Coronabusiness?

Island-made masks!

“There’s no coronavirus here! No coronavirus!” Our friend emphatically proclaimed this again and again. He had rejected our attempts to greet him by bumping elbows or fists (the customary handshake alternative in the age of COVID). Instead he forcibly took our hands and rubbed his palms repeatedly against ours, laughing good-naturedly and repeating, “No, no, no. There’s no coronavirus here!”

While no other islander has forced physical contact on us quite like that, we have been repeatedly assured that there is no coronavirus here on the islands. Some acknowledge that it was here but that it isn’t here anymore. (And there is some truth in that. For a week or two, there have no longer been anyone with COVID symptoms in the hospital on our island.)

Others talk about how bad coronavirus was outside the islands but that here all they had was a strange dengue season. Dengue fever comes in outbreaks every couple of years on the islands and this year the dengue was particularly hard and for many came with a cough (!), which islanders admit is not a symptom they usually have with dengue. (In reality COVID hit on the heels of a dengue outbreak, so there was legitimate confusion initially about what was dengue and what was COVID.)

Others truly believe that there never was any coronavirus on the islands, they say that the only thing they’ve had on the islands is “coronabusiness”! Over and over, we’ve had islanders complain about coronabusiness— or the exploitation of the global pandemic for money. They say that the government tries to maintain the idea that there is COVID on the islands so that they will continue to receive foreign aid to fight it. They claim that the island government continues to have measures like masks and limited gatherings on the books just to get more money.

Island beaches were closed for awhile for COVID

“Coronabusiness” is also seen in the fact that masks and PPE that were donated by foreign countries are now being sold in the market to line island pockets. It’s in a bunch of people being arrested for not wearing masks only to be driven to a building site and forced to work as free labor for the day. Coronabusiness is also the fact that large gatherings are not allowed (ostensibly to prevent the spread of disease), but you can go to town hall and pay a “fee” in order to have your large gathering with the promise that the police will not come and break it up.

Those who complain about coronabusiness are also quick to blame the coronavirus measures as really the manipulations of the current president to stay in power. The breaking up of gatherings with police raids, tear gas and arrests. The curfews. The fines. The travel restrictions. In all these things they see a president who is just trying to keep the people down who don’t want him in power. On the islands, we’re entering a contentious year politically and coronavirus/coronabusiness has only stoked the discontented murmurings that were already there that the government is not working for the good of the people.  

People back home are curious about how coronavirus has impacted the islands. We don’t claim to know the whole truth. We do know that COVID has not hit the islands as hard as we feared. Maybe it’s because it’s a young population. Maybe it’s because it is so densely populated that they reached herd immunity really fast. Or maybe it’s because the islands is an outdoor culture where most gathering and socializing happens outside where breezes dissipate disease. Whatever the reasons, we see it as a clear answer to our fervent prayers.

Tom- the birthday boy!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We got our bags! They finally arrived on Clove Island on Wednesday and we were able to claim them on Thursday morning. We’re very grateful to a few friends that work in shipping who went out of their way to get them to us! We were able to have 1-on-1 meetings with each of our teammates and a potential teammate this past week, as well as colleagues and island friends and associates. It was good to reconnect and to see a plan for the coming months take shape. Tom celebrated a birthday— we thank God for him, for the good husband, father, team leader and friend that he is.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
The mother of an island brother and friend is gravely ill. She is in a coma. We assume that she is dying but don’t know all the details. Please pray for our friend and his family, that he could be a light to all of them and they would know peace at this difficult time. The potential team member is trying to arrange a site visit in November— pray for all the logistics as traveling is more difficult these days. Pray for clarity and confirmation as she considers joining us in the new year. We’ve decided that we’ll stay in our current house through Christmas at least, while at the same time casually start looking for a new place. Pray that God would direct us to the right place and that our kids could even be excited about the move. Pray for our teammate who is currently in the States as she considers her future steps and timeline, including rejoining us on the islands in the near future and beyond. Pray for us as we look at what our new schedule and routines will be now that we are back, that we’d make good decisions and commit to the right things.

Home Sweet Home?

On tarmac on big island

We clamor down the steps from the airplane, leaving it’s air-conditioned interior, to step out onto the hot runway tarmac.  The humidity welcomes us, surrounding and enveloping us in a thick, moist hug.  Our oldest daughter turns with a look of mellow contentment and comments, “This feels so good.  I just love this climate.”

