Life with Covid in Town

If you’re a reader of this blog, you’ve noticed that I’ve stepped up my blogging. Part of it is that I was behind my normal pace of documenting some of the major things going on in my life. Part of it is that this is an unprecedented time that we are in and I feel that it is important that we record what is going on through my own experiences.

I regret not doing this more over the years. I think back to some big things that happened. I remember man going to the moon and Watergate as a child. Okay, so I wasn’t much of a writer back then but it would have been good (would still be good) at some point to write up how I experienced those events. Later in life I had a traumatic experience related to the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing in 1988. Shortly after that, while I was living in Europe, the Iron Curtain fell and so did the Berlin Wall in 1989 (I was able to travel to East Berlin while people were still chipping away at the wall). And then there was also the birth of the internet. That’s a period that will likely be fascinating to people years from now. What we are experiencing with this pandemic is pretty mind-blowing and it will be interesting to see how it will be viewed by history.

Making Adjustments

Last Wednesday (Mar. 19) was my first full self-isolation day. It’s now been a full week. I should say that I haven’t had an office in Nairobi since last March so it’s not a huge change. It will be exactly a year next week that we (the Somalia team) closed our stand-alone office and moved in with our Kenya and regional colleagues. This was intended to reduce cost and begin reducing our footprint in Kenya. We were moving positions/responsibilities to Mogadishu in a longer term effort to shift our center of gravity to Somalia. As such, while in Nairobi I would work wherever I could find an empty space. Usually I could find something but there were days where it was quite a challenge. Given that I was in Mogadishu a lot of the time, it wasn’t a big deal.

So on Tuesday when I folded up my laptop and left, not knowing when I would return, there was no desk to vacate. I just went home. 

I’ve heard some horror stories of people’s experiences sharing space with families, particularly since schools are closed. We live in an apartment which, in normal times, is generally big enough but I feel that it has reduced in size now that we are all in self-isolation. Kids come in showing me their latest drawing or gymnastics move, or I’m summoned to settle an argument. These things aren’t too bad unless I’m on a call or something. But generally I would say that it’s working out fine. I’ve done a lot of work from home over the past year anyway so we sort of already know the drill – except that the kids are not going to school.

I’ve stopped going to the gym. At the gritty place I go to normally, social distancing would be impossible. Thus I’ve had to get creative to make it happen at home. It usually involves lifting various sizes of water jugs. I remember back in 2007, while based in Kibondo in NW Tanzania, I was gym-less. In addition to stepping up my running, I found some chunks of concrete that I put in a plastic bags to use as weights. It’s not ideal but, combined with the usual push-ups, sit-ups, etc., it’s fine for now. And I can do laps in the pool, do stairs in the building and occasionally riding my bike or run. Just requires some more creativity.

school's in session

One positive is that the French school has done a very good job of structuring the home schooling. Kiran even has had a few live meetings with her teachers online. They’re doing about a half-day of schooling (thanks to Priya) and do other activities in the afternoon. They’ve done piano lessons over the phone. So long as the internet, electricity and water hold out, we should be good. 

piano teaching by phone

A second positive is that the kids have a few friends in the building. This is great. They can get out and run wild downstairs, play, swim, etc. The girls know they need to keep their distance from each other and use copious amounts of hand sanitizer. And for the most part, they do. 

We heard yesterday that there may be a Covid-19 case in our building. I don’t think we know for sure at this point but we’re still trying to guess who it is. We know of a couple different families that are on full quarantine in their apartments so we suspect it’s one of them. We’re evaluating whether or not we need to reel in our movements even further but so far we feel like we’ve found the right balance.

Kiran's Fall

There's a forest in Nairobi that is quite the amazing green space. It's about 20-30 minutes from our place depending on traffic. On Saturday, given that I wasn't going to the gym, we decided to take our bikes there and ride on some trails. This is a relatively new activity for the girls and they seem to like it. Being a cycling fan, I take great pleasure in seeing my girls learn to ride. We stayed a safe distance from anyone we saw so it seemed like a good activity.

However this time it didn't go so well. In fact, after oiling chains, airing tires and getting our helmets on, we had only gone about 200 meters before Kiran took a nasty spill on the dirt road. I was just behind her and watched the whole thing helplessly. There was a groove cut across the road at a bit of an angle designed to facilitate water drainage (and probably serve as a speed bump would). Rather than hitting it in a safe perpendicular manner, she hit it at an angle allowing the front tire to slide out from underneath her. There's a little be of fine gravel on the dirt surface which facilitated the sliding of the tire.

She landed on her side and her head hit the road fairly hard. Kiran is tough as nails and, like her father, has a history of accidents. But this wasn't an ordinary fall. Through the tears she immediately showed signs of being concussed. She never blacked out but she wasn't fully sure what was going on and was struggling with her short-term memory. We ended up taking her to a nearby clinic to have a doctor look at her (by the way, a very clean and professional facility).

observing sister's first CT scan; kind of scary

I should confess that both my father and I have had rather serious concussions (apple doesn't fall far from the tree). His resulted in a two-day blindness and mine resulted in amnesia (both football injuries). Both caused blood clots in the brain and Kiran's injury appeared to be similar to what I had. Apparently the impact creates a temporary clot that impairs some sort of functionality, in our case it was short-term memory. The doctor we saw told us basically the same thing that my mom was told back in the day when I was injured: you need to watch for any abnormal behavior (other than asking the same questions over and over again) and keep the person awake or (as in my case) wake them every two hours or so. Something to do with preventing the person from sliding into a coma. 

Sure enough, as the day progressed Kiran gradually became less loopy and her attention was more on the nasty scrapes she acquired. Sigh. We were glad that she was okay and that such a thing didn't happen where we would need to access facilities overrun with Covid-19 cases. We're very thankful.