Space Invaders

The new year has begun and we’re more or less back to our routines. The drought is worsening in the Horn of Africa and I’m in the thick of work on humanitarian response. The girls are back in school. The cast that was on my right arm is now gone and I’m on the slow path to recovering my mobility and strength. I’ve done this several times before but it seems a bit slower at this phase of my life. It’s okay. I don’t mind the challenge.

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After successfully traveling back to Kenya, we shifted quickly to the work of getting over jet lag and preparing for work/school. The former hasn’t gone so well. I’m not a good sleeper even in the best of times so when faced with jet lag, it’s often a question of whether the lying awake is caused by my normal insomnia or if it’s a matter of adjusting to the time zones. Added to that, almost immediately after arriving I came down with a bad cold/congestion. For me, sickness always exacerbates jet lag.

As with a lot of sicknesses these days, it always raises a yellow flag as to whether or not it might be Covid. The symptoms I was dealing with were more or less consistent with those communicated as being common with the Omicron variant. Though we were all PCR tested the day we left the US, according to the CDC, it can take a couple days before someone will test positive. So I could have contracted it, for example, at the Louisville basketball game or passing through a store (even though I have been masked whenever out and about). Even though everything seems to be sped up with Omicron, it’s unlikely that I would be symptomatic from picking it up during the US travel, where PCR tests and/or vaccines are not mandated, given that it was too recent.

We did a couple antigen tests over the span of a few days and they were negative. So it appears to be a common cold. I was almost hoping it would be Covid given that the symptoms are manageable, it might build me some antibodies and it would go away after a while.

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Given all the dramas with the current new variant, the girls’ school has been in hot debates about starting off the year in class or online. Given the success of the school’s pivot towards online education in 2020, I was a bit puzzled to see the pushback from some parents about they possibility of going online for a couple weeks or so. Apparently some teachers are impacted by related travel complications (canceled flights trying to get back to Kenya) or have contracted Covid and are not able to travel. This whole thing is inconvenient for everyone but, as Priya told the school Whatsapp group, people need to exercise a bit more grace during times like this.

In any case, the girls are back to online school for now. There’s an upside to living where we do when normal school is happening. But our urban apartment is less attractive when the pandemic flares up.

Kiran and a classmate are using our dining table and Kinaya took the office. My office is on work from home status so Priya and I ended up being pushed a bit to the margins. I opted to spend a few hours here and there in cafes to carve out some space which isn’t terrible. There are loads of good coffee shops in Nairobi. It wasn’t the end of the world but thankfully school returned to “normal” and I have my office again.