After only 8 weeks at Talua we have made the tough decision to return to NZ amid the uncertainty around Covid-19. At the moment we are self isolating with Ally's sister in Whanganui and once the 14 days are over, we will stay for the remainder of the lockdown. We miss our Talua family and will return as soon as possible this year.
The decision to leave was quite sudden as events escalated rapidly late last week. On Wednesday we went into town and stocked up on a few items to prepare for the new rules around washing hands etc that had just been approved. On Thursday morning Ally saw that volunteers from VSA and other organisations were being recalled home. This seemed serious and we began to wonder about returning. The NZ High Commission in Vanuatu were echoing the NZ Govt call urging NZers to come home while they still could. After discussing with others at Talua, the Medical Centre in Luganville, PCANZ Global Mission Coordinator Phil King and God we bought air tickets and managed to catch the last flight to Auckland on Sunday
At this stage Vanuatu still has no confirmed cases of the virus and we are hoping and praying that it will stay this way.
We have brought work home that we can be doing to continue serving Talua and the local school (Tata) while we are here. Brian had recently attended a week long course on policy writing and will take a good deal of time to update Talua's policies and procedures to comply with VQA standards.
VQA course run by Dr Elly Govers from NZ. The course was mostly in Bislama but Brian was able to follow it reasonably well.
Ally's birthday celebration with her class and with banana cake (her lemon icing was a hit!)
Ally's birthday party continued back at our house with our friends.
We were often visited by little ones collecting water from our rainwater tank for their families.
Walter - a neighbour's boy who often came to visit.
