The CDCA is closed this week; closed until the Wednesday following Easter.
This is the time that we usually close to enforce that our staff rests and goes to see family*. Semana Santa (Holy Week) is a time that Nicaragua traditionally closes… for worship and going to beach … mostly going to the beach.
This year the JHC folks are staying home… Becca and Paul are having a “Staycation” with their daughters, Daniel and Claudia are still quarantined with sweet Samantha, and the Old Farts have been told by their children “STAY HOME!”.
The adult kids pleaded with us to stop allowing CDCA staff to come into our home, stop going to the office, stop having Paul, Becca and the girls in the house, and stop going out. In a Community meeting, Daniel and Claudia on the phone said “We want you not to get sick and we worry about Dad and Mom (Been) with their asthma.”
The Community members have all reacted differently… one is depressed because of change, one is angry because the world has turned upside down, one is afraid of being stuck with all the work, one feels very vulnerable to the virus and a little afraid (me)… but we all feel loved and cared for.
Having Becca be our out-in-the-world person is amazingly loving. Becca wearing her mask, in case she is asymptomatic, as she shouts at us from six feet away regarding questions is so thoughtful. Paul finding chemicals we need and fixing things from afar is extremely generous.
The staff staying away from us but running this work, including the clinic, is touching and humbling. And Daniel and Claudia, being the spokespeople for the kids to talk to us about stopping was brave, because we can be quite stubborn and sometimes messianic, if we are honest.
So here we are, in our home, writing, balancing reports and books, talking on the phone with folks, working, and Sarah posting our blogs and even making face shields for the clinic staff and health promoters to use when work starts back next week… because she can… and we shake our fists at COVID-19 and say, “We will not be defeated!!!”
What are you doing this week?
-Kathleen
*Nicaragua labor laws require that employers give four weeks of paid vacation or extra pay for working vacation weeks. So we schedule staff time off, because the vast majority would rather have the pay, and we think they need the rest and we don’t have the extra pay for them. It is interesting that the more years that go by with them taking their vacation, the more they look forward to it. We certainly do.
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