Please let me come out ...!!

Ola everyone, its Lucas, from Manaus, Brazil.

I hope you all can hear me, as right now I am resting in my dark and shady coffin in the stunning forest of Amazon and I am scared that I won't be lying here alone in peace. The devils will come here too. Yes, devils with tremendous powers with a fatal behaviour.

So, talking about myself, I lived with my family in the depth of Amazon rainforest, Manaus, the Amazon's biggest city. Our lives were just about living in the woods and struggling with the slaughter of our forests. We were already stressed for our existences and suddenly from somewhere a wave of virus knocked our city. I heard that Amazons had one of Brazil's highest infection rates and I was terrified. We didn't have any promising healthcare systems and awareness about this Covid-19 thing. And this combination brought chaos in the heart of the jungle. Poverty, malnutrition and banishment made resisting the virus an even bigger challenge for us.

I saw a lot of people dying in front of me, but I was helpless. We craved for a few scanners, ventilators, medicines, and protective equipment for our health workers. But the help appeared very gradually.

I can't describe the feeling of seeing my folks dying in front of my eyes and the ‘ignorance’ of the outer world. We were digging a lot of graves and pits for our people. There were tears and screaming sounds, yet there was an unusual silence. This wasn't the first time that our people were facing respiratory problems, but this time it was different. In April, Manaus saw a rise of 578% in the number of people who died from respiratory problems. They were not distinguished as patients of Covid-19 and our authorities didn't have any explanation. Maybe it happened because the testing prevailed very low and there was a large underreporting of the real data. I heard in the news that we even passed China where the Covid-19 outbreak began, our people were frightened.

This disaster was wiping out of our existence, but some people were jumping on their nasty businesses. The illegal loggers, miners and hunters emboldened by a government started destroying the forest under the name of ‘development’. Clearly, they were taking advantage of the situation and staking their claim. In the first three months of the year, deforestation rose 51%. Covid-19 made the other issues invisible that we had. We can't forget the assaults and attacks that happened from these unlawful entities. Now, these people are trying to make contact with some untouched tribes of our forest, and they are using this time to explore for mining and hunting. And there is also an added urgency as fire season begins. Last year an exceptional number of fires devastated huge portions of forest in the Amazon. Peak fire season starts from July and this will be a double-trouble, As when we have a lot of fires, we have a lot of people going to the hospital and when we have a hospital full of Covid-19 patients, it will be destroyed when the fires start this year. And this mishap will take numerous lives, just like it took mine.

And I don't believe that my people will outlive this pandemic without any ethical help for a longer time. We were not the ones who started this, we were not the ones who gave rise to this virus, we were not the ones who are destroying the mother nature. But we still suffered, and now I just want to support my family and folk out there. So please, let me come out..!!