Hello everyone!
I’ve been getting a lot of questions on Facebook and such during
this time of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Warning, this is a very long post. I’ve
been following the news on this one from the very beginning, as I lived in
Wuhan, the city where it first surfaced, for three years, from 2012-2015, and I
still have many friends there. I heard
their stories as the city shut down and everyone went into quarantine. At first, I didn’t take it too seriously on a
global scale, but it soon became apparent that I was wrong about that. The next place to be seriously affected was
Milan—also I city I lived in (from 2007-2009) and still have many friends
in.
The Shorts were even in Milan at the time; when the city
went under quarantine, Tammy and Deborah were here visiting Tanzania and
staying with me, and Lewis and the older girls were down in Florence visiting
some friends. They couldn’t get back
into Milan to get their things, so Lewis and the girls returned to the US early
from Florence with what they had packed for a weekend stay. Tammy and Deb returned to the US from here
the next week. They’ll have to go back
to Milan eventually to get their suitcases there, and this has changed their
plans by taking them back to the US several weeks early. Fortunately, some kind people in Searcy who
are currently in another city for medical treatment allowed them to house-sit
for them until the house they’re moving into is ready in a few weeks.
After the first two major cities to be affected were ones I’d
lived in, I began to be a bit worried for Florence, Nashville, Jingzhou and
Monduli! 😉
Here in Tanzania, we are still doing pretty well,
though. As of today, April 6th,
there are twenty-two confirmed cases and one death. Everyone here started hearing the news of the
pandemic’s spread early in March, and it was a bit strange to know it was
coming and just wait to hear that it had arrived. My students were getting pretty scared and
starting to spread various rumors, so I took a day in class to explain what we
knew so far and what the situation was; I feel like it’s better for them to have
good information rather than fear the unknown.
The first case in Tanzania was reported on March 17th,
in a town only about thirty miles from here, and the president immediately declared
some measures to help control the spread.
From what I can tell, Tanzania is following the example of Kenya, who
were a few days ahead of us in having cases, at least for the first few
days. Schools were closed immediately. We found out Tuesday evening, and the students
were gone by noon on Wednesday, March 18th. Honestly, as our schools is a boarding school
in a rural area, we probably could have protected our students much better had
they stayed rather than them taking buses and such all over the country, but the
ruling came from the president.
 |
| Baraka, the head student librarian, organized the students returning their books and even had them all reshelved before I could get there at 10 am! |
So, schools are closed, gatherings of over 50 are supposedly
restricted, and handwashing stations have been set up outside of many businesses
and churches in an effort to help. That
was two and a half weeks ago now. I
thought I would have so much free time without classes, but I’ve been quite
busy.
First, we teachers put together
study packets to send out to the students (or at least those who were close
enough to give paper copies or who have phones with internet to receive them
electronically; we know many won’t get them). I’ve been making copies to take up to the kids
in Monduli Juu (the Maasai town up on top of the mountain) because they have
neither good phone service nor any places to print things. I cleaned my house thoroughly (it needed it,
after I was sick for so long), and I hired one of my now-bored students, Salum,
and his friend to clear weeds from my patio and cut my grass. Another student took my trash to the dump for
me. A few other students have come by to
visit, as well, and many more have checked in with me on WhatsApp and Facebook. I’ve been working really hard on learning
Swahili during this time; I’ve been spending one to two hours a day
studying. I still have plenty of work
that I’m doing in the library at school (no harm in going up to work in the
library when no one else will be in there).
Churches are still open here (current guidelines are no gatherings over fifty
people, which the churches here qualify for, but I’m not sure it’s being
enforced much anyhow), so I have been to church twice, once at the Monduli
church a short walk from my house and once up in Monduli Juu. I didn’t go this past Sunday as I had a bad
cough.
It’s
actually been kind of funny; the tradition here is that (at least in small
churches) during the last song, everyone files out of the building row by
row. The first person out the door stands
next to the door, and then then next person shakes his hand and stands next to
him. The third person out shakes both of
their hands before getting in line. And
so it goes, until everyone is standing in a big circle in the churchyard. Greeting people is very important in this culture,
so this way it makes sure that everyone in the church has shaken the hand of
everyone else. With the current
situation, the churches have been telling everyone NOT to shake hands. We can wave and smile. It’s a bit awkward, us all standing in the
churchyard just smiling at each other, and some people keep almost forgetting
and then squawking and pulling their hand back.
We’ve all a good laugh, anyhow.
In March, I got quite sick; I was sick for several days,
then recovered enough to have three normal days before getting sick again. Again, I almost recovered and then got sick
again for a few more days. I missed
quite a few days of work even before schools were closed, so I feel like I
haven’t had classroom time in forever. Altogether,
I was sick for the better part of three weeks.
