This week, we begin sharing Stories of COVID-19 once again, starting with stories about the ways COVID-19 has impacted our working lives.
Part 1: When a bug gets stuck in her ear while she’s in the field tagging alligators, Laura Kojima isn’t sure how to get it out without putting herself and her work at risk due to COVID-19.
Laura Kojima is a graduate student with the University of Georgia looking at the consumption risk associated with alligator movement off of the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site, a former nuclear reactor plant that has reservoirs that are occupied by alligators that is connected to a river where public hunting occurs.
Part 2: When she finds herself unemployed at the start of the pandemic, Shashi Mostafa takes a job working in a factory that produces medical equipment.
Shashi Mostafa is a conceptual artist who makes fictional narratives that humanize the overlooked. As a director, screenwriter and photographer, her goal is to instigate social change with her films and photo series. Exploring the dark parts of humanity, she creates pieces that brew empathy, challenge oppression, and project power. In addition, she is a social media content creator and host for Waste-Ed, a sustainability channel, and In the Now, a kindness and social justice channel. Both exist across various online platforms, but she mainly makes videos for TikTok and Instagram.
Story Transcripts
Story 1: Laura Kojima
Most people would think that the life of an alligator biologist is similar to that of the Crocodile Hunter, but that's far from the truth. Sure, it's fun, but it's far from fabulous. For starters, I start my day off before I go trapping by retrieving frozen raw chicken from a negative 80 freezer that has a dead alligator carcass in it. Good motivation to start off my day and then I have to get that chicken and put it on the back of my truck to let it thaw out, because the easier the better for my animals. I use this chicken as bait. No, it's not an afternoon snack for myself. I then go grab materials for trapping, such as my set bag, a catch bag, for once I get animals, and the traps themselves of course. Once I get the boat connected to the truck, I get my technician and him and I usually go out around noon and get ready to spend a day out in the lake setting traps. For me, the grossest part of my day tends to be grabbing that raw chicken and attaching it to the trap as bait, and usually I don't think anything could get any worse after that.
Laura Kojima, with one of the alligators she studies.
Well, I was wrong. So my project was already a little set back by two months due to the COVID pandemic. Thankfully restrictions on trapping and having a decent group to come out with me wasn't too limited as a result, but I definitely was under a lot of pressure to catch up and make up for all the lost time I had getting animals. This day was particularly important because it was the beginning of putting GPS transmitters on my alligators that I was catching and I was using those transmitters to record their movement. The most pressuring part was that I only had a month to get at least seven transmitters on animals before I began classes in the fall. So to say I was under a lot of pressure was an understatement because to put these transmitters on how to do a surgical procedure and everything needed to go right.
I thankfully had a crocodilian biologist, Thomas Rainwater, come out with us to put these GPS transmitters on and show us the surgical procedure and all the loops. With me was also my advisers, Ben and Tracy. And Ben was definitely going to be taking over putting the tags on these animals because he has a steadier hand. And I just tend to have a shaky coffee hand most of the time, let alone I'm juiced up on caffeine when it comes to trapping these animals since we do it at night time. So everything goes smoothly, Ben and Tracy and Thomas all meet me at the dock, this traps are set. It's night time. We're ready to load onto the airboat and go. So far, everything seems perfect. We get out in the water. No alligators have taken to the traps yet. So we go upon ourselves to just noose the animals from the bow of the boat. And none are my criteria for getting a transmitter, but at least we get to start off our night with a little bit of fun. But one thing I notice is that the night is particularly buggy and it's July. I'm in the southeastern United States. I can't complain. I know what to expect. But nights like these tend to be a bit distracting because you're just trying to focus on the animal and getting your data and getting your work done. Well, we finally go back to check the traps and bingo, we got an animal. It's the perfect size.
We end up checking the sex. It's a male, which means it can get a tag. And so Ben, Tracy, and I get the alligator on the back of the boat. Thomas ties it off and then he restrains the animal. Tracy's sitting on the back of the animal, pinning its legs down and its tail. And between her thighs, Thomas is holding on to the middle part while Ben restrains the head, and we start prepping to get the tag on. So I'm in the midsection of the boat taking data and all our headlamps are facing up to create a halo of light over the boat so that we can see all the materials needed for the transmitter. It is a surgical process so we have sterilized needles, scalpels, wire that we use to attach the unit to the animal. So it's very intensive and everything needs to be sterile and clean so it's as humane as possible. So me, being basically the nurse on the boat, having to retrieve the items to give to Ben, who's doing the procedure, I'm trying to be as focused as possible and making sure that I have everything prepped in advance so that when he asks for something, I can give it to him. And as I'm reaching to get wires for this animal, I hear a bunch of buzzing.
