not the world we left
Isolated Canadians abroad on COVID-19 confusion, uncertainty and the struggle to get home
By: Jade Prévost-Manuel
March 20, 2020 ​
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“I watch videos about what’s going on at home and people are panicking. I don’t want to go back to that situation.”
Rain Fernandes used to hear children playing outside her home in Hwamok, a remote village in South Korea’s North Gyeonsang province. Lately, an eerie silence blankets her neighbourhood. It speaks volumes about the precautions people are taking to protect their communities.
Fernandes moved from Toronto to South Korea last August to fulfill her dream of living abroad. She works as an English teacher at five schools in the area: one for each day of the work week.
Now in her third week of quarantine, she doesn’t bother setting an alarm. After all, the only time she goes outside is at night. That’s when she says the risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic is lowest.
It’s a reality Fernandes lives with now. The visits she used to look forward to in nearby Daegu—South Korea’s fourth largest city and the epicenter of the country’s outbreak—have stopped.
“I’m extra worried,” she says, about leaving Hwamok to visit the city. “My village has a majority of kids and elderly people. I don’t want to be that person [who brings it here].”
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Fernandes returned to South Korea after a vacation three weeks ago with friends in Vietnam. She's been in quarantine since. (Rain Fernandes)
Avoiding leaving her home whenever possible, Fernandes buys most of her groceries online. When she needs to, she’ll make a quick run to the local store. Hand sanitizer and a face mask are now part of her daily protective wear. The sanitizer is something she says she can’t forget.
Fernandes’ reality is a stark contrast to the life she left behind in Canada, or even life just two months ago in South Korea. She hasn’t seen her students for weeks, and nobody has answers on how long social quarantine will last.
The first case of the virus was identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. But experts are predicting global COVID-19 cases will increase exponentially, saying many countries have yet to feel the pandemic’s peak. In the last two weeks, the number of worldwide cases doubled from 100,000 to more than 200,000. It’s now in 164 countries.
What Fernandes sees—empty streets and closed storefronts in city bus terminals—is a sight familiar to people in Europe, North America and the Middle East, among other regions. Widespread quarantine has become a shared human experience, one no one would have thought possible just last year.
Still, Fernandes’ most recent visit three weeks ago to Daegu, a bustling city home to two million, took her by surprise.
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“It was like a ghost town,” she said. “I’d never seen it so empty.”
South Korea has reported over 8,600 cases and more than 94 deaths from the virus to date. It's a relatively low fatality number, considering it was one of the worst-hit countries in the early stages of the global outbreak. The first spike in cases was traced back to a religious sect, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus based in Daegu.
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Chart from March 17. New cases in South Korea are on the decline thanks to an expansive and rigorous testing program. As of March 17, the country has tested more than 270,000. (Chart courtesy of Ruobing Su / Business Insider)
The government has since declared the city a disaster zone. This is the first time they've done so because of a virus.
Fernandes says being a quarantined foreign national in South Korea has been easier than most people would expect. She says the country’s world-class healthcare and accommodations they’ve made for citizens, residents and foreign nationals is comforting.
In fact, she's more worried for people back home. Before Fernandes started teaching English, she worked at a Canadian hospital. She’s aware of what’s at stake if Canada can't "flatten the curve"—reduce the number of patients presenting with COVID-19 to the ER.
“Just during normal flu season, we’d always be at capacity,” she said. “Sometimes we’d have to open up the auditorium to take more patients. I can’t imagine the strain the Canadian health-care system is going to experience [because of this].”
While announcing billions in funding for health care and the economy, the Canadian government said it won’t be repatriating nationals abroad. Stranded Canadians will be responsible for booking commercial flights to return home, of which there are few.
But Fernandes isn’t rushing back. The panic buying and hysteria she’s watched in Canada through social media isn’t something that’s been echoed where she lives in South Korea.
“Sometimes I’m homesick, but then I watch videos about what’s going on at home and people are panicking,” said Fernandes. “You don’t have that here. I don’t want to go back home to that situation.”
McGill University student Julia Morales, on the other hand, is doing everything she can to make her way home.
“I’m telling you, the world we left is not the one we’re living in right now.”
Faculty and students from McGill University's Earth and Planetary Science Department in Morocco, where a highly-anticipated geological field trip turned into an unassisted race back to Canada. (@MoroccoStuck)
After a five-day scramble, Morales is finally on her way back to Montreal. The rest of her team is at an airport in London, England, hoping to catch the next flight. It was just 72 hours ago she was stranded in Casablanca, Morocco after the educational trip of a lifetime.
Morales left Montreal on Feb. 27 with a student-organized field study. She says they’d had no indication of the mayhem to come. The geophysics major went to Morocco to study the country’s unique geology on an off-the-beaten-track research trip.
The news and updates that rapidly unfolded in the weeks that followed went unheard by the team. She, her colleagues and her professor were working in rural parts of the country—off the grid and in the dark.
“We haven’t spent any time in cities. We’ve barely seen or interacted with anyone,” said Morales. “We’re geology students; we’ve been interacting with rocks in the middle of nowhere.”
From Left: Students Robert Collar, Julia Morales, Professor Anthony Williams-Jones; Students Emilie Saucier, Kaiyuan Wang, Joshua Wasserlauf. (@MoroccoStuck)
When they arrived on March 14 in the northwestern city of Tangier for the first leg of their trip home, they discovered Morocco had banned flights out to 20 countries including Canada. By the time they made it to Casablanca, it had escalated to a ban on all flights out.
