Time is moving is such strange ways. The days feel long and slow. Looking back over the past week or month, however, and it feels like everything has changed (and changed again) in a blink.
Three weeks ago, Nate was making the difficult decision to call Karisa and say they should not come to Kenya for their planned two-week trip (if everything had gone as planned, they would be leaving Kenya today after two weeks of safaris in Amboseli and the Mara and playing with us at the ILRI pool and visiting the giraffes and elephants of Nairobi).
Two weeks ago, Kenya closed all schools in the country and our kids started "remote" learning from our upstairs office in our ILRI house.
One week ago, Nate and I were agonizing over whether we should evacuate ourselves from Kenya, and then wondering if we were already too late to get a flight out as our flights were changed, canceled, changed again...
Five days ago we arrived in Vermont and began a 2-week self-quarantine.
Today, we are just living in the moment. Not planning even a week ahead. Not knowing how long we will be here, or if we will ever go back to Kenya as residents.
There is no one in the world not affected by what is happening. We are incredibly lucky to have the choice to stay or go, to come to Vermont where we have a safe and isolated and affordable place to live, to have family nearby who stocked our cabin with food and necessities before we arrived. We are lucky that none of us have shown any illness (so far) from traveling from Nairobi via JFK, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the US right now. We are lucky that Nate still has his job and our kids school was prepared for remote learning and my Masters program has been so understanding about late assignments this week as I try to adjust to our new reality, teach my kids, maintain a sense of "normalcy", adjust to the new time zone...
There are lots of stories about what we have experienced, but for now I just wanted to say: we are here. We are healthy. We are grateful and confused and sad and happy. We hope our family and friends stay healthy and whole (economically, mentally...). We send our love out into the world.
1 comment:
And you know we send ours back to you! I applaud that you put this transition into writing, Jen, and have made it an historic part of this wonderful blog. We zig-zagged with you (as much as we knew) through the necessary decisions and multiple plane cancellations/rebookings/overbookings/airport waiting. We are so deeply grateful to VT family who, in their own times of social distancing, enabled a functioning cabin, winter clothing, stocked larder, a vehicle! Thank you for loving this world and all its people; thank you for being able to make a wise decision under the current circumstances. Settle in; be at peace in a place you love. Once jetlag has passed, the U of K will see its excellent student again!
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