Phil & Christine in Minnesota, USA

Christine & I just wanted to update you on what we are facing in this time of COVID-19. Our teams continue to work in Bangladesh. But shortly before the really serious lockdown began in Bangladesh, the international staff team asked Christine & I to take some R&R in Dhaka (the capital). So we ended up leaving Cox's Bazar on (what we didn't know at the time was) the last flight out of dodge (or out of Cox's). So we ended up getting stuck in Dhaka, and working remotely from there.

After the huge distribution, NUT work is scaled back

After having been there for 3 weeks, and having no hope that we would be able to get back to Cox's anytime soon (given the fact that all commercial flights are grounded into the month of May), we again consulted with our country director and international colleagues. From that discussion we decided to take a repatriation flight arranged by the US embassy in Dhaka to Washington DC on the 13th of this month. We arrived in Dulles on the 14th and drove to Minnesota from Dulles. So we have been quarantining in the basement airbnb of a young couple that live next to our son, Nathan, and his wife Anna.

The plan is that we will continue to work remotely (late in the evening and early in the morning when we can have contact) with our teams from here until we can return to BGD. After quarantine Christine will work at renewing her passport, and we will apply to renew our visas (which you remember were expiring on May 1) while we wait for international flights between BGD and the US to resume.

In a wonderful twist (that only God could orchestrate), our country director feels that it should be easier, because of the corona virus, for Christine and I to get visas for BGD because we both have our Master's in Public Heath (shout out to Tulane University!) and the government of BGD is more open to people with such degrees given the crisis.

I want to give you some resources that I have been collecting over the last month or so that you can look at if you want to find out more about how the refugees are facing the crisis (the first is a link to an interview that our country director gave to Tearfund New Zealand):

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=220079196103162 - you can follow this Medair FB page if you want to keep up with what Medair is doing around the world.

https://www.msf.org/rohingya-refugees-left-starve-sea

https://www.thedailystar.net/frontpage/news/virus-can-cause-havoc-rohingya-camps-1882162

Thank you so much for your support!

Praise:

1. Safe travel to Minneapolis
2. The understanding of our Bangladeshi colleagues as we took the decision to leave BGD for the time being. 

Prayer:

1. For the peace of mind of our colleagues, a few of whom have expressed dismay that we have left a country with a few hundred reported cases of the virus, to rejoin a country that has 3x more than any other country of the world.
2. For our visa application process.
3. For our world in the time of this crisis (this probably goes without saying).
4. For resolution of some existing health issues that Christine has been dealing with. 
5. For the Rohingya refugees who face a multitude of crises, including the corona virus. And that God would continue to operate this miracle of no confirmed cases in the camps. Divine intervention is the only hope of this remaining the case. 

Your resiliency during a time of COVID-19

I was recently led to re-read these questions that I posed to you in our post of the 23rd of November:

• How would you respond if you were forced from your home? 
• Would you be able to find joy? 
• How would you combat creeping despair? 
• What would be your strategies for resilience?

Rather than being forced from your homes, most of you have confined to your homes. But I think those questions are quite pertinent for all of us in this time!

This article by NT Wright helped me to crystallize some of the lament in our hearts in this time: https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/?fbclid=IwAR3zPKoEDoQBYVsPE4uGsOzAKEPmFx9SK_YCqGBv8BUCG9_fnGeFGBVe9Ss

I have these laments (among others):

1. That a people so marginalized already are only marginalized more by COVID-19;
2. That we are separated from our biological extended and nuclear family during this time;
3. That I find it so difficult to see past my own inconveniences caused by COVID-19 to be able to perceive the dire consequences for others;
4. That Christine has not been able to shake illness for the last month or so;
5.  That this illness could be what forces us to leave this place where we feel called to work, and this people with whom we feel called to walk;
6. That the poor are made poorer by such circumstances. 

I have been drawn to the biblical laments for some time (those of you from Emmanuel Mennonite in Minneapolis might remember us bringing our laments to the altar some years back). These writers cry out to God because they know him as He who acts on behalf of His people. So their lament is an act of faith, not an act of despair! In fact, the flip side of the coin bearing the image of lament is an image of faith! The Biblical writers didn't write out of abject despair wondering whether God even exists - they rather wrote out of their relationship with a God who they existentially knew and experienced.

