SOME call it olfactory memory. It’s what Rodel Guco, standing near where water burbles on one of the shores of the seaport city of Valetta, Malta, says what his nose remembers after briefly taking off his face mask.
Guco (not his real name), also remembers the pungent smell of money, something his nose also missed when he arrived in Malta late-February, 2020, from the United Arab Emirates.
That scent, however, wafted to hundreds of millions of families of migrant workers as, to the surprise of many, central banks of major origin countries relying on foreign remittances reported receiving higher dollar inflows in pandemic-hit 2020.
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