As we know that the Covid-19 arose and hit the fundamentals of human life. It is not only about psychological terror but also economics. Also, there must be more things affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. For instance, educational space has to be shutted down, many art agendas must be postponed. That was all that the government tried in order to break the cycle of the spread of the Covid-19. The recommendations from the government such as social distancing, stay at home, work from home were like an echo we could hear. And then, after the pandemic was going crazy as well as those three domestic matters, a new problem appeared: the economic conditions were also getting worse. Therefore, the government offered “New Normal” as an attempt to overcome this pandemic situation and help the people through this. And for the hope the people could go back to routine and work or trade again.
In the month of Ramadhan, I had been living with this Covid-19 for the past few months, I personally did my writing to keep me busy. I wrote anything but none of them I could finish because I literally “wrote anything”. One of my writing ideas was the relation between re-visioning my village with the Covid-19 phenomenon.
In my village, the most obvious thing we can see from the impact of the Covid 19 was a sale value. The sale value for fish dropped drastically to three-quarter. Therefore, most of the farmers in my village decided to stop working and go to sea. I was also curious about the problem in the other coasts; did the communities in the other costs (Outside Madura Island) deal with the same problem? At that time, I tracked through Google (this application made me very helpful in tracking or digging up the information outside my place). In some other coastal areas outside Madura such as Pasuran, Lamongan, and Mucnar, they postponed the activity at the sea forcefully both from the independent side and the fishermen community itself. However, some of them decided to keep working and going to the sea. It was because they did not have any other choices.
From a territorial side, this coastal village was located in the southern suburban area from the center of the city of Sampang Regency. This village was well-known as a Ju’lanteng village, The Urban Community of Banyuanyar. It was near to Tanglok Port where the fishermen used to drop the fish and a transit place for the villagers in Mandangin Island.
Around four years ago, this fish transit shed was reactivated by H. Holiq. He was the third son of a middle class family which was H. Nurhasan. In the past, that transit shed belonged to H.holiq’s brother, Kusnadi. Now, he moved and built a new one at the edge of the river of coastal village, Ju’ lanteng, where the fishermen pulled their boats over and unloaded their fish they got from the middle of the sea. The fishermen from the coastal village did not go fishing for their own fish but they did a transaction at the middle of the sea. There were fishermen from Mandangin Island, Camplong, and Tanjung who did fishing.
Now, the shed became the place for trading fish which came from outside Madura such as Muncar, Puger, and Berondong. Mostly, the customers were women from this village. They became fish resellers for some markets in Sampang or Bangkalan. The fish were sold in a ready to eat food we knew as a pindang fish* or a steamed fish.
*Pindang fish is a fish that is cooked with many spices such as chili, garlic, onion, turmeric, coriander, candlenut, pepper, and sometimes is added with coconut milk.
CEMETI 