The Haze Between Us

As I write this, the color of the light coming through our living room windows has been slowly shifting from a flat gray to a more golden hue. I can start to make out the outlines of the hills behind our neighborhood, and for the first time in a few weeks, I can hear the sounds of kids playing downstairs. This is significant. We don’t often make it into the global news cycle here in Malaysia, but over the past few weeks, I’ve seen some headlines pop up about our haze problem. As far as polluted South East Asian cities go, Kuala Lumpur is generally pretty good, but this September’s abysmal Air Quality Index has been a marked exception in an overall decent track record. Malaysia’s pollution tends to be more seasonal rather than constant, and it usually increases during the months of agricultural burning in both Malaysia and Indonesia. The winds shift and blow over the peninsula, carrying the smoke and other pollutants that combine with the constant humidity to make a noxious, toxic, blanketing haze. For a variety of reasons, this year’s “haze season” (which barely registered last year) has been particularly acute.

The kids went back to school in mid August, and right away, the pollution levels were such that the school had to employ its haze protocols: all outdoor activities have to be cancelled or moved indoors. All of them. For Theo, this has meant having recess and lunch (which is usually eaten al fresco) in his classroom and grade-level common areas pretty much every day, PE is all in the gym, swim team has only done dry land training indoors, and he has been running laps around the high school gym for cross country practice. His soccer club has had to cancel practices and games as the haze has worsened, and no friends have been outside playing in the afternoons and on weekends. If you ask him how school is going, he wouldn’t have much positive to say up to now, even though the teachers and administrators are doing an absolutely incredible job to keep learning on track and kids engaged.

Emma has been slightly less affected, although her soccer team might as well switch to a futsal team since they have had only indoor practices for the past month, except for a few. She is playing volleyball as well, which thankfully is indoors, and she isn’t necessarily looking to hang around on playground equipment for recess, so an indoor lunch isn’t a huge loss. Both kids had to start wearing masks at school for any outdoor transitions between classes. Last week, the haze got bad enough to make the Ministry of Education order the closure of ALL schools in Kuala Lumpur, including ours. The school implemented Virtual Learning for two days, a new experience for our family. I’ll just say that Virtual Learning continued to confirm for me why I will NEVER homeschool our offspring. Emma did great and was wonderfully motivated and independent. Theo was, well, not. And I happened to have some tight work deadlines looming for which I had not factored in extra days off of children at home in an already short week with yet another Malaysian holiday. Our family, mercifully, has had only minor reactions to the haze (headaches, general fatigue, itchy eyes and noses, scratchy throats), which has not been the case for others with respiratory conditions or compromised immune systems.

The conversations in our community about the haze, both in person and virtual, have ranged from the global to the granular. There has been the general outrage over our ongoing destruction of our planet, multiple petitions started to urge the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia to act, concern for many in Malaysia who lack any means to mitigate the effects of the pollution on their lives, lengthy WhatsApp posts about where to find masks and air purifiers, and near hourly updates on the latest AQI for our various neighborhoods.

Our family has managed to cope well enough, for the most part. There has been a lot of Rainbow Looming, Perler Beading, Beyblading, origami, and coloring. We’ve had countless games of volleyball with a beach ball and a mattress set up as a net in our hallway. Every ball we own has emerged from the ball basket and been bounced, thrown, or kicked in some manner around the house. Screen time has definitely gotten extended. Friends have come over to play and relieve the tedium of the weekend afternoons spent inside. However, the biggest challenge, one that I had not expected or anticipated, is how isolating this has been, and how much that isolation has affected our personal and family morale.

I don’t think I had realized until this past month just how much vital social interaction we have by being able to be outside. Our apartment complex has been ghostly silent and lacking the usual chaotic sounds of children at play. Our doorbell hasn’t rung nearly as much with kids looking for our kids to come outside. We have missed lazy Sunday afternoons chatting with neighbors poolside, or casual conversations and banter exchanged with people going to and from the mall next door, or hanging out with friends at sports practices and kids’ games. Our community support has been nearly all virtual, with lots of sympathy and commiseration and resources offered, and yet… As we all know, and research supports this, virtual community can’t replace the immediacy, connection, and efficacy of human, in-person interactions.

Many people have been quick to point out that this situation is nothing compared to other places with chronic and severe pollution issues, and I know that is true. But because this isn’t the overall norm for Malaysia, it has caught many of us off guard, having to quickly adjust a lot of things about our lives all at once. That isn’t easy no matter where you are. It is really hard to suddenly give up doing a lot of what you like to do, and retreat to your house, surveying the skyline and hoping for the winds to shift or the monsoon season to finally get started.

The isolation of this haze month, which has been like an extended snow closure without any of the fun, has highlighted for me the many things I love about being here in Malaysia, precisely because they have been in such short supply of late. I love the daily, unplanned interactions with neighbors and friends and school acquaintances that come from being out and about and that build up familiarity and comfort; I love the sweaty exhaustion of my kids at the end of a school day or after a sports practice; I love strolling past the pool on my way to the grocery store and stopping to chat with neighbors along the way; I love the stream of kids in and out of our house on the weekends and after school; I love the wet footprints tracked from the elevator through our house by our kids returning from the pool; I love sitting on our balcony in the mornings or evenings, feeling the warm humid air wrap around me and watching the birds or bats, depending on the time of day, swooping about; I love my weekly morning walks with a good friend in the nearby hills, dodging the crowds of lollygagging monkeys. We are deeply and abundantly fortunate to live here and the hints of blue sky final re-emerging are helping to remind me of that.

.