It makes me really sad to be posting this, but at least for the next couple months, I, along with every Peace Corps Volunteer internationally, have been evacuated back home. If you want the full reasoning and everything I’ve put a link down at the bottom of this post to Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen’s open letter on the subject. The short story version of this though, is that in general, it’s important for volunteer’s health and safety to be able to leave their country of service, and as covid-19 has gotten worse in recent days, international travel has become less and less feasible. It’s uncertain how long this will last, so it’s possible that they’ll offer reinstatement in the coming months, if the global situation improves, and if unrelated existing visa problems get resolved, but it’s definitely far from certain that that will happen.

It’s hard to express how I feel right now, I’m not even sure myself how I feel, but it’s a mix of gratitude for my community and how welcoming they were, sadness for leaving friends, both American and Mozambican, and anger that I couldn’t have said a proper goodbye to the people that made my town into my home, but more than anything I feel just a sense of quiet, like a lack of closure. Suddenly uprooting all the relationships without any warning kinda feels like somebody just changed the channel from your favorite TV show to C-SPAN. Like you were getting to know the characters, you were getting invested in the plot, you had some popcorn popping in the microwave, but then without warning, the channel switches to boring, plotless TV you never asked for. 

Hopefully this isn’t it for this blog, if for no other reason than the fact that I still have a lot of music for the Mozambican Music Corner, but for now I’m home, I’m safe and quarantining, and I’m among family. So at least even if the channel’s stuck on C-SPAN, I have good company to share the popcorn with (I hope I didn’t stretch that metaphor too far).

https://www.peacecorps.gov/news/library/peace-corps-announces-suspension-volunteer-activities-evacuations-due-covid-19/