“It was bedlam,” Morales’ professor Anthony Williams-Jones told the Montreal Gazette. “People shouting and screaming, shoving and pushing. It was not a very comfortable scene and not a situation you want to take students into.”
The Canadian Embassy and Global Affairs Canada told them to book a commercial flight home, most of which Morales says get snatched up or cancelled in the blink of an eye. Despite the group having done interviews with CTV, CBC and the Montreal Gazette, Morales says the government has done the bare minimum to help.
“We’re getting all this media intention but nothing’s happening with the government,” she said while stranded in Casablanca. “They’ve basically said, ‘You’re stuck, but make sure you come home.’ How do you come home when there are no flights out?”
After their first cancellation, the group started the Twitter account @MoroccoStuck. It’s the platform they’re using to attract media and call on the Canadian government to repatriate Canadians.
Most of their help came from a Facebook group of more than 200 Canadians stranded in Morocco trading flight information. Online advisories and emails aren't reliable anymore, because scam emails are telling travellers their flights are cancelled.
Many people are booking charters out of the country and splitting the cost among other foreign nationals desperate to leave.
“I’m telling you, the world we left is not the one we’re living in right now.”
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Over 2,500 kilometres northeast of Casablanca in Turin, Italy, Canadian international law student Miranda Gallo is hoping her flight home makes the cut.
“We're talking 3 to 12 years in prison. That's no joke.”
It’s been over a week since Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ordered a nationwide lockdown to combat the country’s COVID-19 outbreak, the most severe outside of China with more than 40,000 cases.
Now, the loudest noise on Turin’s streets isn’t the hustle and bustle of a typically busy day, or the chatter of crowds frequenting the Piazza Castello.
It’s the sound of a police car with a speaker patrolling the streets, announcing that anyone who leaves their house risks jail time of three to 12 years.
Gallo moved to Turin in January to study international law at the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Institute. Less than two months into her studies, she’s under mandatory quarantine in the city just hours west of Italy’s COVID-19 epicentre.
With classes postponed until late April, Gallo spends her time at home cooking and trying to keep busy. To risk leaving her apartment without valid reason or the necessary documentation—an official government form or self-declaration card from the Italian government—is to risk being jailed in a foreign country. As of March 18, Italy has charged 40,000 people with violating lockdown.
“Honestly, it’s pretty Draconian,” said Gallo. “If you don’t have those forms or you’re just wandering around your house outside because you want to, you can get fined and arrested. There are police everywhere in the streets.”
Though she planned to wait for classes to resume, the volatility of the situation in Italy has escalated. She hopes to leave Sunday for Montreal, where she'll have to self-quarantine for 14 days.
Gallo on left in Italy. On right, a neighbour hangs a sign that reads 'Tomorrow is another day.' (Miranda Gallo)
Like Morales, her interactions with the Canadian government in Italy and back home have been frustrating. Up to 500,000 Canadians were travelling abroad when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic, but Canada has made no promises of repatriation.
“The Chinese government has already come here with medical supplies for students that are Chinese in Italy,” said Gallo. “The Indian government has already come here and flown out their nationals on planes. [But when I call] Global Affairs Canada, it’s like I’m telling them new information. [Nobody] understands the specific situation unfolding here.”
Canada recently announced Global Affairs Canada’s loan program, which lends up to $5,000 in emergency funding to stranded Canadians trying to come home. The federal government also says Canadians should contact an embassy.
But Gallo says neither the embassy in Rome nor the consulate in Milan is answering phone calls. New information is scant—she’s received only four updates from the Canadian embassy since Italy closed its borders. Canada’s emergency assistance hotline, sos@gc.ca, is sending back template emails.
Gallo speaks enough Italian to get by reading updates from local media. As an international law student, she’s legally savvy when it comes to keeping up with the mounting restrictions Italy is imposing. But for Canadians who don’t speak the language, she says it’s a nightmare.
“It’s horrific because pretty much every other day there’s a new law or restriction passed about what’s legal and what’s illegal,” said Gallo. “If I don’t speak Italian, the Canadian government is my only lifeline to understanding what the hell is going on. I mean we’re talking three to 12 years in prison—that’s no joke.”
Hard-hit would be an understatement to describe Italy, the country that ran out of life-saving ventilators on day two of its outbreak and is using church cemeteries as emergency mortuaries. Cities have become reminiscent of post-apocalyptic ghost towns. Nearly 3,500 people have died.
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A police car in Via Madama Cristina, Turin, announces new restrictions for Italians under quarantine and tells them not to leave their homes. (La Stampa / Instagram)
Yet there’s a communal collectivity and high morale bursting from Turin’s neighbourhoods. It’s similar to the atmosphere Fernandes describes in South Korea—of a community finding unity in a time of severe physical divisiveness.
The viral videos of Italian nationals singing to their neighbours from open windows are indicative of the scenes Gallo sees when she steps onto her own balcony.
“Every single day at 6 p.m., everybody starts clanging on their pots and pans,” she said. “Somebody plays music, and everyone comes out to their balconies. People are waving the flashlights on their phone and you can see lights all over the place.”
At a time when nothing is certain, the morale boosters on balconies in Europe and digital screens across the world are reminders that humans are social creatures. Our species’ sociality is the means by which emotion, language, society and culture sew our lives’ social fabric, transcendent of physical proximity.
“Honestly, it helps me get through each day,” said Gallo. “Knowing I’ll see people at 6 p.m.”
Jade Prévost-Manuel is a Master of Media in Journalism and Communication Student at Western University and an alumna of McGill University. A past science and technology reporter with a special interest in environmental issues, Jade reports on social justice, culture and travel.
