, culture, living and many other relevant affairs of the local community. As a consequence, commonly some of them also used to share the updates in terms of local rules and regulations regarding the pandemic via WhatsApp messages. Their virtual company was also supportive to my mental health. But still living in a new territory, isolated in a single room, managing all necessities independently, working with academic tasks; all these are not easy to handle during the global crisis of pandemic. That’s why initially I was afraid of mostly about the supply and availability of daily commodities in the local shops, as it was disrupted in many countries due to the pandemic.
The Global Conference on Implementation Science and Scale up was held in Bangladesh from 29th June to 1st July 2019. The conference showcased the role of Implementation Science in promoting a culture of evidence based health and other social development programmes, policies and practices. There was a TDR Postgraduate Scheme Networking meeting session on 2nd July, 2019 at Center of Excellence for Science of Implementation and Scale-Up (CoE-SISU), BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health at BRAC University.
