Evacuation

March 16th, 12:01 am

I was awoken by the voice of a fellow volunteer coming from outside my door. After escaping from my mosquito net, I stumbled around in the darkness of my room feeling around for my shorts and a flashlight. I headed outside to see two other volunteers, Tristan "Itoli" and Fé "Nely/Bego".

"We're heading to my house to make coffee and breakfast", Tristan began.

This was not the news I expected to receive and I checked my watch to make sure it was indeed midnight.

Fé told me what Tristan should have began with, "Pack your bags, we're getting evacuated."

Fé stayed with me to help me pack while Tristan began the 45 minute hike to get another neighboring volunteer, Sean "Nidi".

Packing wasn't so hard. Given how small my house was, I kept most of my clothes packed to save space and I had packed light to begin with. Fé and I gathered my perishable food items for breakfast and I secured my door for what would be an indefinite amount of time. No one in the community was awake, but I figured I should at least tell my host family what was going on. I walked over to their house, knocked, yelled out their names. They stumbled out a few minutes later, and I briefly explained I was getting evacuated.

Of course, I was safer there from COVID-19 than in the United States, but with border closures and airport shutdowns globally, Peace Corps decided it was best to evacuate all volunteers. I explained it as such to my host family. But hardest of all was to tell them that I didn't know when I'd be back, if ever. I did promise I'd visit, with or without Peace Corps. With that, I bade them farewell and they asked that God safeguard my travels. No one else was awake, and I couldn't give any sort of proper goodbye to the communities I served.

It had been abnormally dry this past month, so the depth of the river was low, and the trail not muddy. This (hopefully not) last hike out was significantly easier than the hike in as the start of construction of a road smoothed over the worst part of the trail involving balance on two muddy (i.e. slippery) logs running over a chest deep mud pit. I crossed through the stream that marked the boundary of my second community and was officially out of site. Fé and I arrived at Tristan's house and awaited the arrival of Nidi and Itoli.

The process of evacuating as a whole was exhausting, and this day in particular was 25 hours long. I will summarize as best I can.

We regrouped with Sean and Tristan and eventually went to Fé's site to make breakfast. Our regional leader along with PC office staff chartered a bus to collect all the volunteers in our region as well as stragglers elsewhere to bring us to Panama City. At one point the bus was boarded by medical staff who checked our temperatures. Everyone had a normal temperature. What would have happened otherwise, I do not know. On arrival to a hotel in the city, we were informed of the quarantine measures put in place by the Panamanian government and that we had to maintain "social distancing" practices. This meant restrictions on the number of people in the lobby and in the dining areas. Of course, this was the last thing volunteers wanted to do on what could very well be our last night(s) together. This caused headaches for the staff as the hotel was nervous about getting fined, and Peace Corps nervous about getting kicked out. Eventually the Peace Corps staff managed to find a way to divide our meals and activities in groups to organize compliance with the law. On Wednesday, Panama City had closed the bridges and flights were planned to be suspended starting on March 22nd.

Some volunteers managed to get their flights back to their home of record, but there were several issues that necessitated the chartering of a flight to collect all of us and bring us to Miami by Thursday night. Thanks to an early flight and the time-zone difference, I made it back to San Diego at noon to the surprise of my family that didn't expect me at all.

So how did I feel? The first few days were surreal. Part of that I suppose was that being woken up in the middle of the night made it feel like a dream. I remember just being tired and pensive. I never felt sad, largely because I believe it likely that I'll be back. At home, everything was more or less the same with the exception of my room. Once my 14 day quarantine is over, I'll see more of what's different with the outside world, though the COVID-19 outbreak and stay-at-home orders has certainly changed the character of the city. Largely I've been sitting around readjusting to life here and plotting for my eventual return to Panama. But in the meanwhile, I can, eventually, write up all the stories I hadn't been able to because I had drastically underestimated the time I could take to find and use Wi-Fi.