Evacuating Kenya (Goodbye for Now)

Goodbye, friendly sidewalk home

I had never imagined that my departure would have come about the way it had - one month early, last-minute, and wearing a face mask. 

I had plans for April, the last month of my time in Kenya, too. I was going to Naivasha for a weekend to meet hippos. I was absolutely hell-bent on finding a dikdik in the Karura Forest. I was contemplating taking the train to Mombasa for another weekend. And I was planning to visit a colleague in Malawi for my final week on the continent. Instead, I didn't really get to say goodbye to any of the friends I had made in Nairobi and escaped the borders closing on me, which would have left me somewhat stranded during the COVID19 pandemic.

Two weeks before I had found out I was going home, I had started self-isolating, anyway. I had previously been in Uganda for a conference and had picked up some sniffles between Kampala and Nairobi, so I was playing it safe. Shortly after, the office decided to implement working from home practices and most of my colleagues started calling me while they, too, started to socially isolate. I had limited my travels to only the grocery store for those two weeks, save one trip to DHL to ship home things, as I had a sinking feeling that I may have to evacuate the country at any given moment and didn't want to leave anything behind.

Kenya at the time had only 7 confirmed cases of COVID19 (while NYC had about 9K, for comparison), and the country was acutely aware of its healthcare limitations and did not want to test the system. Kenya started canceling public events, shutting down schools, encouraging people to us M-PESA money over cash; and airlines started to slow down their services. Rumors were going around that the borders were going to close any minute, but they were just rumors. I had decided to stay put unless I had received some kind of ultimatum from the US or Kenya - I was better off in a warmer climate where my asthma wouldn't get triggered and I could relax on the lawn outside for hours. Not to mention that US was considered the global hot zone for COVID19. 

Sadly, three days after I made that decision, in late March the US government did, in fact, send out an ultimatum to US citizens overseas - either come home now or don't come home, and we're not going to help you get out. Shortly after, Kenya announced they were probably going to close the border soon, so Kenyan residents should probably get out of the country if they can. My decision was made for me.

The morning after, I made my way to the Kenya Airways office to change my departure to "as soon as possible". My Uber drove through traffic on a beautifully sunny day in Nairobi, and the country looked almost as if nothing was happening with the world. Cars were crowding the roads, people were walking around. My Uber driver had casually shared with me that Kenya would probably be fine from COVID19, because the virus wouldn't survive well in warm weather, so no one was particularly worried yet. I ended up hearing that a lot throughout that day as I frantically packed my bags and worked out my logistics, and I was worried that Kenyans didn't seem to be understanding the severity of the virus. To be fair, East Africans typically need to worry more about diseases like Ebola, which is endemic in that region and a very violent way to die. Still, it felt surreal watching the headlines of a world on fire while many Kenyans around me were living as if nothing dangerous was afoot.

I got to the crowded airline office and found out that "as soon as possible" was two days in the future since all of the other flights had been sold out overnight, and the only available seats were Business Class. I gulped down the steep airline fee to upgrade to Business Class and secured my spot on a now-sold-out plane back to NYC, taking off in a little over 48 hours. In those 48 hours, I paced and called Mr. CT Lawyer multiple times to frantically figure out how he'd pick me up at the airport and how we'd arrange me to live with him in quarantine for 2 weeks after I landed. I wasn't able to see any of my colleagues or friends - Kenya was starting to make it hard to meet up in groups, and I had begun to think that maybe I should steer clear of people anyway, so I spent time hanging out with my housemates when I wasn't in planning mode calling the US. I also started to find out that a lot of my other foreign colleagues were frantically packing up and going home, as well - to Canada, Australia, and the US. 

At least my friend who Uber drives in Nairobi (Calvin) agreed to drive me to the airport and see me out of the country. On the day of departure, he picked me up and drove me through the now-deserted city streets (which were full only 2 days prior). We got to the airport in record time, and I was there far too early for my flight, so he agreed to sit with me in an outdoor airport cafe for my final dawa (oh, how I miss those already) before takeoff. While we sat sipping dawas, Kenya announced the border closing would be in three days, and that the number of cases had more than doubled within 24 hours.

The airport was mostly empty, save for whoever was flying to JFK or Jo-burg that night. The airport was tense and silent; you could tell no one wanted to be near each other. Everyone was wearing a face mask, now, and we all looked around with wide eyes and anxiety, quietly hoping that the planes would get into the air and not have a surprise announcement from the arrival country that no more planes would be allowed in. It was a long wait inside the terminal.

I knew my airplane was sold out, but I hadn't realized just how crowded the waiting room would be. Everyone wore masks and darted glances at everyone near them, trying their best to inch away from whoever was nearby in hopes of feeling some kind of safety that wasn't going to come for another 15 hours. You could tell much of the plane's passengers had had no intention of leaving Kenya at any time before the ultimatum, too. Many of the people on the plane were families with infants who probably shouldn't fly 14-hour legs across the globe. Others wheeled around elderly parents who apparently did not want to stay around while the country figured things out. The elderly parents looked jarred - I wondered if some of them were being torn away from homes they had not wanted to leave, with pleading adult children who had secured dual passports for the family two decades earlier for a moment exactly like the one we were suddenly in.

Once we loaded into the airplane, we all pulled out packets of wet wipes and started vigorously cleaning our seats and surroundings. We shared wipes with others, but otherwise, no one wanted to interact, other than sharing bulging eyes, as if trying to convey the thought, "can you BELIEVE what we're going through, right now?!"

I found out soon after take-off how lucky I was to get a business class seat - the flight was much more bearable with anxiety because I could put my feet up and actually sleep. And the bathrooms were clean and big. On one bathroom visit, the stewardesses started to talk with me and shared that they were hoping that the US would ground all planes before they would have to return to Kenya. Apparently, while we were loading into the plane at the Nairobi airport, the Kenyan government had started to enact a new rule which meant that anyone landing in the airport from that moment on would be automatically shuttled to a forced hospital quarantine for 2 weeks....paid by the quarantined. They were hoping that they would, instead, be forced to shack up in a hotel in NYC and wait it out there while on the airline's watch. Unfortunately for them, that didn't happen.

I've never been so scared landing anywhere as I was when I landed into JFK that morning. We all left the airplane with masks on, expecting hours of testing lines and screenings before we could get out of the plane. Instead, we found ourselves walking from the airplane to the luggage belts in about 5 or 10 minutes, with only one stop for us to get quickly stamped by mask-less customs agents. The airport, other than our flight, felt completely abandoned. It only made me want to get out of the airport faster. My family picked me up shortly after to start my voluntary 2-week quarantine as the world blazed around me.