Every time I go onto social media, I see people posting about how you shouldn’t be traveling right now and if you do, you are effectively a horrible person. Rather than continuing to point out that there are extenuating circumstances, I want to share my experiences and talk a bit about what I am going through right now.
Starting a New Chapter…….
As many of you may know, India has been my home for the past two years. I finished up my work contract there and was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to renew. As I wasn’t sure what to do, I decided to have some down time and volunteer with an NGO in Zanzibar for awhile. Much like my previous organization, they used tourism revenue to fund education. It seemed like a logical next step and would give me some time to figure out which direction I wanted to go in long term. So I packed up my stuff and flew out of Mumbai on March 4th for what was supposed to be at least 3 months in Zanzibar. At this point, there were around 4 cases of COVID in India.
I flew from Mumbai to Istanbul where I left the airport to wander around the city during my 9 hour layover. I then took the next flight from Istanbul to Zanzibar. I spent the first weekend exploring the island and getting settled in my new home and then started teaching on Monday, March 9th.
I spent the first week blissfully thinking that I had found the perfect place to ride this out. Free accommodation, free food and a relatively relaxed work schedule plus an evening swim every day in crystal clear waters. The children were adorable and I smugly thought that I had lucked out.
But then, I started reading about India’s initial COVID outbreak. Half of the 31 people infected were a group of Italian tourists. My mind quickly went back to all of the tourists I had seen in Stone Town and Nungwi the previous weekend. Nervously, I began asking the local NGO staff and the Italian volunteer coordinator if they thought that Zanzibar would be able to cope with an outbreak. The local staff all resoundingly believed that it wouldn’t but the pig-headed volunteer coordinator kept assuring me that everything would be fine.
By Saturday, I was starting to get nervous. Zanzibar had done nothing to limit tourists and wasn’t testing for COVID. While I am not actually worried about getting sick (I kind of assume that I am going to get it at some point), I started to get very concerned about the lack of infrastructure and what would happen. I was staying about a 90 minute drive outside of Stone Town and there wasn’t much of anything in between. The nearest “hospital” was a one room clinic and the closest grocery store had less stock than most New York City newsstands.
So I started to research what my options would be if I needed to leave Zanzibar quickly. The US and Europe are basically out of the question due to lock-downs, closed borders and my lack of American health insurance. Despite having a few weeks left on my work visa, India was off limits because I had left the airport in Istanbul and now anyone who had been to Turkey was banned. I looked at Georgia because it is relatively closed to Africa and has a year long visa scheme. Then they closed their borders. I began looking at Hong Kong but the only flight options had layovers in red-zones. So I started looking at Mexico. Nearly every single flight from Tanzania transited through either Europe or the US.
Out of Africa
Then fate made my choice for me. On Tuesday night, the NGO I was working for announced that they were closing and us volunteers either had the option to stay in the NGO compound for a lockdown (only 1 person allowed in and out each week to get groceries) or we could leave. The NGO founder talked about the pros and cons of staying and reconfirmed that my worst fears could happen. The same ones that the volunteer coordinator refused to listen to a few hours earlier that day.
I started my search again and luckily, I eventually found a flight going from Dar es Salaam to Istanbul and then direct to Mexico City. The entire trip will take 36 hours and I am currently praying that Mexico doesn’t suddenly decide to close their borders or that Turkey doesn’t suddenly stop flights. I leave tomorrow.
My current backup plan is that I will hang out in Mainland Tanzania since it is slightly less frightening than getting stuck on an island and hope that my visa doesn’t expire before this is all over. Kenya has closed its borders so trying to exit through there isn’t an option.
The Emotional Cost
This unexpected financial costs of this are certainly painful but what I feel is more damaging are the emotional costs. I have had major anxiety since Saturday about what to do. I didn’t want to disappoint the NGO by asking to leave early but I was also scared that since they were all from Turkey, that they would decide to leave when the situation reached a certain point (which is exactly what did happen). I was worried about being on an island alone in a country that I wasn’t familiar with far away from EVERYONE I know. I desperately wish I would have stayed in India. The US isn’t an option because I have no job, no home, no health care and the anxiety of watching borders close around you is hard to deal with.
To top it off, people are nasty when they find out that you are traveling. I have had people tell me that I am a “danger to humanity”, that I am killing the elderly, that I should just “go home” and have been ridiculed for not having American health insurance (I haven’t lived there for 8 years, why would I?) . I have been mocked, been called irresponsible and had people I have never even interacted with questioning my life choices, my morality and ethics.
People smugly get on a moral high horse and tell me that they are staying put in whatever random European city that they are in but they forget that it feels very different to be in a developed country during something like this with things you are familiar with. It is very different to be in sub saharan Africa where you know no one.
A Wake Up Call
I think for many of us, this has been a real wake up call. Although I have tried to sympathize with refugees and immigrants, this is the first time that I have ever truly had even a taste of what they go through. I have a strong passport and am used to being able to travel pretty much wherever I want. Now, I am extremely limited and hoping against hope that somewhere will let me in. It is also a reminder of how fragile and far-behind the American health care system is. As Europeans and Australians scrambled to get home, Americans abroad are trying to figure out where we can go that will let us stay long enough to ride this out.
The world has been turned on its head and I hope that we remember these lessons and how it felt to go through this. Maybe things will be different next time…….
