We initially thought that the new virus was a bit of a media hype. Serious in China no doubt, but we underestimated how quickly it would change the world.

We’re currently in Sorong, Papua, and this is probably not the hot-bed of infection. Well, it might be, but officially Indonesia only has approx 200 cases. Hard to believe, in a country of 250 million people, with few measures put into place until this week. Schools in Sorong only closed yesterday. Hand sanitizer is sold out, more people are wearing face masks. But life has not yet come to a standstill. I expect it will.

Last weekend we read the quantitative analysis by Tomas Pueyo, https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

That brought it home for us: obviously the real number of infections is a multiple of the known infections. Sorong is probably as affected as any other place in the world. This week we have seen many countries shut down, close borders, change their immigration policies. That is starting to impact us: our Indonesia visa is expiring this week, and except for Germany our stay in any other country will be limited by visa duration, if they let us in in the first place. The excellent German passport has almost turned into a liability.. now whenever I tell someone that we are German I am quick to add that I have not been home since 2018.

With our visas expiring and many countries closing, the question becomes where do we go from here? The three nearest neighbours to this end of Indonesia are the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and Australia (Palau and Micronesia to the North have already introduced strict controls). The Philippines are increasingly being locked down. Papua New Guinea is the direction we wanted to go anyway, and still allows entry in three ports. So today we are clearing out of Indonesia, and tomorrow morning we will leave for Rabaul, at the Eastern end of New Britain, PNG.

We are well stocked up with everything. As much as this is just the same normal provisioning that we have done for any extended trip, in this case it does conjure images of survivalist bunkering. Maybe we did buy a little more than we usually would, as there is a very real possibility that in Rabaul we will be asked to quarantine first. We are hoping that they will count our journey, which will take 3-4 weeks, as quarantine time. We will self-quarantine for the first two weeks and make sure we do not spread anything.

In many ways we are probably fortunate to be able to remove ourselves easily from civilization and the areas with a more concentrated risk of infection. But it sure feels like setting off into the unknown!

We hope that instead of creating new barriers this crisis will bring out the best in communities, with people helping each other in times of need. For sure nobody will stay unaffected.