Jesus, in the very travails of death on the cross, quotes from one of these Biblical songs of lament - Psalm 22 - when "...about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" Maybe you feel a bit like the psalmist, who continues on by saying, "Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?"

I am certainly not smart enough to understand what God is doing, or allowing to happen, through COVID-19. NT Wright suggests (to those of us so influenced by the Enlightenment) that we may find no rational answer to to this question. In Stanley Hauerwas' book Naming the Silences, he suggests that the question we would be asking ourselves is whether or not we have a community surrounding us when we suffer, rather than why God allows suffering.

Psalm 46 is a place where I have sought comfort in these nearly unprecedented days:

1 ¶  God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

3  though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah

4  There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

5  God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

6 ¶  The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts.

7  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

8  Come, behold the works of the LORD; see what desolations he has brought on the earth.

9  He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire.

10  "Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth."

11  The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

So I come back to my questions: 

• Are we able to find joy in these difficult circumstances? 
• Do you have strategies for combating creeping despair? 
• What are your strategies for resilience?

We would love to hear what your strategies for resilience are as you yourself - and all people around our globe - face these cataclysmic changes to our daily existence. What ways are you finding to love your neighbors (next door or around the world) at this time?

My prayer is that the God of all comfort will share His with you - that you, in turn, can share this comfort with others!

(c) Medair / Hailey Sadler

Double rations and preparedness in the nutrition program

With all of us focusing on the COVID-19 crisis, I wanted to update you a bit on the implications for our lives and COVID-19 preparedness in the Nutrition program of Medair.

(c) Medair / Hailey Sadler

As an overview, from the beginning of 2020 we moved into 4 different camp locations and have been providing food rations to all children under 5, children from 5-9 years and elderly (>60 years) with severe malnutrition, and Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLWs). I have described these services a bit in the past but for a brief recap children and elderly with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) come weekly for their food and follow-up visit. Children with moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) come biweekly. PLWs come biweekly, and all healthy children come once a month. In total we serve around 18,000 beneficiaries monthly.

Porters unloading double rations
from truck

As an organization that is used to working in emergency settings we started our COVID-19 preparedness plans in January. The first confirmed cases were recognized by the Bangladeshi government on March 9. Leading up to this time we trained staff on messaging to share with beneficiaries and in the communities and basic COVID-19 understanding. We worked to get our sites ready with extra masks, soap, hand-washing stations, and alcohol based hand rubs. And we encouraged the nutrition sector, the organization that brings together all the nutrition actors to start working on their preparedness plans. Finally at a nutrition sector meeting on March 16 I shared our own proposal for preparedness with a imminent restriction on movement into the camps. Our proposal was to begin serving all beneficiaries a double ration immediately and continue until all were served. This would make sure that everyone had food for at least 2 weeks (SAM cases), 1 month (MAM and PLWs) and 2 months (all healthy children) respectively. This proposal was agreed to immediately by the UN agencies. All NGOs were told to try to distribute double rations to all beneficiaries beginning March 22 and end by March 31.

Rohingya in the camps waiting for extra rations

The first step in doing this was to order the additional food that we'd need to distribute during this time period. I put in an order with WFP (World Food Programme) - which provides most of our food for the nutrition services - for 220 metric tons (MT) of food. Yes, that's 220,000 kg of food. This would be added to what we already had in stock. On a monthly basis we distribute around 115 MT which means we needed double that amount of food. All of this food  would need to be loaded onto trucks at the WFP warehouse and trucked either directly out to the camps or to our warehouse (from where it would then be trucked to the camps). In the camps it would be hand carried by Rohingya porters to each of our nutrition sites where it would then distributed. This process is all handled by our logistics department - it may have been one of their biggest challenges yet given the time constraints.

On March 19 we visited all 4 nutrition sites and discussed setup with the site supervisors. Rather than receiving 3-400 beneficiaries/day we would need to plan for around 1000. We had to look at how we could best protect staff and beneficiaries by considering social distancing, handwashing for all beneficiaries, and managing this number of people in a 6 hour day. At the end of the day we again met with all the site supervisors to go over plans. Not once did any of the staff say it wasn't possible, rather they were all focused on the lifesaving need to get all beneficiaries food in case camp access was shut down due to virus cases in the camps.

