COVID-19 and Mission Efforts: One Story

Tony and Mary DeKoter were about halfway into their planned 2½ month stay serving villages in the Mwandi district of western Zambia when they began hearing of a new virus that was causing concern and disruption in parts of the world. Then, as COVID-19 spread quickly, their plans changed dramatically and they had to cancel the final three weeks of their stay, heading home on one of the last flights out of the district.

The DeKoters were volunteering as international relief managers with World Renew, overseeing a food distribution effort in Mwandi, which has experienced devastating food insecurity resulting from droughts and army worms.

“We were distributing maize meal, millet flour, beans, oil, and salt to over 25,000 people in 16 villages in the Mwandi district,” said Mary DeKoter. She added that their stay took place during the last three months planned for this project, which began in February 2019.

The DeKoters arrived in Mwandi at the end of January 2020 and started their first food distribution on February 3. Reaching the 16 villages with food usually took eight working days, said Mary.

“The farthest village was four hours away on rough road, and then it would take about two hours to distribute, and it would take another four hours to get back home. So they were long days.”

A month later, in early March, they ran a second food distribution to the same villages.

Around that time, Tony and Mary heard from their adult children that COVID-19 had reached North America and was closing schools, churches, and businesses.

With years of experience in living and serving overseas, the DeKoters were used to the need for flexibility and dealing with the unexpected. But despite the rapid spread of COVID-19, they still hoped to be able to finish their assignment and leave as planned on April 15.

Then, on Tuesday, March 24, while meeting by phone with World Renew staff, they were faced with a choice: stay in Zambia and run the risk of being forced to stay longer than planned — and with expired out-of-country medical insurance — or return home to Canada as soon as possible. They chose to return.

World Renew booked a flight for the following Sunday, March 29, and Tony and Mary started packing. On Thursday, they received another call. The Sunday flight had been canceled, and they would need to fly sooner — on Friday.

It was a scramble, said Mary. They had less than 24 hours to finish packing, give away food they had bought to last through their stay, and prepare local project workers to take over.

“We had planned a meeting as a team for Friday morning at 9:00; the agenda was all ready, so we told the team, ‘You’re going to have to move on without us . . .’ Some of this team — Kalaluka and Maurice — have been doing this for several years in Mwandi because there’ve been so many projects. We felt that they would be confident enough to carry out the last distribution,” said Mary.

So on Friday morning the DeKoters left for the airport near the city of Livingstone. “We arrived at the airport about noon,” said Mary, “and we found out the flight was still going from Livingstone to Lusaka [Zambia] — but then they told us that after this flight, the airport would be closing. I’m not sure if it actually did or not, but that’s what we heard.”

In Lusaka, they made their way to a hotel, where they would wait until Monday for their next flight. They never left the room that weekend, said Mary. Several cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in Lusaka, so the DeKoters stayed isolated to avoid contact with the virus.

Once settled, they learned more about the global impact of the pandemic. “We really didn’t know how bad it was until that Friday night when we were watching the news in the hotel,” said Mary. “For those seven or eight weeks while we were in Mwandi, we had no TV or radio. We had very limited internet access because it kept going off and on, so we couldn’t watch any news. So we finally got caught up to what was actually going on in the world.”

On Monday morning, they flew on a half-full jet from Lusaka to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  Then they flew to Dublin, Ireland, and on to Toronto, Ont., where they arrived March 31. The airports they passed through were nearly deserted, said Mary.

As required, Tony and Mary have been self-isolating in their Chatham, Ont., apartment since their return, and their local children have helped out by bringing groceries to restock the cupboards after their time away.

They recognize the blessing it is to have a comfortable home in which to pass the time during the pandemic, and to have access to groceries, clean water, and daily needs. It’s a reminder for all of us, they said, to pray for people living in circumstances that were already difficult before this pandemic hit the world.