As we walk nearly the length of the runway (there are no buses to pick us up), the airplane engines’ deafening roar making it hard to hear but our youngest son is skipping along, dragging his carry-on bag and saying, “This is awesome!  This is awesome!  This is awesome!”
We trundle down the road in the back of an island taxi, dodging potholes, windows down to allow in some airflow from the tropical humidity.  Our middle child is thoughtful.  He looks out the window and remarks, “It’s like America is this land of excitement, but the Islands feel like home.”

A lot of people were asking our kids as we got ready to leave, “Are you excited to go back to the islands?  What are you looking forward to?”  By and large, each of them didn’t rise to this question.  The younger ones would shrug their shoulders and refuse to answer.  The oldest one, knowing enough to know that people expect a response, usually replied about missing the food, but it sounded more like a “satisfactory answer” than a heart-felt response.

We can relate.  The way we feel about a place is complicated.  I think everyone can relate to it to some extent.  When you get back from a vacation, have you ever felt that same melancholy?  That feeling of, “This boring, old place.”  But when you put your bags down and settle into your favorite chair, you can’t help feel some relief, too.  You’re “home”.  After ten years on the islands we know those feelings too.  Only, we feel them both ways or with more confusion.  What is America for us?  For our kids?  Is it home?  Is it vacation?  Is it something different all together?  Based on the amount of time spent in one place the islands are certainly home, but our trips to the US, though infrequent are long—six months.  Plus there are all the natural connections with America- family, heritage, culture.  Despite our and our children’s friendships with islanders, despite our knowledge of language and culture, we can usually still navigate our way through most of America with greater ease than on the Islands.  On the other hand, we have lived lives that look so different for so long, we don’t always “get it” in America either.  So what is home?  Where is home? 

There are probably a million blog posts, articles, and books on this very subject. We may just be adding one more, but there is a reason for so much attention to this subject.  It can be difficult to experience. There’s a tension—like we are constantly pulled in two directions.  It is hard enough to know this tension as an adult but, it is harder still to see it in our children.  Everyday we make choices that effect our children. We decided to first live in Africa before we had any children, but we knew it was a decision that would shape the futures of whatever children we had. 

 

Greeted at the airport on Clove Island

We do not regret it.  There is always tension in life.  We cannot protect our children from everything.  Home may be a hard place to pinpoint, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  We can be at home in America or at home on the islands.  We are drawn to and from both our homes.  As our children grow up and make their own ways in the world, they may find yet new locations to call home.  We hope the tensions they feel now will make such future tension a little easier to handle.  We can’t be sure, but we hope so.  

The longer we live on the islands, the longer we feel our own impermanence—like we are travelers and we will always be travelers.  And yet, we still have places where, when we arrive, we find ourselves saying to ourselves, “This feels so good.  I love it here.  This is awesome.  This feels like home.”  

Back to their rain-time fun at home on Clove

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We made it all the way back to Clove Island! A colleague waited at the hospital in mainland Africa for 2+ hours for our COVID results, but we had them all for our flight to the islands! We are thankful for our old teammates and friends (including Ma Imani) on the big island that we got to see on our way through. We’re thankful for a uneventful flight to Clove Island. We’re thankful for all the island friends and neighbors we’ve been able to reconnect in the past few days. We’re thankful that we’ve adjusted back to the time zone and sleeping well again.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
Most of our luggage is supposed to come to Clove Island by boat, but apparently we chose a boat captain that didn’t have his act together, so we don’t have our bags yet. A friend is intervening on our behalf to get the bags on a different boat and we hope to have them on Wednesday! This week is about reconnecting— we have meetings scheduled to sit individually with all our teammates and a potential teammate. Pray that we’d have good times learning where everyone is at and have a clear sense of how we should move forward in the coming months as a team. Pray for us and our kids as we reconnect with islanders and that we would have opportunities to share truth and light this week. As we move back into our house, we’ve been given the news that we’ll have to move out by the spring so they can use the house for a wedding— pray for us as consider whether to look for a new house right away or stay in this house for as long as we can. 

96 Hours

96 hours.  International travel during COVID is a bit of a logistical puzzle. All travelers have to have a certificate of a negative COVID test taken within 96 hours of arrival into the country.

