forty days

It came to my attention this week something perhaps obvious to everyone else, but the word quarantine comes to us from the Italians, during their bouts with the plague, and means forty days (quaranta giorni) from holding ships at bay for that long to prevent spread.  

Our quarantine started in Tegucigalpa on Sunday, supposedly for seven days...which quickly turned in to all businesses save for healthcare being totally closed as well.

Personally, I am confronted by my introvert nature, as I hear of frustration and being bored during quarantines in other parts of the world...I barely notice a change and definitely don't have any frustration or being bored.  I think i could go weeks like this with great pleasure, using it as an excuse to be able to avoid contact with the outside world.

As an aside, if you needed proof there are hills on the campus, check out how many floors I got doing a light walk this morning.  

Plenty of office work still to do, the clinic is still open, kids are doing online school...changes, but relatively harmless.  A bonus is not having to drive anywhere since Sunday.  

However, for most of the world, a quarantine is a very serious thing, and I am not talking just about exposure, but rather living itself.  So many people here survive daily based on what they can earn that day and thus buy something to eat.  Being in what is for now a seven day quarantine lock down, is not an inconvenience but a true trial in many ways.  

Our Milk Project staff continues to come every day (thankfully...they live very close, and police enforcement in our area has been light) and are working to take food to the homes of the children to help them in this time, both cooked food plus foodstuffs to use at other times.  

Yesterday in preparation, they were also personalizing some messages for the kids, and printing out homework assignments the kids have been getting since school is out (proactive teachers still have WhatsApp to give out some assignments, but they usually require internet access, which is where we come in) 

How our rural pastors are doing, we are not sure...telephone communication is hard, and with them locked in place and not able to come down the hill, we wait and see.  We know the coffee farm managers are still working on drying coffee for us to sell and working daily on the farms.  

​Pray for our clinic staff...they continue to work in this crisis, using the ambulance to pick those up to bring them here since there is no public transportation (Jorge left at 6:00 this morning to go out to get them.) 

We cannot test for COVID-19 in our clinic, and are taking new measures to prevent the spread, but people are still ill and make their way here, and some still come for dental and eye work as well, for as long as we can continue to do so.

Of course be in prayer as well please for so many we know, and don't know, here that are struggling in very real ways during such a time.   

And for others still working in the sectors allowed (police, health workers, and today for a few hours, grocery store workers...policies and practices are changed on a daily basis...including curfew locations and whether or not cargo or other trucks are allowed to leave the city.)  

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