Making Pizza - Neya Patel

Reconnecting with Lost Friends During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This new normal turned out to be more fun than I had imagined.
United Kingdom, Northern Europe

Story by Neya Patel. Edited by Melaina Dyck
Published on November 1, 2020. Reading time: 4 minutes

This story is also available in cn it kr tw



Six months into the Covid-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom (UK), I remain fascinated by the ever-changing world I live in. I think back to one evening in February. I sat around my friend’s dinner table discussing our upcoming trips: Ibiza, the Cayman Islands, and Canada. My friend had recently returned from China and informed us about the outbreak — I was shocked by the death toll in Wuhan. I never imagined that Covid-19 would come to the UK, and I never pictured not being able to hug my family and friends.

One month later, this became a harsh reality. Boris Johnson implemented a lockdown of the UK.[1] He commanded us to stay at home and comply with social distancing guidelines. I was surprised: my once-normal life turned into a strange unknown. I, like many others, found myself experiencing a lot of stress during the initial stages of lockdown. On top of this, I worried about my friends and family. Before the virus entered the UK, I lived a busy life and I was constantly bombarded with limitless information from my social world and career.

The virus transformed my outlook and redefined what I deem ‘essential’. The new rules forbade us from meeting friends and relatives, so I found a new form of communication: the weekly Zoom calls! Here, I reconnected with friends from across the globe with whom I had lost touch. These calls included weekly quiz games, birthday celebrations, and karaoke nights (despite my terrible singing). One afternoon, I had a beach-themed Zoom party: I ate food from the barbecue and conversed with my friends online. This new normal turned out to be more fun than I had imagined. Gone were the days of Zoom calls primarily being used for conferences; a new ordinary had emerged.

In June, six-person gatherings within a 2-metre distance became permitted.[2] My Zoom-formed friend group embraced this challenge and ran with a ‘Come Dine with Me’-inspired event.[3] Each friend hosted a dinner party once a week in their garden with a different world-cuisine. My Mediterranean-themed dinner party included a range of dishes from tapas to baklava. We creatively sourced weekly entertainment to accompany the dining, including bingo and piñatas. Initially, I was apprehensive about reuniting with my friends again. I was excited to see them, but I feared I would be socially awkward. Thankfully, my friends felt the same — we had nothing to worry about. Social distancing was less challenging than I had previously thought. I sat 2-metres-apart from everyone and probably overdid it with the hand-sanitiser!

The pandemic has allowed me to maintain, grow, and create friendships, and broadened my taste buds. I have been taken out of my comfort zone and have adapted to this novel way of life. In years to come,

I will look back on the extraordinary year of 2020. I will not only remember it for the devastation of the pandemic, but also for how it allowed me to reconnect with lost friends. I may not be able to hug my family and friends, but I have not lost hope. I pray this continued sense of solidarity and connectedness flourishes well beyond these unprecedented times.


Footnotes

[1] Boris Johnson is the British Prime Minister. Prime Minister's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 23 March 2020 from: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020

[2] Coronavirus: Gatherings of six people allowed from 1 June from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52841999/coronavirus-gatherings-of-six-people-allowed-from-1-june

[3] ‘Come Dine with Me’ is a British TV show, where four strangers take turns hosting a dinner party for their fellow contestants, who give points based on food and overall experience.


How does this story make you feel?

Follow-up

Do you have any questions after reading this story? Do you want to follow-up on what you've just read? Get in touch with our team to learn more! Send an email to
[email protected].

Talk about this Story

Please enable cookies to view the comments powered by Disqus.

Share your story

Every story we share is another perspective on a complex topic like migration, gender and sexuality or liberation. We believe that these personal stories are important to better understand what's going on in our globalised society - and to better understand each other. That's because we are convinced that the more we understand about each other, the easier it will be for us to really talk to one another, to get closer - and to maybe find solutions for the issues that affect us all. 

Do you want to share your story? Then have a look here for more info.

Share Your Story

Subscribe to our Monthly Newsletter

Stay up to date with new stories on Correspondents of the World by subscribing to our monthly newsletter:

* indicates required

Follow us on Social Media

Neya Patel

Neya Patel

Hi! I am a 23-year-old psychology graduate from the United Kingdom. I have a strong interest in human rights and the ever-changing world we now live in. I love meeting new people, experiencing different cultures and travelling to exotic destinations around the world.