And I made the mistake of wearing my hair back, even though I'm aware that it's a very buggy night. And all of a sudden I hear a bunch of loud noises all around me. I swat the bugs away, thinking there's no way they'll get any closer. And I also grabbed my headlamps and face them the other way just so they can not get attracted to anything surrounding me, especially my six earrings I have on my right ear that I know they're most likely gravitating towards. My efforts did not end up working the way I wanted, because the buzzing got louder and louder to the point that a bug ended up going into my ear. I took a moment to think to myself, this could not actually be happening. The timing was so awful. And here I am with the twitching head, just trying my best to not have a full on panic attack because there's a bug who's freaking out inside my ear. I paused because I figured maybe he'll leave. There's no way it's actually going to stay and no. No luck, nothing.
It just kept going and going. It sounded like it honestly went deeper as the minutes passed. I try to play it off and quickly hand Ben the next amount of materials that he would need. I can tell he could tell that something was wrong because he looked over at me quizzically and just kind of was waiting for me, considering I'm such an open person, to tell him what's going on. But quite frankly, I was embarrassed. All that was going through my head in that moment was one, I'm sure the safest way to get a bug out is by going to the hospital. And there's no way in hell I'm going to the hospital during a pandemic because an insect is stuck in my ear. Two, how can I potentially remove this bug without anyone noticing? Because there's no way I'm asking them to help me. And three, maybe Google will have an answer. And of course, Google did not have an answer. And I knew better than to trust WebMD, even though they did have one good piece of advice, which was stop sticking things in your ear if you're trying to remove this bug. However, I didn't listen. I grabbed my pencil that I was using the take notes, put tape on it, sticky side up, stuck that in my ear and hopes that I can get the bug out in that fashion with no prevail. Then I get my headlamp, I stick it inside my ear, seeing if maybe the source of attraction could potentially get the bug to follow it out.
But no, nothing happened. And so I finally grab a pair of tweezers that thankfully were sterilized at least, and I gave them a quick look before deciding otherwise. I need to just give up and go back to doing my work. So finally, Ben speaks up and he asked me what's going on, and I tell him and he goes, "Do you want me to get it out?" I hesitate and then I say, no. And he goes back to dealing with the transmitter. And so I'm like, well, he obviously knows what his priorities are. So maybe I should right now, too. So I kind of just, like the bug, shove it all into the back of my head, just completely ignore what's going on to the best of my ability and proceed with the transmitter placement procedure while occasionally touching my neck because the sound is just so incredibly aggravating. So thankfully, we get the transmitter on this animal and it only took a little bit longer than it needed to because of my delay.
And we proceed to continue checking traps. We managed to get another transmitter on another animal. I think at that point I was just so numb inside from exhaustion and disbelief that I have someone hitchhiking in my ear that I was able to just temporarily ignore it, let alone I usually hate the sound of the airboat because it is quite loud and we wear headphones in it because listening to that daily can really damage one's ear more than a bug in the ear. But in this particular instance, it was a very much so welcomed noise and a distraction from the buzzing that was going on in my head. Once we finish the night, I had to go back to the lab because, as part of my project, I'm also analyzing biological data, including blood. And so I had to go spin blood, extract plasma, and make blood smears. This is all at four in the morning with the hitchhiking bug going off in my ear. And sure, I was pretty exhausted by that time, but I'm not going to lie. Doing blood smears is already hard enough as it is, let alone at four in the morning and with a buzzing sound going on in your ear. I was lucky that I even managed to get one good slide for my samples. Thankfully, the night was already coming to a close and I thought to myself, this is something that I'm going to have to deal with tomorrow.
If I actually have to go to the hospital during a pandemic, then this is something that I'll make the decision when I'm more awake and like, cognizant tomorrow morning. But right now, I just I'm going to just hope that this bug leaves my ear. So I go home, shower, and yes, I go to bed with earplugs in my ear because I can't sleep without feeling them in my ear. And the bug, by some miracle, sleeps with me. I hear no buzzing and I sleep like a bear during hibernation until the next morning at twelve o'clock, I finally get up and of course the buzzing commences. So in that moment I made the decision. All right. I think it's time to go to the hospital. You know, I live in a small town in South Carolina. It shouldn't be crowded. It's a weekday. Maybe I'll be fine. And so I try to let my paranoia of COVID kind of subside with the practicality that if I keep trying to remove this creature from sorry, I keep trying to remove this critter from my ear, I can cause some serious damage to myself. And that's just not worth it. So I double up on mask, I get my hoodie, I tighten it around my head like I'm Kenny from South Park, because for some reason there is logic to me that just full on hazmat suit type protection with everyday clothes will protect me from the coronavirus.
