Travel Stories in a Pandemic and dealing with Quarantine

I thought you might like to hear some of the stories from my travel home during the middle of a global pandemic.  Some of you may have seen some of the photos on my facebook feed, but I have some more that did not make that feed.  I am also going to talk about what I am doing now that I am at home and in self imposed quarantine before I go to stay at my folks home.  I am also going to ask for your help to decide what I should be doing on the blog during what will be an extended break.

Let's start with what was happening in Tanzania before I left.  The government had encouraged people not to gather in large groups and given some basic guidance along those lines.  They closed all school and  universities.  They required everyone coming in to Tanzania to go into a 14 day quarantine at a place the government set up.  This meant expensive type hotels that many of the Tanzanians returning after being overseas could not afford.  The government however is encouraging people to continue to go to Church gatherings and Mosque services.  This has created some confusion with large groups wanting to meet (like the ruling party) to reclassify their meeting as a prayer meeting so it is acceptable.  The mass transit system that is the only way for the majority (closer to 85-90%) of Tanzanians to get somewhere are still running.  They are now restricted to no standing passengers.  People still have to sit 4 across on a bench in a van or minivan.  People still live 4 or 8 in small house.  People need to plant and work crops during rainy season if they hope to have something to eat later this year.  I worry about Tanzania and my kids there because so many things prevent them from being able to "flatten the curve" once the virus cases start increasing.  Currently they have only had 20 cases and 1 death but it has just started.  In addition their main sources of income are tourism and agriculture.  They still have a potential of locust swarms though they are now lower than they were months ago.  

So I got a ride from my house to the airport from Pastor Stephano so I did not have to ride the buses.  It was raining overnight and the morning of my departure date.  This meant potential problems with flooding and trouble both going and for him to go back.  Fortunately there was no road flooding but we left early so it would give him enough time to come back.  So I was at the airport roughly 4 hours before I could go through to check in.  So I check in with KLM and they have changed my seat (understand KLM requires you to pay to reserve your seat which I had done) then when we got Dar es Salam they needed me to move my seat again to accommodate the KLM staff flying home.  This flight was packed and fortunately after all those switches I was still on the aisle.  All of the shops and restaurants at Kilimanjaro Airport were open.  Customs was quicker to get through than normal though still required the fingerprints and photo just getting there so early makes it quicker.

The first flight stops in Dar which takes about an hour to get to and then there is a swap of pilots, flight attendants and people get off and some new folks join for the trip to Amsterdam.  This is when I found out I had to move again because this was the last KLM flight out of Tanzania and all the KLM staff had to leave on this flight.  After this flight only Ethiopian Airlines is flying out of Tanzania and they only do so for 3 flights each week.  The flight itself was uneventful and we arrived in Amsterdam on time.  There was very limited drink service (they gave us a bottle of water) and no food service on the flight, the 8 hour flight.

We got several warnings about how Amsterdam will not allow people to walk in groups and you must keep the distance of 1.5 meters (almost 5 feet).  They even went on to say they had noticed people not doing this in Tanzania and we really must follow the rules in Amsterdam.  Then this is what I actually saw all of the airport and KLM people doing.  The new version of blogger will not allow me to upsize the image so that is 2 feet maximum between the group of 3 people walking around.

It looks like they also took away my ability to justify text after a photo.  This is interesting.  So I think I understand why they could not distance themselves properly.  They did a really bad job on the graphic showing how to distance yourself from others.

Anyone that has flown knows that inside the airport you will only have carry on luggage and that it has a maximum dimension of 22 inches or approximately 0.5 meters.  So if they graphic shows that as 1.5 meters they think being within a carry on piece of luggage from another person is 1.5 meters when it is actually a third of that distance.  So I took it upon myself to correct the graphic for them.

I don't think it will catch on as well as their previous graphic.  However they have enough problems with graphic manipulation.  This is from an advertisement poster in the airport celebrating being around for 100 years.  They have combined an image from the early days and a male pilot with his head turned with a picture of a female pilot in a modern airplane set up turned completely around facing the camera.  The old photo of the male is not turned completely around facing the camera and what it ends up looking like is Barney Stinson from HIMYM tv show looking at a woman.  I am really surprised the male pilot from 100 years ago has not been sued for sexual harassment because Barney should have been.

The scene at the airport was surreal, disturbing, and really weird.  I was there for 9 hours waiting on my flight to the states.  Normally I eat at least once at the airport, but all the restaurants were closed.  I understand that, food service is difficult to maintain social distancing while doing that.  The majority of stores were closed including things like the pharmacy and stores where you can grab packaged food and a soda to eat somewhere (grab and go).  

But then what confused me was the fact that souvenir shops, jewelry stores, clothing stores and Victoria secrets were all open.  I did think about going to a clothing store as the temperature in the airport was around 42 degrees F (6 Celsius) so it was cold.  I had on a short sleeved shirt appropriate for the Tanzania temperature when departing of around 82 degrees F (27.7 C) and I was cold for the entire 9 hours I was there.  Best I could figure is that no one thought to adjust the HVAC units for only around 100 people instead of the couple thousand normally in the airport.  They lost a significant heat load but left the AC running.  I will say about noon their time the jewelry and clothing shops all closed up.  So everything was pretty much closed.