Topic: Coronavirus




Get involved

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

Share Your Story

Community Worldwide

Correspondents of the World is not just this website, but also a great community of people from all over the world. While face-to-face meetings are difficult at the moment, our Facebook Community Group is THE place to be to meet other people invested in Correspondents of the World. We are currently running a series of online-tea talks to get to know each other better.

Join Our Community

EXPLORE TOPIC Coronavirus

Global Issues Through Local Eyes

We are Correspondents of the World, an online platform where people from all over the world share their personal stories in relation to global development. We try to collect stories from people of all ages and genders, people with different social and religious backgrounds and people with all kinds of political opinions in order to get a fuller picture of what is going on behind the big news.

Our Correspondents

At Correspondents of the World we invite everyone to share their own story. This means we don't have professional writers or skilled interviewers. We believe that this approach offers a whole new perspective on topics we normally only read about in the news - if at all. If you would like to share your story, you can find more info here.

Share Your Story

Our Editors

We acknowledge that the stories we collect will necessarily be biased. But so is news. Believing in the power of the narrative, our growing team of awesome editors helps correspondents to make sure that their story is strictly about their personal experience - and let that speak for itself.

Become an Editor

Vision

At Correspondents of the World, we want to contribute to a better understanding of one another in a world that seems to get smaller by the day - but somehow neglects to bring people closer together as well. We think that one of the most frequent reasons for misunderstanding and unnecessarily heated debates is that we don't really understand how each of us is affected differently by global issues.

Our aim is to change that with every personal story we share.

View Our Full Vision & Mission Statement

Topics

We believe in quality over quantity. To give ourselves a focus, we started out to collect personal stories that relate to our correspondents' experiences with six different global topics. However, these topics were selected to increase the likelihood that the stories of different correspondents will cover the same issues and therefore illuminate these issues from different perspectives - and not to exclude any stories. If you have a personal story relating to a global issue that's not covered by our topics, please still reach out to us! We definitely have some blind spots and are happy to revise our focus and introduce new topics at any point in time. 

Environment

Discussions about the environment often center on grim, impersonal figures. Among the numbers and warnings, it is easy to forget that all of these statistics actually also affect us - in very different ways. We believe that in order to understand the immensity of environmental topics and global climate change, we need the personal stories of our correspondents.

Gender and Sexuality

Gender is the assumption of a "normal". Unmet expectations of what is normal are a world-wide cause for violence. We hope that the stories of our correspondents will help us to better understand the effects of global developments related to gender and sexuality, and to reveal outdated concepts that have been reinforced for centuries.

Migration

Our correspondents write about migration because it is a deeply personal topic that is often dehumanized. People quickly become foreigners, refugees - a "they". But: we have always been migrating, and we always will. For millions of different reasons. By sharing personal stories about migration, we hope to re-humanize this global topic.

Liberation

We want to support the demand for justice by spotlighting the personal stories of people who seek liberation in all its different forms. Our correspondents share their individual experiences in creating equality. We hope that for some this will be an encouragement to continue their own struggle against inequality and oppression - and for some an encouragement to get involved.

Education

Education is the newest addition to our themes. We believe that education, not only formal but also informal, is one of the core aspects of just and equal society as well as social change. Our correspondents share their experiences and confrontations about educational inequalities, accessibility issues and influence of societal norms and structures. 

Corona Virus

2020 is a year different from others before - not least because of the Corona pandemic. The worldwide spread of a highly contagious virus is something that affects all of us in very different ways. To get a better picture of how the pandemic's plethora of explicit and implicit consequences influences our everyday life, we share lockdown stories from correspondents all over the world.

Growing Fast

Although we started just over a year ago, Correspondents of the World has a quickly growing community of correspondents - and a dedicated team of editors, translators and country managers.

94

Correspondents

113

Stories

57

Countries

433

Translations

Contact

Correspondents of the World is as much a community as an online platform. Please feel free to contact us for whatever reason!

Message Us

Message on WhatsApp

Call Us

Joost: +31 6 30273938