And I head to the hospital, I go in and thankfully the waiting room isn't too bad. I get called in pretty quickly and I am aware of how booked up the hospital is because they have to do my blood pressure and all that basic vitals stuff in the waiting room, which I've never experienced before. I get called into an exam room and they don't have any more of the normal exam rooms, which is closed-door closed-off walls.
I'm basically protected by shower curtains, but honestly, going through a door outside of the waiting room into this shower curtain exam room was ten times more reassuring than being in the waiting room itself. A physician's assistant comes in and meets me, ask me basic questions, and we get down to it. I tell him what's going on and honestly, I think it takes him and it takes him a minute to realize that my condition that I'm coming in for is absolutely absurd because the look on his face goes from stoic to just pure joy in a matter of seconds as he realizes that he has to deal with something so mundane, but also very far off from the virus. So he initially tries to just suck the bug out using a syringe with no prevail and finally he gets down to business, gets a syringe filled with saline solution and one filled with lidocaine, which is a local anesthetic. He puts the lidocaine in my ear to paralyze the bug, which ends up killing it. And then he flushes it out and within 10 minutes from arriving to the hospital the bug is out. And I just can't believe how quick and easy of a prosthetic process it was since it was such a painful evening of dealing with that bug in my ear.
I asked him if I can take a picture of it just for memory's sake, and of course, I have to get one of me flipping it off for all the grievance that put me through. So the worst part of this, all aside from the fact that there was a bug in my ear, was I had lidocaine in my boat, which I use to numb the area, which I put the transmitter on. And I had the same syringe sizes that he used to flush the bug out. So realistically, I could have gotten the bug out using lidocaine and just I would have put fresh water in my ear. I don't care. I didn't have to be saline solution, anything to get the bug out of my ear. So now I have two things that I know to prepare for when it comes out to trapping alligators. One, I always wear my hair down because I don't want to risk any exposure in my ear. And two, at least I have the materials to get the bug out of my ear if I ever have to go through this again.
Story 2: Shashi Mostafa
I'm driving to a factory at five a.m., expecting to pull up in a dirt lot and see pipes blowing smoke. I actually pull up to what looks like an office building with a normal asphalt parking lot. They take my temperature at the front, I check in and I sit on the sofas in the lobby while waiting for the orientation to begin. Other new employees who are part of the orientation start trickling in and join me on the couch. I noticed they're all in their 20s or early 30s. They're all people of color and they're all wearing off brand clothing. One guy has a tattoo on his face and my mind goes toward the direction of judging him. But then I stop myself from being a total shallow bitch. I think these are the type of people I was in high school freshman class with, like before honors and AP divided us. Once everyone arrives. Once everyone arrives, they take us to an office space. We sit down, and we're handed these fat manuals and told to read them.
Shashi Mostafa is a conceptual artist who makes fictional narratives that humanize the overlooked.
The manual goes into depth about different safety precautions, we need to wear smocks so we don't get electrocuted. The ground is taped off in a certain way to signal what is a walkway and what is a high risk electrocution area, or at least that's how I interpreted it. We should avoid doing certain things so we don't wear out our bodies, et cetera. The way it's all written makes me think that this job might actually be kind of dangerous. Like, I'm kind of worried for my health. When we finish reading the manual, we have some downtime and I started talking to this girl sitting next to me, and I ask her if she ever did this type of work before. She kind of just goes off about it. She starts telling me about, like, all this stuff -- like, honestly, I don't even know half of what she's talking about. She starts talking about the stuff she did at the previous factory she worked at, using words that I'm unfamiliar with to describe the actions. And then she says something like, "I hope they put me in the warehouse."
