When you live in a migrant community and run a community center, home quarantines really bring an abrupt end to your life and work as you know it.
If you take away the people, we just have a huge house we aren’t sharing. Our community center is echoes of silence, reminding us of the aunties that didn’t come for work and the youth that aren’t here for class and the kids that aren’t here to play.
At the same time, because we do live and breathe in this community every other day, it is a rare thing to have so many days as just our family. We are trying to really enjoy these days with Oak, and that has been a gift.
So here’s what quarantine looks like for us.
We are starting every day with a walk or a run. This is keeping mom sane, because she’s a bit high-maintenance about exercise and being outside. There is a patch of trees that rise over the road near us, and it drops flowers every morning between 7:50am and 8:00am. It’s a highlight for both Oak and I! They smell fabulous, and are a beautiful reminder that time marches on.
There is an epic, sprawling highway being built just about half a kilometer behind our house and stretching almost eight kilometers through Mae Sot.
In the morning, we take this for walks. In the evening we take this for bike rides. Usually, at least once a day, we can catch the construction equipment. They let us bike or walk right near them, and we just watch them work, without cones or safety regulations except our own common sense. It’s every three-year-olds dream.
The new road also goes by and through many farms and fields, so there are always goats, cows, chickens, and horses to see. This farm is near to our house and a favorite. Goats and sheep and geese and chickens, oh my!
And wide open roads also create space for kite flying. We’ve been out for this a few times. And Stephen only had to search for the kite in the cornfield twice…
Oak has decided he absolutely loves books these days, and we are reading one after another. Not even two months ago when my sisters came, I was feeling guilty for all the new books they had brought: I felt like we had too many considering our neighbors… And now that I’ve read them all a hundred times, I’m over it. We ordered a new set of books on the second day of our quarantine. And while I’m hoping they arrive soon, knowing our delivery systems I more hope that the quarantine is over before they arrive 😬
And after weeks of telling him not to use loads of soap, we’re now just playing bubbles and soap for hours on end. Why not?
I’ve been excited to have time & space to cook–I’m currently not sharing my kitchen! I also wanted to enjoying cooking & baking with Oak, making things we don’t always have time to enjoy. However, it’s hard to enjoy fancy homemade meals (hollandaise, bagels, pizza, waffles…) while our friends are literally struggling for the next meal. Enter my genius husband’s idea: two meals a day.
We’ve tried to cut back to two family meals a day so that we can enjoy making bread and trying interesting recipes, but not feel as indulgent. (It also makes it more enjoyable to take an hour to prepare a meal from scratch and another hour to feed a toddler!) We also have timed these mid-morning for brunch and late afternoon for an early dinner, allowing us to be outside in the coolest parts of the day. Since most days are reaching over 100 right now, that is making our walks and bike rides more enjoyable.
Oak still has some snacks and meals on our walks and before nap so that he’s still eating three or five times a day. But for us, this–in addition to food distributions in the community–has helped us to balance the needs around us for our lives here and the quarantine lives of our friends and family stateside. It’s so odd to be between two cultures, and I’m often torn between my own privilege and our friends, as you see here, in every. aspect. of. our. lives.)
And we’re still enjoying incredible coffee, which I’m so thankful my husband makes daily.
We also have sweet friends, who even when they are short on rice and food, think of us! Thida brought rice for Oak just a few days into the quarantine, telling us, “I know you don’t really make rice, but he loves it. I’m happy to make it for him.” She brought him a lunch pail with rice, fish, and potatoes.
He absolutely loved the fish, so that when she arrived a few days later, he ran out and leapt to get the lunch pail. Once he’d opened it, he asked her where the fish was! 🤦♀️ She said she didn’t know he didn’t like eggs, but she’d bring him fish next time we went to the market. Oh my goodness, we’re still working on politeness and how not to ask our friends for their protein sources. 🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
As of today, we have found a solution to our visa, which has been a bit of stress during this quarantine. Our visa ended on 5 April, and we need to cross the border that is now closed. We also can’t leave the country with Oak, further complicating the situation. In the end, they have extended our visa here in Mae Sot, but only after two visits to immigration and $115. We are now required to visit immigration every fifteen days, and we’ll pay $115 every 30 days until the border re-opens. That is not ideal–for Covid nor with a toddler nor for our budgets–but we’re happy to be here legally and praying that the border is able to re-open sooner than later.
Until then, at least he’s cute with a mask and did wear it the whole time! {He kept telling me it was wet, and when I did take it off it was very wet. Turns out he’d been licking it or spitting on it the whole time?! Hence why toddlers should stay inside during such an outbreak.}
And so we are trying to do so! We continue to hope and pray for the best for our little migrant community here on the border.
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