Rohingya taking the extra rations home

March 22 our staff began distributing to their beneficiaries. Each camp had its own challenges but overall the day went well. The following day they kept up the pace of serving beneficiaries; each sub block (as you remember, camps are divided into blocks) was called at a different time to try and manage flow and keep distance between people. The third day we were informed that rather than having another 5 days to distribute we should try and finish in the next two days. After that Bangladesh would be going on lockdown for the next two weeks and access to the camps would be limited. All of a sudden we were facing increasing numbers served to 2000+/day rather than 1000. Imagine serving double rations to 18,000 people in 4 nutrition sites over 4 days. I am so proud of our nutrition staff for working so hard. In Medair we talk about going the extra mile. This is a true example of staff going the extra mile.

We don't know what the next weeks and months will hold. Our health staff are already experiencing difficulty getting into the camp to work. Movement is restricted to protect people in the camps as some COVID-19 cases have been detected outside of the camps in the Cox's Bazar area where some staff live. With the lockdown in place our office staff will be working from home this next week. Nutrition will see when it can get back out to the sites with skeleton staff to follow up on the children with SAM and MAM. We will see how we can use our Rohingya volunteers to support the ongoing work as they live, and work, in these communities that we are trying to serve in spite of the COVID-19 crisis.

Thanks for:

• the incredible support provided by the logistics teams in procuring our personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies and trucking all this extra food
• the hard work of all the nutrition teams to serve as many beneficiaries as they were able before the shutdown
• the courage of our health teams to serve on the front lines (logs erected a tent for isolating potential COVID-19 cases at one of the Medair health clinics)

Pray for:

• the ongoing setting up of isolation and treatment centers both in the camps and in the broader community
• the relationships between the host community and the Rohingya refugees - with fear and suspicions rampant right now about who is to blame for COVID-19
• protection against the virus - particularly in the camp setting where the population density is higher than a cruise ship
• our Medair team as we work to protect staff and volunteers as much as possible in their work
• Phil and I who are taking a week of much needed rest in Dhaka. We are on lockdown here, like everyone else in the country. We've never experienced such quiet in Dhaka before! Pray for me, Christine, in particular, as I've been struggling with feeling worn down for a couple of months.

Night life in the camps and a new resouce - Medair Lives

I wonder what the title of this post evoked for you? Were you wondering about night clubs in the camps (there are none)? Were you thinking about violence that happens at night (unfortunately, that is part of the reality of refugees as drug gangs and the Rohingya rebel group sometimes make life difficult for people)? I often wonder how people deal with the rats at night (particularly securing the food commodities they get from the nutrition clinics from the rats)? Or have you heard reports of Christians being persecuted in the camp in the last month (this took place at night)?

Actually those realities had nothing to do with the title of this blog post. It has to do with a refugee who documents night life in the camps through his photography. Check it out here: https://asiatimes.com/2020/02/the-nightlife-of-rohingya-refugees/.

I think that this article gives a glimpse into the lives of the Rohingya. They are discouraged by the lack of a future. They continually retell the stories of horrors that they faced in Myanmar. They like to be social. In the absence of school, people like this young man seek to train themselves in other things (like photography) as a coping mechanism. The horror of their stories cannot erase the creative impulse that drives poets, musicians and photographers, like this young man. And the case brought against the government of Myanmar in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) gave at least momentary hope to a people who seem to have so little.

If you are wondering how this young man gets gets his photos out to the Asia Times, your thoughts are going where mine went. There is no network for data in the camp (it was cut off a few months ago). But refugees are also nothing if not resourceful and resilient. They find a way to do the things they want (and need) to do!

The last two months have been super intense for Christine and I. The number of international staff has dwindled to between 4-5. This means that we are constantly covering for each other. It has become more and more difficult to get visas for international staff - for all international NGOs, not simply ours. The Covid-19 situation around the world will not make this any easier. But just when I was beginning to despair of us getting our visas renewed in May, today we had a Nepali consultant get a work permit! Thanks be to the conventional-wisdom-tables-turning God that we serve!