And I'm thinking, there's more than one option? Because I just thought that we were going to be sitting in an assembly line all together, the same place, doing the same thing. Now, I had just graduated college a little less than a year ago, never had a real full time job since I had just finished my college job and had gone backpacking in Europe for a couple of months until my trip was disrupted by the COVID pandemic and the travel ban. But I quickly realized that although I'm probably the most educated of this group that I'm sitting with right now, I'm actually the least qualified to do this job. It's lunchtime and we get a 30 minute break. I begin drafting my text to the woman who told me I got the job from the temp agency. I type something along the lines of I type something along the lines of, "hey, it's Shashi, I actually think this job is not what I was looking for and I would not like to go through with this position, but thanks for the opportunity." I pause and think for a moment. This is not a place for me. Getting minimum wage to do this dangerous work isn't for me. This is something I'm not willing to go through. My friends say that I'm the only person they know who would do something like this, but even for me, this is taking it too far.
But I don't know if I can get another job right now, one of the managers at a Trader Joe's I called the other day said that they are getting 400 applications a day. So I ended up not sending the text. The next few days, I'm on the floor observing people who have worked here for decades. They're making Alaris pumps, which is the device that you run an IV tube through. So these are essential for COVID patients. I try to romanticize the factory in my head to come to terms with being here because it's an interesting, colorful site. And assembling a medical device during a pandemic is like pretty cool to say that I did. Even though I knew this job would be temporary for me, though, I cry every day throughout my shift for the first two weeks of my job. And I hope the PPE I'm wearing hides the fact that I absolutely hate being here. I can't believe four years of busting my ass to double major got me to this moment. Describing someone as a college graduate and a minimum wage factory worker, it doesn't sound like it makes sense, but it's my reality. In addition to beating myself up, my Asian immigrant parents are disappointed I'm doing the same thing they did their whole lives, so I wouldn't have to do it, like it was all for nothing.
I tried to talk to people in the administrative position so I can network myself up into a higher position because I don't belong in the factory, I belong in the office. And if I slip in the fact that I graduated from college and have done administrative work before, maybe someone will notice, get me out of here and give me the raise I deserve. Finally, it's time for me to get trained on the alarm test station, I meet Winnie, a 70-year-old Asian grandma who reminds me of my parents and aunties who love drama. She's worked there for 35 years and knows how to do every single part of the assembly line, like this woman could literally make the whole device herself if she wanted to. She shows me how to test the alarms to make sure the lights and sounds coming from it are working When it's my turn to try it, she watches and even if I almost reach for the wrong button, not even accidentally pressing it, even though that happened a few times, she is very quick to say, nope, that's wrong.
Shashi, in her factory uniform and face mask.
But when I do it right, she's like, whatever. And this really triggers me because it brings me back to all the negative energy I'd receive from any mistakes growing up. Time progresses and I get really good at the station. Winnie sits at the station next to me and talks to me sometimes. She asks me if I have ever thought of going to college and I kind of laugh and tell her that I already graduated. She jokingly says, "Oh, what are you doing here then?" Which makes me feel really awkward because I don't want anyone to think that I'm above them and I genuinely want to believe that I'm not above them either just because I went to college. I think Winnie sees her kids in me, though, because they were all born and raised in the U.S. just like me and went to college and they live good lives. I start to develop relationships like this with other people, too. Many of the older Asian ladies like me more than a lot of the other people who are in their 20s.
And I think it's because I'm able to understand where they're coming from a little better than the people who aren't Asian, since my parents are like them. So I kind of know how to respect them in the way that they expect it. Some of them insist on sharing their lunch with me, they cook food for me and surprise me with it. They always make sure to ask me if I'm enjoying working at the factory and I start realizing that they actually really care about me. We have weekly factory meetings where we all gather out in the front and the administration gives us COVID updates, factory updates, praises us for our hard work sometimes, like answers any of our questions and whatnot. One day they announced that the production rate of the factory has risen 2,700 percent in the past six weeks, and I don't really know if I should feel proud of that or disgusted by that. But at the same meeting, someone asks whether we're going to get hazard pay and they say no, but they quickly add, "we're going to give you one free lunch per week, though," and maybe like a third of people cheer because the guy who announced it said it as if it was something great. But really, we all knew that we were getting more of a slap in the face.
I start getting really angry about the lack of action the factory is taking in terms of COVID precautions and caring about the people who work for them, and I'm especially annoyed that the factory doesn't think of a way to let their older workers stay home. We don't sit six feet apart, there's over 100 people in the room per shift. The company I work for makes COVID tests in a time when they're not as readily accessible, but they won't go through the effort or spend the money to test us, even though production has increased by twenty-seven times, meaning so has their profit. Our face shields are really uncomfortable, so people aren't wearing them right. White people from the administration come into the factory maskless to tell all the people of color and immigrants who work in the assembly line, "Put your face shield on so you don't give others COVID," as if they can't contract COVID themselves because of their whiteness and their more than living wages, and that we will infect them and each other because we're brown and low income.
