March 2019: one year before evacuation. Hiking to an overlook in a rural outpost of my site known for its pre-Colombian petroglyphs.
Continued from Evacuation Diaries Part 1 and Part 2.
On March 15, 2020, in a historic first, the US Peace Corps announced it would evacuate 7,300+ volunteers from their posts around the world.
A few months ago, I interviewed two fellow volunteers who previously had to evacuate their posts in other countries and rejoined the Peace Corps to serve in Colombia. When the order came to leave Colombia because of COVID-19, it was Clare and Ashley’s second time evacuating their country of service. This is what they had to say about their first:
Where were you when you found out your country of service was being evacuated?
ASHLEY, BURKINA FASO:
The group I was part of had just completed our three months of training and we all had just left the training compound. At a local restaurant for a celebratory round of beers as shiny new volunteers, suddenly all our phones started buzzing one after the other, each with an incoming call from a different staff member. After hesitantly answering the call, it was clear something had happened. We were asked to return to the compound immediately.
CLAIRE, NICARAGUA
I was at my host family’s home in a small town called Niquinohomo, one of the training towns for PC Nicaragua. I was seven weeks into pre-service training, and I was working on my community integration report when I got the call. About a week later when I was back in the US, I opened up my laptop to find the Word doc I had stopped writing mid-sentence.
Can you describe what it was like? Were you scared? Worried? Confused? How did you leave the country? Where did you go?
ASHLEY, BURKINA FASO:
I never felt scared because I was never able to fully process what was happening. We received the news at night and it happened so fast that we were leaving on a bus the next day at 7 am. We weren't allowed to tell anyone, not even our parents back home.
On the morning of the evacuation, 141 of us boarded four large charter buses and began the long drive across Burkina and Ghana. We were escorted to the border by Burkinabe soldier in the back of jeeps with huge semi-automatic weapons and gun turrets. A retired marine was in charge of our security detail. At the border, the Burkinabe soldiers left us and Ghanaian soldiers took up their post. It was madness.
When we came to high traffic areas in cities, the soldiers would jump out of the jeeps and beat on cars with strips of rubber to get them to move out of our way. We all watched this from our comfy reclining seats and air-conditioned buses behind tinted windows thinking, I'm just me. All of this for a group young nobodies. The only thing is these "nobodies" had something very critical: US passports. And since that day, seeing the surprised and intrigued faces we passed by wondering who could be in those buses, that day will forever cement in my mind as the starkest demonstration of privilege.
CLARE, NICARAGUA:
Everything happened really fast. The protests started on a Wednesday and by the following Wednesday, all 160+ volunteers and trainees were on PC-hired buses to Costa Rica. It was very confusing. Communication became difficult because the government shut down the internet. The government also controlled the news stations so it was hard to get accurate information about what was happening. By the time PC came to pick us up, we knew we would be going back to the US. At that point, everyone thought the evacuation would be temporary. Still, it was very emotional when we said goodbye to our host families, both because I didn’t know if I would see them again and also the guilt that we could just leave when things got bad.
While we waited for the other volunteers to be picked up, we spent a few days at a (very nice) hotel in Granada, one of the larger cities in Nicaragua that had not been affected by the violence. Once everyone arrived, they drove us in hired buses to San José, Costa Rica. The violence was centered in Managua which is also where Nicaragua’s only international airport is located. Through the consolidation and our time in Costa Rica, the message we were getting from PC staff was that the evacuation would be temporary—one month, maybe two. Things would settle down and we would pick up where we left off. I remember our program manager telling us that Nicaragua just couldn’t handle another sustained conflicted—the economy was too fragile.
Editor’s note: PC Nicaragua’s evacuation was permanent. The program shut down in 2018 and Clare came to Colombia in the cohort following mine.
Was the unplanned and sudden transition to US life difficult? How did it affect your view of the Peace Corps and your country of service?
ASHLEY, BURKINA FASO:
It was extremely difficult for me. I felt lost, without direction, so sad to have left under those circumstances without goodbyes or explanations to the people who were counting on me and who I came to know and love dearly.
Most of all, I struggled with intense guilt. It was very obvious that the situation in the country was becoming very dangerous and in the days and months after leaving, we heard stories and read articles about the terrorist attacks happening in the country. I was rushed out of there, but everyone I left behind, they don't have that choice or that opportunity and their lives are in danger every day. It was a huge wake-up call to the world order and I still struggle with that today.
I constantly wrestle with whether I am doing my part in all things to make the world a little better, to use what I have been gifted to uplift others, to share all parts of my life and knowledge, to contribute. It is hard, it is a daily existential crisis. I am not sure if we are doing the right thing in the Peace Corps, I am not sure if we are contributing more than harming, I truly don't have the answers.
I do know one thing though. I shared something beautiful with the Burkinabe people of my towns and they shared something beautiful with me and we will always have that to hold onto. That can never be taken away or tainted, it will stay with us for years to come, and perhaps that is the point of all of this.
CLARE, NICARAGUA:
Yes, it was especially difficult because my cohort had been evacuated after only two months. Many of us had just left our jobs and said goodbye to family and friends and now all of a sudden it was over. We thought we would be away for two years. I thought of PC as a time to gain new skills and figure out the next step in my career. Life after PC wasn’t even on my radar during my two months of training, so it was very difficult trying to figure out what to do after the evacuation.
Another difficult aspect of the evacuation was that it sort of became the whole story of my PC Nicaragua experience. While I was there, I hadn’t shared a lot of what was happening day to day because I was still getting my bearings. When I evacuated, all anyone at home asked about was the evacuation, even though it was only a small part of my experience. I had grown to love Nicaragua for its stunning landscapes (it’s the land of lakes & volcanoes!) and for the warmth and humility of the Nicaraguans I had met, but it felt like the only thing people wanted to hear about was the single story of violence in a poor Central American nation.
Read Evacuation Diaries: Part 1
Read Evacuation Diaries: Part 2
More coverage of Peace Corps’ COVID-19 mass evacuation:
The New Yorker: A Peace Corps Volunteer’s Evacuation Video Diary
Chicago Tribune: My Peace Corps evacuation from Ukraine: I had 5 hours to pack and say goodbye
NPR: Coronavirus Sent Peace Corps Volunteers Home. It Could Also Give Them A New Mission
New York Times: ‘None of Us Saw It Ending This Way’: Peace Corps Volunteers Evacuate Abruptly
Voice of America: Peace Corps Volunteers Face Uncertain Future After Coronavirus Evacuation
The Hill: Lawmakers call for unemployment benefits for evacuated Peace Corps volunteers
Associated Press: The Latest: Peace Corps evacuating volunteers, suspends ops