To be honest, we have never truly lived in lockdown. Benin's government
decided that it was too harsh for this context, and seem to have handled
the outbreak effectively in other ways. SIM France asked us to act as if
we were in lockdown in France, which we mostly did - only leaving the
compound here to shop once or twice a week, to go walking in an empty
forest or to visit the kids' library on the other SIM compound. But we
have interacted with the missionaries and Beninese employees working on
this compound - always keeping one or preferably two metres between us.
However, as the weeks passed and the epidemic didn't explode here, we
did visit a few friends - still trying to keep a distance - which
wouldn't have been allowed in France.
It hasn't been that difficult, because our life up in Pèdè was similar.
Never seeing family, having few regular social contacts, shopping once a
week, nowhere to go out to on day trips...! The big differences were
church services and the handful of good friends we visited or hosted
from time to time.
What will be strange is to go back to Europe and to find things so
different. People talk a lot about "reverse culture shock" when you go
back to your own culture, but whether on short visits or the year we had
back in France, I've never suffered from it. But this time it seems more
likely! It certainly isn't the ideal time to be moving to a new place -
people are hardly in the mood for making new friends, and our own love
of hospitality will have to be inventive to survive!
However, at the moment I'm mainly focused on the short-term challenges
of packing up again, getting to France and finding somewhere to
self-isolate for 2 weeks!