I also noticed they closed all the toilets except the units in the center of the airport.  So if you like to go to the bathroom right before your flight you had to walk the airport hunting an open bathroom.  Another weird element were the flight boards.  It looked like that scene from Die Hard 2 when Fred Thompson says change the boards and every flight on their arrival and departure board goes to delayed.  It may be hard to see without getting to upsize the image but I counted and less than 5% of the flights were still a go on that board.  This may have been the contributing factor to the eerie quiet in the airport.  Sort of like the scene in The Walking Dead on the first episode without the wrecked cars everywhere.

So after 9 very cold hours and being kinda hungry now. I got on the flight to the USA.  It was a plane geared for around 400 passengers I think were had maybe 80 get on board.  I fought to sleep on this flight because I could not find a seat with more than an inch of incline so I kept falling forward.  Again it was limited food and beverage (a bottle of water and one of the waffle treats).   Again it was mostly uneventful except moderate turbulence about ever 40 minutes that required the seat belt sign and an announcement.  Upon arriving at Atlanta, we had to stay on the plane while EMS workers came on board and had us fill out a health form and check our temperature.  No one could disembark the plane until everyone was checked.  I actually felt that was appropriate since they had no clue where people were coming from until they did that.  Interestingly enough I got an email from SC DHEC saying they were informed I had traveled through a hot spot and I must self quarantine for 14 days.  I did not travel through any major hot spots to my knowledge.  I certainly did not check the box that I had traveled through the 4 areas they considered to be hot spots (China, Italy, Spain and one of the islands).

I did not take as many pictures at the Atlanta airport mainly because everything was closing for the night but it appeared most restaurants had been open in the food court.  Some of the larger chain restaurants appeared to be closed.  There were several places I could get a bag sandwich and soda so I could at least eat a little.  It was very quiet and empty as well.  Almost no one around in any capacity.  Customs was quick but honestly Atlanta's customs and immigration is normally pretty quick the last year or so.  They also do a good job of telling people what lines they need to be in unlike Detroit and especially DC and Philadelphia.  

My flight to Greenville was several hours away but I could tell the minute they put it on the board it would be empty.  

So I got home around 12:30 AM Monday morning to the Greenville Airport.  Mom and Dad waiting on me.   One thing about empty flights it does not take long to get your luggage.  There were no hugs just tossing me the key to Mom's car which they had put some groceries in for me as I headed to the hotel for my 14 days of self quarantine.  I have made use of no contact grocery curb side pickup to fill up on some items for the 14 days.  If I need something they will drop it off in the car and let me know it is there so i can go it out.  I do continue to call them everyday as I did the last week and half in Tanzania.  

So far self quarantine does not feel too much different than most of my life.   It is better than my life in Tanzania.  My hotel room is about three times the size of my house.  I have hot water showers and hot water to shave with.  I have access to cold Coke Zeros every day.  I have access to a lot more food choices in quarantine than I do in Tanzania.  There is a TV in my room with house flipper shows.  I did do laundry because it is always nice to really clean the clothes after a couple of months of being washed in the bucket by hand.  It is harder to get on the right time track when you don't have anything physically taxing to do.  I do go for walks along Pelham road at least once a day to keep my spirits up.  I don't get in the long walks I do back in Tanzania because it is too cool right now for me to enjoy them as much.  I have had several people call my cell phone since I have been home and talk.  

I left having set as much in motion as I possible could.  The Mauldin UMC Men's Fellowship paid for a lot more playground equipment and I had arranged to purchase and have it installed.  I have checked and the company handling it is still working and has my order in production so everything along that line is set.  Unfortunately we don't have the online teaching capabilities that are available here in the USA so I did set up for the teachers to make an activity pack every week with one sheet on each subject for their class and the headmaster and driver have to arrange locations to drop them off for the parents to pick them up with as little contact as possible.  They are supposed to send me updates on these packets for the next couple of weeks/months.  I actually expect they will close school there until the second semester begins in early July since the school will close the first week of June anyway.

I have pulled out my list of various activities I could be doing while I have some time over the next couple of months.  I am not sure how this affects my speaking engagements or the upcoming July trip. Basically since little has to happen to cancel those, I am proceeding like they will happen  until I hear otherwise because they were all in May and June.  I am concerned about our family vacation to Alaska the first week of June.  I expect it will be cancelled but until the cruise line says that it is I am again proceeding like it will happen.

I thought it might be good for me to ask you what you would like to hear about here on the blog in the coming months.  I have several things I can work on including doing more Reading with Barnabas videos.  I have enough content to edit for 10 more videos already.  I could do an introduction to some of my students and teachers using photos I already have and tell you about them.   I could work on mission related studies or discussions about what we could be doing to help our fellows in these rough times.  I could work on my novels or a novel of your choosing and do it "open source" where when I write something I put it up for you to read if you want to and you can make comments and suggestions to help me out.  I could also work on a kids bible study for  my students back in Tanzania but have you use it while I am working on it while you are homeschooling.  So I am going to let you vote on what you want.  Top vote getters will be what I work on.  You can vote for more than one item but please try to keep it to three.  Of course you may want me to take this time to leave you alone and I understand that too.