However, I’ve been doing well in the weeks since, other than getting
tired easily. The school break has been a
blessing for me in that way; I otherwise would have gone back to working long
hours to try to make up for lost time
and thus exhausting myself and getting sick again.
Again, so far, it isn’t bad here; only a few reported cases
and the number doesn’t seem to be growing quickly. We have the benefit of being the last
continent affected, so African countries were able to prepare a bit and try to
track cases quickly as they came in. I
pray fervently that it does not spread here.
This is a young population (only 6% over the age of 65) and it’s the end
of summer here, so still warm.
As bad as I feel for Asia and Europe, and I don’t mean to
diminish the deaths there at all, I’m grateful that it went to those places
first, where they have good healthcare and infrastructure and resources. I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened
if it had started here. As it is, I am
fearful of what will happen if it does take off exponentially here as it has
other places. It will be an incredible
disaster. We have no way to combat it
here. Handwashing stations outside
businesses only go so far; the smaller business won’t be able to afford to keep
putting out more soap indefinitely, and many people can’t afford soap at home
anyhow. Social distancing doesn’t work
here, as many people live in two or three-room houses with ten people, with
bathrooms and often cooking facilities shared with the neighbors. Many people don’t have refrigerators at home,
so they must go out to shop for food daily; they can’t stock up for a
week. Even if they could, few people can
afford to buy more than a few days’ worth of food at a time. Most people don’t own a car; the only way to
get around for them is by dala dala (a crowded 15-passenger van crammed with
way more than 15 people) or bus. Hand
sanitizer is almost impossible to find in this country; I buy mine in Kenya
when I go to Nairobi.
Furthermore, people, even ‘nonessential’ people, can’t stop
working here. Most people live day-to-day;
a day they don’t work is a day they don’t eat.
There’re no unemployment payments, social security, etc. Few people even
who are better off and have office jobs and such have much savings, and those
that do would be required by social customs here to use whatever savings they
had to help all of their extended family, so any savings would go quickly. The government may eventually issue some sort
of ‘stay at home’ order, but I don’t see a lot of people complying, and if they
do, many could starve. I pray the
government will make the right calls; I don’t know myself what those will
be.
So far, the Allisons, the Williams, Beth’s family and I have
decided to stay where we are. Again, at
this point, things aren’t bad here at all and life is mostly going ahead as
normal other than the schools being closed.
We are trying to stay home as much as possible and practice what social
distancing we can, but life is going ahead here. We’ve all considered whether we should leave,
but right now the situation is much worse in the US than here, and we would be
much more exposed going through the series of airports it requires to get from
here to there than we are staying home here.
The only concern is that if things do get much worse here, there may not
be a chance to leave. Already all
flights are cancelled except for three a week out of Dar es Salaam (a ten-hour
drive from here) on Ethiopian Airlines. Last-minute tickets are outrageously expensive, but quite reasonable a few weeks out
(Beth has checked just in case). We’ve
all registered with the American Embassy, and we will be notified if they
eventually decide to do any evacuation flights.
Beth said that if we do leave, she’ll buy as much soap as she can to
leave with all our friends here. Beth
and I both have been staying stocked up to have at least a month’s worth of
food in our freezers just in case. I
think I’m set on pasta for the rest of the year; I bought extra pasta on one
trip, forgot about it, and bought another large amount. I told Beth to smack my hand if I go near the
pasta again at the grocery store. 😊 If worse comes to worse, Monduli is down a single
long road from the highway, and it could be effectively closed off.
I have no medical background at all, so I don’t know how
much help I could be if things are bad here, but I’m keeping in touch with as
many of my students as I can, and trying to find little things to do now. I’ve been buying extra soap and giving it as
a gift to many of my friends here. I’ve
been trying to spend money locally, ordering a couple of dresses made by my favorite
seamstress that I don’t actually need until August, doing all my laundry at my
friend’s laundry service (when I could have hand washed some of it at home),
tipping my boda-boda drivers well, hiring students to do yard work, etc. in an
effort to get a little money to my friends here in case people don’t have as
much work if it gets bad here.
So, for now, don’t worry about me here; we’re all doing well
so far. I’ll keep you all posted if
things change. Also, most of you have
probably noticed by now, but my blog posts are rarely posted as things happen,
so you will continue seeing blog posts from past months that show the school
open and people gathering. Also, my
internet at home is very bad at this point; I can get Facebook and such on my
phone fairly well but can’t get the internet to work on my laptop at all. I’m up at the school using the office
internet today, so I’m lining up the next week of blog posts; sorry there’s
been a gap over the past few weeks as I haven’t been able to post on my blog at
home.
I love you all, and I hope you are all staying safe.
1 comments:
Glad to hear from you! Keeping all of you in Monduli/Monduli Juu in my prayers.
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