Enjoying US fall

96 hours sounds like lots of time. But then going all the way to Africa, you have to take into account that you lose 28 hours with the travel and time change.  That leaves 68 hours.  The fastest COVID test labs in Massachusetts promised results within 24-48 hours. That leaves 20 hours. But you can’t get a COVID test just any time.  Test centers work 9-5.  There goes another 8 hours—leaving just 12 hours. So it’s possible, but not lots of wiggle room.  

We timed it perfectly. We’d take the tests Wednesday morning, get results by Friday afternoon at the latest, and leave Friday evening. Arrive in Africa on Saturday night! Perfect!

Not Perfect.  
Late Thursday- a link comes for the results, but a mix-up means we can’t access them.
Friday, 12:00pm - We finally get access to Tom’s and our daughter’s results.  Both negative.
12:30 - Megan’s results come in.  Negative
2:00-  Our sons’ tests had not come.  We call the hotline and confirm that they both tested negative, but we have only oral confirmation. We need the official paper.
2:30 - One of the boy’s results is in.  Negative.
5:30 - We leave for the airport, one lab result shy.  Our youngest son’s results never came.

We went up the airline counter and handed all our paperwork, wondering if they would look closely for ALL the test results. Tom kept checking his messages for link to the fifth result, but it never came. Finally the airline worker asked for our youngest son’s COVID test result and we had to admit that we didn’t have the paper even though we knew he was negative. The airline insisted that they needed a printout. Africa required the paper, so they couldn’t let us on the plane without the paper. We argued that we should have the link to his result before we landed in Africa, but they held firm, we needed it now!

We called the hotline again and put it on speaker phone. She confirmed orally that our son had been tested and was negative. The airline asked her to send an email to that effect, but she said she couldn’t. We asked her to contact someone who could and she said she could only give an assurance of help “within 24 hrs”. We asked her to just take a screen shot of the result. We told her it didn’t have to be official. She would not be budged. She told us that she was putting an urgent note on our case for the help desk, but all we could do was wait for someone to call us back.

Leaving for the airport

So we did what we do in a crisis.  We got people praying.  We waited with all our bags sitting in front of the check-in desk. The airline employee helpfully noted that all they needed was one of the documents we already had with just our son’s name at the top instead of ours— subtly suggesting that we could just create it ourselves. It was tempting. After all, we had obeyed the spirit of the requirements— we had tested our son and we knew he was negative. The airline knew he was negative. All they needed was a physical paper attesting to that fact.  We opened up the test result documents and looked at them. We could do it, we could make a fake report for our son, but it would be fraud. We could change the name on one of the COVID test results, but all the codes and specimen numbers and case ID wouldn’t be valid. The lab letter head was not ours to use. We could do it, but it wasn’t right. We thought about all the prayers that were being said on our behalf and we knew that to fudge the document wouldn’t be trusting. So we waited.

Thirty minutes passed.

Then it came to us. Not a the fifth text, not a telephone call from the lab, but an idea. Tom suggested we simply type up a letter with everything we knew and could honestly confirm. So we typed up our son’s name, birthdate, gender, when he had his specimen taken, what his result was, what kind of test was done and the name and contact information for the lab that did the test. We showed it to the airline employee and he whisked Tom to a desk with a printer. And just like that, within a handful of minutes we were checked-in and heading through security. What a sweet relief, God had answered our prayers!

Made it to Africa with all our bags!

Fast forward a day and we land in Africa, the healthcare worker at the airport only looks at the first of our test results and doesn’t even count them before he tells us all to pass through. As we wait for our luggage, the text with the link for our son’s result comes in.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are very thankful that we made it safely to mainland Africa. We are thankful for how well our kids did with all the travel. We are thankful that we continue to be healthy. We’re thankful for being able to get so much done this past week and for the most part feeling good about how we were leaving things in the States. We are thankful for getting to connect with our administrative oversight here in mainland Africa and to our old team leaders giving us their house to stay in!

PRAYERS REQUESTED
We had COVID tests done again this morning (Monday) for our flight on Wednesday morning. Pray that our results come in time. Pray for our continued health. We are feeling very jet-lagged. Pray for good nights of sleep and a quick transition to this time zone. Once we get to the big island we still have to figure out how to get all our luggage to Clove Island as our luggage allowance is less than half on the intra-island flights. This is sometimes a headache- pray for an easy solution. In mainland Africa, we met with someone who is interested in joining our island team— pray for clear confirmation if the islands is the right place for her. We have heard of a number of friends, brothers and sisters on the islands and their relatives, being sick.  Pray for healing and restoration.

