Hello dear ones – It’s 2:33 AM in Mumbai and while I’d love to be sleeping, my body has other plans for me. So I thought, “Why not write to my readers and give them a quick update?” So here we are. Let’s do this!
As you may have deduced from my intro, we are back in Mumbai and fighting our way through jetlag. Sleep has been a total fail for me. We’re on the 4th night and my longest stretch has been 4 hours with me waking up between 12:30 and 1 AM every night. It stinks. :( This is yet another thing that seems to be getting harder the older I get. Boooooo.
When we unexpectedly left Mumbai in late April because of the spike in cases here it was a vastly different scene. We had been holed up in our apartment for the prior 6 months and only had 1 of our 2 vaccine shots. During my 3 months in Minnesota (and two weeks with no masks in Iceland), I savored the freedom that came with being fully vaccinated and having relaxed restrictions. That is not the case in India though. Things are still locked down here, so although my vaccinated status allows me to venture out more freely and reconnect with friends, I’m back in a world of restrictions and constant masking.
Perhaps the biggest difference between my return last November and my return now is that I feel hopeful again. India is hovering around 40,000 cases a day and school has informed us that they feel confident we’ll open in person on August 16th (Nia has been in virtual school since March 2020!). I am also comforted by the fact that people are good about masking and following distancing guidelines (probably because these things are enforced with monetary fines) and that vaccines are commonly accepted. It remains tenuous though, as estimates predict that only about 10% of the 1.4 billion Indians are fully vaccinated. There is a major vaccine shortage here and a huge wait list of people that want the privilege of being vaccinated. It’s very hard for me to witness that and reconcile it with the fact that the U.S. has an abundance of vaccine, some of which is going to waste. It’s yet another reminder of the privilege I have as an American. I never take that for granted anymore. I pray for a more equal distribution of the vaccine so that all can experience the freedom it provides and move on from this miserable disease.
On August 25th we will hit our 3 year Mumbai anniversary. Although a year of that was spent in the States due to COVID, it’s still the longest that we’ve lived anywhere overseas. Our tour here will wrap up in summer of 2022 so you know what that means . . . it’s time to bid for a new post this fall. Stay tuned for more updates on that soon. I know how much you all love our bidding drama!
I titled this post Same Same, Yet Different because although I am one of the most veteran members at the Consulate now (2 year tours are most common), in many ways I feel like a newbie as well. For example, I interviewed a new housekeeper/cook Monday who started Tuesday and I’ll spend the week orienting her to the house and our routines. The Consulate community has also changed a lot while I was holed up in my apartment. I probably only know about 30-40% of the people at post anymore. So while I am very comfortable navigating how things work at the Consulate and in India, I am also feeling anxiety over making new friends, wondering if the housekeeper will be a good fit and whether Nia’s transition back to school will go well.
I think that’s good for today. As always, thanks for reading. I appreciate you!
