The New Normal

Several people have asked if we are back to normal as far as the crisis is concerned. (I won't go into how normal we are in other aspects of life. Ha.) My answer is that we have a new normal. As far as I can tell, the crisis is not close to being over, but it's come to a place that we can live with it as it is. It means that we don't go into some areas of town unless absolutely necessary, and that on particularly volatile days we stick pretty close to home. It means that the dairy products and cooking oil from the president's company are in the stores only sporadically. It means that although the girls have been having school as normal, school can be canceled without warning. Matthew has extra paperwork and red tape at work, since flying requires extra permissions right now. So, is it inconvenient? Sometimes. Can we live with it? For sure. Is it wearing on us? Maybe. It's hard to tell. This is so much better than the first week or two when we stayed at home so much and couldn't get groceries and other things as normal. Those weeks make what we've experienced since then seem not-so-bad.
We have tried to be very careful about how much the girls hear about the details of what happens in town. They know that the mayor and president don't get along, and that there are angry people who stole things and burned buildings. Caitlyn knows a bit more - that people have been killed, etc. But I really have been careful after Caitlyn told me that it makes her nervous to talk about it. We pray about it as a family and we try to answer their questions. Beyond that I don't know if there are other things we should be doing to help them cope.
Sometimes I struggle with guilt. One of my (literal) nightmares in the last few years has been being evacuated from war, while my Malagasy friends stay behind. It doesn't seem like we'll be evacuated, but you never know. We do have the option. So many people here wouldn't want to leave, but even if they did, they probably don't have the option. There's also a lesser guilt about being able to go on eating as we always have. Cooking oil has tripled in price and now settled down to about double the price since this began. Sure, it's expensive, but I can still buy it. Yogurt, cheese and milk have all gone up. Meat hasn't necessarily gone up since the crisis, but it has increased by 30 - 150% since we moved here. But I can still afford it. I won't even get into what we pay to fuel our truck! I'm processing living among poverty once again. How do I reconcile my relative wealth here with my decidedly not wealthy status in North America? How do I decide when to share? Outright begging in our area has dramatically decreased since we moved here, but I know that many, many people are suffering from the high cost of living right now.
So, that's the new normal.