"My friends called me crazy": university student tells his story in the red zone

"I have to confess that going into the so-called red zone is a bit scary, but once here there is no turning back," said Yadian Rodriguez Noda, 22, over the phone from the University of Matanzas (UM), now housing low-risk COVID-19 positives, six days after he crossed the tape that separates the ordinary safe environment he has always known from a different and complex scenario which only a few crazy people dare to enter.

Nobody understood how a young man, the kind who usually runs errands for his grandmother, could leave behind the comfort of home to enlist in a dangerous task when a single mistake could mean getting sick with a deadly virus, he recalls.

Inside the building, where there are only four confirmed cases of the virus, Rodríguez Noda works with two or three professors and another student. Now they are like family, because this type of scenario nurtures the best alliances.

“We clean and disinfect corridors and rooms and bring in food deliveries, always keeping a safe distance from the infected and wearing protection,” he stresses. “We have also seen strings of discharged patients whose smiles of happiness and gratitude suffice to give me a boost, cheer up and realize that I would be willing to jump over the rope and scrub up again.”

Yadián Rodríguez Noda is a boy like any other, not as crazy—or as sane, perhaps—as he is cracked up to be, but he knew how to overcome his own fear to help others, others who are also afraid.