10-9 to 10-21 Alone on the Island

Jason petting a kangaroo while I sat on a rainy island

I am getting a taste of my own medicine. I left Jason in February to go to Australia on medevac when I hit my hand with a bush knife. Now, I’m stuck on Pentecost while he is in Australia on medevac. His is not self-inflicted or an emergency, which was good planning on his part.
My medevac experience was miserable. I can’t say that being on the island is really great either. Now, I am alternating between worry about Jason and annoyance that he gets things like pizza and rugby. I’m in the day-to-day routine while he is on an adventure.
Look! Paved roads!  

Right now, it is useful that we started out our relationship long-distance. We try to talk every day, though that isn’t always possible between hit-or-miss reception and too many cloudy days. (I can’t charge my phone if it’s cloudy.) We send each other random text messages about the things we find funny or reminders to take our antimalarials. They are the same things we’d share over lunch or on the walk to and from Melsisi, now it is just squished into a text that may or may not make it through. This isn’t the longest we’ve been apart and we have practice on how to make it work.

Basically, we try to keep the lines of communication open. It isn’t easy to be separated, especially when we are both in the habit of relying on each other. On the other hand, we are getting a taste of the single volunteer experience, sort of.
The correct hospital to go to for medevac.

Jason read an article about how couples function better than the individual skills would imply, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts kind of a thing. The study showed that couples use each other as a sort of “external hard drive.” Unfortunately, my external hard drive has been temporarily disconnected so I can’t dump the things I normal would on it. I have always been independent, now I am being forced to remember how to be alone as well. This is a good reminder of all of those skills, though not the life path I’ve chosen.

I will point out that of the 80 volunteers currently in country, there have been four out of country medevacs. Jason and I are two of them. When did we become such sh*t magnets? There is a long list of things that people say are a “once in a lifetime” kind of bad luck, yet I’ve had like four this year. Really, what mirror did I break or black cat did I cross? Maybe someone did do nakaimos(black magic) on me. 
He was in Australia.  Of course he held a koala.

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