Steemit Engagement Challenge Season8 Week1: My learning during the pandemic

Hello steemians,
I'm delighted to present my entry in this contest today. We are in the first week of the engagement challenge for season 8 and the topic of discussion this week is "My learning during the pandemic". We all experience a phase that we never saw coming and this touched the entire universe. I'm going to be discussing my learning during that period by answering the questions below.

The pandemic came as a shock to everyone. I want to believe I'm not out of place to say no one was prepared for the incident at that period. We all never had prior knowledge of the coming of the pandemic. These changed our lives completely because everyone adjusted from the usual way of life.

During the pandemic period, what I consider to be the main lesson I learnt is taking more care of myself and trying to stay free from the pandemic. Before the pandemic, I don't consider communicable diseases as something serious, I feel if you are always staying away from sick people, then you also will contact and people will run away from you too.

When the pandemic came, we started practising social distancing and our markets, schools and churches are all closed because it is said that if one person has the flu and touches another within a group then everyone can contact the illness.

So, during this period, I learned to take more care of myself by taking my bath regularly and also washing my hands always and using sanitiser to keep myself free from the flu. I also learnt to stay alone and it has helped me because before this time I hardly stay without people around me and that limits my work so much.

Yes, I lost a dear friend during the pandemic. He is a priest who went about taking care of the needy during that period because the hardship on the people within the period was massive. He got infected when taking care of someone who had the symptoms and was rejected by all because of fear of the illness.

Father John as he is popularly called took it upon himself to always pay a visit to this young man whom the community has abandoned. After a few weeks, the man gave up the ghost and father John too was seen with a few symptoms at that moment. He went into isolation and after some time, we also heard that he died. He was one of my best friends because he always encourages me and give me hope for the future.

The most difficult moment during the pandemic is not allowing people to go to the market in fear of the spread of the flu. During this period, things in my country became unnecessarily expensive and those who survive based on wages also were seen dying because they couldn't afford one square meal a day.

In my opinion, that is the most difficult moment during the pandemic. I say this because it came to a time when people were seen dying not of the pandemic but of hunger. The Nigerian government never kept anything for the masses to use and survive on during the period. We are even restricted from going out and if for any season you are caught outside you may be killed for flaunting the government order.

Yes, as I ha e said earlier in the paragraph above, I never believed in anything that has to do with communicable diseases. But when the pandemic came I saw how people were dying as there was no more for the illness. I started taking all precautions to avoid the illness.

I followed all the guides and to this moment I still follow them all because it is believed that it is no longer a pandemic but endemic because it has come to stay and we all have to learn to stay with it. To do that properly, I always have my nose mask on especially when going to a public place. I have my sanitiser and I use it often when joining out or coming in. I also wash my hands regularly at all times.

Everything that has an advantage also has a disadvantage. The pandemic caused a lot of hardship for me as a student then. I was always going out for manual work after classes to support some of my bills during school but when the pandemic came, I couldn't go out any longer and getting NGN 100 became so difficult for me.

After a while, I made some research looking for any other thing I could do online to earn money since I have been hearing that people also make good money online. During that period, I came in contact with @josepha, who told me about steemit and we started working on it together and which boost my financial life till this moment.

When I joined the platform, I was able to cope completely because I was getting some support and since I never understood the investment part, I was always withdrawing. When I got to know the platform better now, I have always tried to invest by setting my post to 100% power up to earn more curation rewards.

Indeed the pandemic caused a lot for me but it also helped me to get exposure to the steemit platform today I'm enjoying every bit of my stay on the platform as I have increased in knowledge, writing skills, speaking and even relationships with everyone around the world.

The pandemic period is a period that we can never forget in our lives. History showed that some things as such have happened before and I got to know about it because of this very condition. I have also been able to know about the steemit platform because of the presence of the pandemic as my manual work was kept on hold. I want to finally invite a few friends to also join the contest today. I call on @fjjrg, @graceleon, @nahela and @bambuka to join the contest if they have not presented their entry.