I find myself more at peace with life in Bangladesh and more drawn to this country and the people we work with (those people, for me, are all Bangladeshi). I think this is my heart giving itself to this place and these people. I don't know exactly what that means.

Something that might tell you about the rhythm of our life here is that yesterday I found the time to watch a video that I no longer remember how long ago I opened in my browser.... It was as if I found it anew (except that it was already open on my browser).... It is this video: youtube.com/watch?v=bAB1iyexxRo&feature=youtu.be. Check it out! For those of you who are interested in knowing more about the lives of people connected to Medair (local and international workers, refugees etc), you can write and email to florian.ecuyer@medair.org and ask more about this. My understanding is that you would get content specifically related to the different types of lives connected to Medair.

Thanks for your prayers -- they really are what keeps us going!

Praise for:

1. A new visa for one of our international staff members - woohoo!
2. God's grace in the midst of a reality that often seems to be spiraling out of control!
3. Amazing Medair staff - at the base, in the camps and at HQ
4. Christine & I finding our place here in Medair Bangladesh - God confirms His call over and over
5. Thanks that, in the face of dwindling supplies and rising prices, we were able to procure the personal protection equipment that we needed if we would need to face caring for people with Covid-19 in our clinics - this was no small feat!

Prayer for: 

1. Our visa application which will be made early in May (if the world as we know it doesn't cease to exist before that time....)
2. Covid-19 to NOT make it to the camps - this would be an unmitigated disaster (for which we are, nonetheless, preparing)
3. Covid-19 to be a reminder that we are not in control of our lives (that is a delusion), and that we need the One who created this world and who also will walk with us day-to-day through the suffering and the triumph!

Refugee boys caked in mud and other news!

Our communications person shared a link to this story a couple of weeks ago: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/24/i-want-to-tell-of-our-suffering-comms-crackdown-puts-rohingya-on-mute-bangladesh-coxs-bazar.

In our last blog we talked about how kids will be kids (interestingly enough someone mentioned this very line to me in church while in the US), in spite of difficult circumstances. Check out the wonderful picture of two young Rohingya refugees caked in mud in the article above!

The article also gives us the perspective of young people on the ban on internet in the camps - what this means practically for them. Here are some other challenges for us as an organization:

1. The only way we have to communicate between the office and staff in the camps is telephony. In the past we used WhatsApp and Skype for sending reports and other communication. Connecting even by phone is becoming more difficult.
2. Emergency services in the camps are handicapped by not being able to use location services.

Christine & I were in Minneapolis over Christmas. We were blessed to spend Christmas with our kids and Christine's extended family. It was also wonderful to be at our church twice during the short stay. 

For those of you who celebrate the advent season, we pray that it was meaningful for you. It was again incredibly meaningful for us to practice the discipline of Advent-keeping by reading the devotionals by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This quote really resonates with us:

We are, no doubt, among the sated and the satisfied. But we also find that we have carried for some time a restlessness in us for the least served, the forgotten and the vulnerable. So we are so gratified and privileged to have been able to walk alongside the Rohingya throughout 2019. We also pray that we can get our visas in May in order to fulfill our contractual agreement to continue to work with the Rohingya through the end of 2020. 

Praise: 

1. Those 45 nutrition recruitments happened - thanks for your prayers! However, a couple of key nutrition staff turned down our offer, so these positions remain unfilled. Please be in prayer about this. 
2. The 3 old nutrition sites were handed over and we started work in the 4 new sites on Jan 5.
3. Just deep gratitude for this opportunity to be with our kids and extended family. 

Prayer: 

1. Onboarding of new nutrition staff and a quick sense of unity and esprit du corps between new and old staff.
2. For acceptance by the refugees in these 4 new camps who have lost their former nutrition service provider(s) and are transitioning to our clinics.
3. For God's leading as we walk alongside the Rohingya
4. For visas for us (in May) and others currently in the process.

Medair Advent devotional and news of the week!