The Weight of Leaving

Packing in experiences while we can--on Maine coast

“So, are you ready to go back?” We’ve gotten this question a lot. A number of things pop into our minds: There is the approval from our organization and the plane tickets. There is the big to-do list that includes last minute shopping and packing. There are the final visits and saying goodbye, but maybe they are asking if we are emotionally ready?

Ultimately the answer is that we’re getting there.  

For many people traveling across the world with three kids in tow would be stressful. They would be worried about the airplanes, customs and flight connections. For our family that all feels like old hat. I mean it’s hard, but it’s not as hard as it used to be.  Our kids know the drill. They know about the long waits, about going through security, trudging through terminals with our carry-ons and about how to snuggle into a plane seat and enjoy the in-flight movies. That part doesn’t really weigh on us.

The packing is a pain. We sort all our things between what we have to take, what we will store or get rid of and things we want to take (space and weight permitting). This process is complicated by the fact that we are actively using a lot until the final day we leave, also we continue to get requests from people on the islands for us to bring stuff and we still have some shopping to do. So we don’t know where we stand— will we have way too much stuff for our bags or will everything fit easily? The uncertainty weighs on us as we consider what we’ll be able to bring with us.  Added to that is the fact that our travels include three different legs of travel, each with different rules for luggage allowances. For now we’ve been pushing off the logistical headache of packing but we feel it looming.

Picking pumpkins

Part of packing up and leaving is also saying goodbye to things that we’ve enjoyed having here— whether it is physical things (bikes, toys, games, shoes, clothes) or experiences (outings, parks, food). For the physical things, we have to make hard decisions (both for ourselves and our kids) about what can come back to the islands. For some things we’ve tried to prepare our kids for the disappointment of saying goodbye. At their birthdays they knew that they needed to ask for small things or live with the fact that we wouldn’t be taking it home with us to the islands. Whenever we see them clinging to something that is unlikely to make the cut, we make sure to warn them and encourage them to enjoy it while we have it! We also try to help them remember that there are things waiting for us on the islands that we haven’t gotten to enjoy here! As adults we’ve gotten more used to this part and we can even look forward to our simpler, less-encumbered island lives, but we still feel the losses sometimes, more so for our kids. Ultimately these aren’t the important things in life and we live fine without them, but there is a weight of sacrifice as we say goodbye after having them for 6 months.

Finally there is the saying goodbye to friends and family. Some people have casually asked, “So when will you be back in the States again?” When we answer, “Not sure, might be up to 3 years” we see their surprise. The world has gotten small and international travel is easier but Clove Island is still 4 difficult flights away and it’s not a trip we take lightly. The burden of a long absence and not knowing when it will end adds a weight to our goodbyes. In some ways we’ve gotten used to this too. Our kids are so used to meeting people, enjoying them and then saying goodbye that they often seem pretty unfazed by it. Sometimes we are grateful for their ease, sometimes we wish that they had lives where they hadn’t needed to develop that skill. We try to make connections that will last, we take photos, we exchange email addresses and promises to video chat, but it won’t be the same.

Our lives are journeys and we don’t always know what will be next. More so than in the past, we’re not sure what the next few years are going to bring. But we take comfort in a few things. One is a memory verse that our family recites regularly as we travel— the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9). Another is that we don’t have to have it all figured out.  We  just need to be faithful in taking the next step. We won’t make progress if we don’t keep pushing forward. So we prepare ourselves and step out knowing that we aren’t walking this journey alone.

Carving pumpkins!

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful that, with less than a week to go, many of the details have fallen into place, we’ve been able to do fun things and see special people, share with a small group and get some of our packing done.  We’ve even had some miraculous days of weather where the storm clouds have seemed to clear before us and temperatures rise allowing us to be outdoors, enjoy the Maine seacoast, go on hikes, and be with people we love in COVID-safe ways.  


PRAYERS REQUESTED
Unfortunately, the father of our island sister, after appearing to be improving, suddenly turned worse and passed away a few days ago.  Pray for comfort for her and her family and that the community of islanders who walk in the Light would gather around her and encourage her.  We travel on Friday, so please be lifting our travels up.  Although we are travel veterans, we also know that prayers help a lot in making the way smooth before us, and there are some unknowns because of COVID.  Pray especially for our kids that they would have a good transition and be excited about going back to the islands. Please keep lifting up our old boss and his knee surgery this week.  May this knee be healed, and may our friend be greatly encouraged and not lose heart.