One day I come to work and I hear a bunch of people whispering in anxiety about how they deep cleaned the factory during the overnight shift, so that must mean someone got COVID, right? People start panicking a little, but it doesn't stop them from working. We have a factory meeting later that day where the CEO tells us that six days ago someone in the administrative offices had symptoms of COVID. So he and the people who work around him in that office got sent home to quarantine. But the thing is that that guy always comes into the factory to do his job and no one in the factory is sent home to quarantine. Instead, we're told that if we're afraid of getting COVID, we can take our paid time off if we have it. And if not, then we can quit. One of my co-workers tells me that they have more comfortable face shields in the office that we can go and get. So I go into the area where the administration sits so I can get mine. I go to grab it out of a box. When I hear someone aggressively telling me I have to sign something saying I retrieved it before I grab it. As if I was like a nuisance of some sort to him.
And the first thought that comes into my mind is, "Geez, you're treating me like I'm some sort of immigrant or something." I stopped for a moment with a second thought, realizing how fucked up the first thought was. But I'm also flashing back to the moments when I was growing up where white people treated my parents like this, when they didn't understand what they were saying because English is their second language. Additionally, I'm realizing that I'm just another brown-skinned factory worker to all of them. People assume I'm uneducated, low income and maybe an immigrant, but that doesn't mean I or anyone else should be treated like that, right? With all of this happening, I want to do something about it and the social justice fire grows within me to fix this and get better conditions for my friends at the factory. But there are so many people here for the long run. And I heard so many horror stories from people I work with about the factories they used to work at. So it seems as if this place is actually a place they enjoy working and they're able to overlook the shitty parts of working here because this factory gives them a workplace they want.
And I don't want to risk anyone's job, especially because this place is still temporary for me. And so I just don't say anything. Finally, after six weeks of working at the factory, I get a job that is more on track with what I studied in school and the career path that I'm on. It's my last day. Everyone tells me. Everyone tells me that there are fighter jets honoring pandemic heroes flying above the factory at noon and that we all have to go outside to see them. Noon comes around and I'm standing with one of the younger people I became friends with at the factory, her name is Thuy. She asks me about my next job and I tell her, "Well, I have a degree and I'm going into a job where I can use the skills for my degree." She tells me that she has a degree, too, and I feel a little embarrassed that I assumed she didn't.
It's just that it's for Vietnam and she can't use it in the U.S. because it's less valid here. She also has a baby now that she has to take care of. So that keeps her from going back to school. She tells me her dream job is to do what she got to do back in Vietnam, but she sacrificed that to come here to the U.S. While there are a lot of older people who work here and enjoy this type of work later in their lives, there are a lot of younger people who have big dreams beyond the factory. But there are a lot of barriers people face that I don't. And yes, I got into the situation where I needed to work this terrible job. But six weeks is nothing compared to one year, five years or 10 years, which is how long some people in their thirties have been working here.
People who work at the factory sleep in their cars because the commute home is too far. My commute is only seven minutes compared to some people who have one to two hour commutes before and after work. Even then, my shift starts at five a.m. every day. But if you want, you can come in at three a.m. to do two hours of overtime and you'd think that only a couple of people come in at 3:00, right? But actually, the reality is that most people come in at 3:00 to make the extra buck. And I'm one of the few who don't come until 5:00 because I want to sleep more and rightfully so. Everyone gives me shit for it. But also, I'm privileged enough to not need the extra money. People cut their fingers on the job and don't complain. They're in constant pain from doing the same motions over and over again every single day. And when we aren't at work, I hear beeping noises ringing in my head for the rest of the day into the night when I'm going to sleep. And I can't imagine how it's like to be someone who's worked here for thirty-five years, like quite a few of them have. These are literally the hardest hustling people I've ever worked with.
We're still standing outside waiting for the planes to fly over us, and I glance over to the other side of the parking lot to see administrative workers flashing peace signs and taking photos with this giant banner that says, "Heroes work here." The fighter jets finally come and fly over us and they just go in the straight line and then disappear. Then we all line up to get our temperatures checked so we can go back into the factory and continue assembling until the end of our shift.
People are kind of muttering and disappointment because we all thought the jets were going to do tricks and stuff and like draw stuff in the sky, and someone walking alongside me actually makes a comment saying, "I wonder how much money they spent on that. They should have just given it to us." And I'm like, yeah, they should have just given it to us.