Greetings all,

Christine & I want to share with you an Advent devotional put out by Medair for this advent season. There is only one devotional per week. But you might find it significant as you prepare to receive anew this year the One who came as a refugee, only to become the Lord of all! Here is a link where you can find it: https://app.box.com/s/xxzbfxak3pkn9l0qa7xlfux514ezomj4.

Our international team here in BGD is again doing our Dietrich Bonhoeffer Advent devotional that we did last year as well. We are looking forward to preparing for Advent together.

The Rohingya  volunteers  role playing during training

We had a very productive work week this past week. Phil is so thankful for all the things that his team accomplished. The nutrition transition has presented a number of staffing and logistical challenges. But two logs staff created a spreadsheet yesterday to help us all think about some of these challenges in a new way. One of the nutrition officers, Saiful, brought his outreach supervisors from the 3 current nutrition sites to the project office to train them so they could in turn hold trainings with their Rohingya volunteers. That was a direct application of a training of trainers that he attended last week. It is always nice to see those applications.

More role playing

Praise:

1. A very productive work week!
2. Opportunity to talk with our kids on Thanksgiving morning!
3. Significant growth in our Bangladeshi staff all across field office and our programs.

Prayer:

1. Wisdom for negotiating with UN partners for health and nutrition programs
2. Wide open doors for continued ministry to the Rohingya through our programs. 

The complexities of refugee life

I have always been intrigued by the tendency of some media to paint things in broad strokes which tend to envision things in black or white. It is either total despair or absolute joy - there seems to be little in between these polarities. Obviously this is a broad generalization. But I sometimes wonder if remarks such as, "Wow, this trip made me realize just how blessed we are in the US," are born out of such a bipolar worldview that tends to only see the material realities of people's lives.

Saleem showing a picture of his
home in Myanmar

When Florian Ecuyer, a media employee from headquarters, was here in September, we talked some about this inability of media to nuance the realities of refugees' lives. And I think that Florian's photos from that trip do a great job of pointing to the nuances.

This first photo of Saleem is fairly neutral. He no doubt has remorse over not being able to live in his home, but rather has to live in the largest refugee camp in the world. But he is able to show people a picture of his home in Myanmar - maybe in some way this is healing for him. I don't know. But it also is probably part of his ardent desire to be able to return to his home country and the place of his origins.

The joy of Children

Children are often more resilient than adults. And one sees this in the camps. Kids will be kids.... There are kids playing everywhere in a camp of 1 million people. Florian did a great job of capturing that joy that children continue to feel - maybe wherever they are, in whatever circumstances they find themselves. And this is true of the Rohingya children!


This is not, however to deny that there is anguish and pain in the camps as well. Florian captured this well in this picture of a man carrying a woman on his back. Honestly, I don't know the story. It is hard to whitewash the fact that this woman has to be carried wherever she wants to go. But she was leaving a health clinic. And the fact is that she likely has access to better healthcare than she would back in Myanmar.

One of the ironies of life in this mega refugee camp is that life for the Rohingya here in the camps is, in some very existential ways, better than it is for their family members who have remained back in Myanmar. There are those in the host community here in Bangladesh who also contend that the Rohingya live better than they do. That is a difficult equation to work out. But the fact is that the life of the Rohingya here is not black and white. It is not simply a picture painted in the broad strokes of despair. And it isn't a portrait of people living an easy life either.

The sun setting over the rice paddies
surrounding our office/home

But isn't that life for all of us? It would seem, given the staggering number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world right now, that none of us is all that far removed from a life of displacement. How would you respond if you were forced from your home? Would you be able to find joy? How would you combat creeping despair? What would be your strategies for resilience? These are questions to which the Rohingya work to find answers each day.

We are thankful to be able to walk alongside the Rohingya, in their delight and their jubilation, as well as in their desperation and their hopelessness. Isn't this what Jesus did when walked he on this earth? And we are asked to do no less.

Praise:

• For a good R&R
• For the Nutrition sector continuing to move forward in the plans to move partners to new camps
• For the Gambia opening a case against Myanmar for the systematic injustice against the Rohingya - a real source of rejoicing for them!

Prayer: 

• For ongoing work to be done for moving Nutrition clinics
• For project proposals for Shelter and Health sectors
• For the courage to continue to walk alongside the Rohingya in the complexity of their lives