OK, well, where’d we leave off in the traumatic saga that was the COVID-19 global Peace Corps evacuation? I think we were just taking off and leaving Ukraine’s borders.
In case you missed it, part one of the evacuation saga (detailing the process leading up to evacuation and leaving my actual site) can be read here and part two of the evacuation saga (detailing our week-long attempt at getting out of country) can be read here.
So, that leaves us at part three: leaving Kyiv, and stopping in Madrid for a short layover, Washington D.C. for one night, Detroit for all of 30 seconds and then finally back to Ypsilanti, where my sister lives.
So, after we took off, things were… quiet. We had a short flight from Kyiv to Madrid, and most of the PCVS — exhausted from our sunrise departure time — fell asleep.
We landed in Madrid for our layover, and that’s when things just started to feel… surreal.
Ukraine had started implementing COVID protocol while we were there, such as restrictions on the number of bodies in an elevator at any given time, and we were given rubber gloves and masks, but it all felt kind of, I don’t know, jokey? Like, a running gag? Like Peace Corps was like, “ha, ha, we’ll play along, see you back here in a few weeks.”
Until we got to Madrid. It was the first time I’d been outside of Ukraine for the better part of the past year. Ukraine had truly began to feel like my home, the other PCVs had started to feel like my family. It all felt like one giant joke. Once we were in Spain, it hit me that I was no longer in the country I was living in. It was a really strange and surreal feeling.
We got off the plane, and one of the first things I saw was an entire family traversing through the airport in full PPE. I’m talking full PPE. Surgical gowns, masks, face shields, gloves, even shoe covers. I think that’s kind of when it hit me that we’re dealing with something really, really big.
After we had deplaned, we all had this massive unorganized struggle to get our boarding passes. Once we got them, we went to the gate and just waited. Some of us walked around the airport, some of us slept. This was so early in the pandemic that social distancing was suggested, not enforced, and the idea of wearing a face mask seemed really, really stupid.
So even though we were being forcibly removed from our homes, thrown onto a series of flights and sent off to some unknown future in the U.S., things were… normal? It is so hard to explain.
We boarded our flight from Madrid to D.C. (no delays this time, thankfully) and settled in for the next part of our journey.
Because most of us had slept on the first leg of the flight, the atmosphere was a lot livelier this time around. I will say — if you’re being evacuated — doing it on a chartered Boeing Dreamliner full of 300ish of your closest friends is definitely the way to go. As somber as everything was, this was probably the most fun I will ever have on a flight.
Everyone was awake, the flight was serving beer and sangria (which was a super pleasant surprise because Peace Corps functions — and government functions in general — typically don’t involve alcohol) and because everyone knew each other, there was a lot of seat-hopping and aisle-standing happening. It was actually pretty fun, if, again, you can disregard the circumstances that led to the flight in the first place.
If you didn’t know, Peace Corps has this little tradition where, once you finish your service, you get to ring a bell that’s in the Kyiv office. These little ceremonies have recently started being streamed on Facebook Live with a little speech, and it’s kind of an ongoing joke about how you just can’t wait to ring the f-ing bell.
Someone had brought a little bell on board, and so it was passed around the flight for everyone to ring. We played the Ukrainian national anthem over the plane’s intercom system (seriously, such a weird, weird time) and generally all enjoyed ourselves.
Finally, we touched down in D.C.
(Peace Corps had scheduled us all one night in a D.C. hotel, and then had booked us flights to our “home on record” for the following morning. Most of us picked our parents homes, or our hometowns, or somewhere we knew we had friends/ family, but I am envious of the guy who was smart enough to list his “home on record” as San Diego, so he got a free flight to the ocean.)
LET ME TELL YOU HOW WEIRD IT WAS TO LAND IN THE U.S. AFTER BEING IN UKRAINE FOR SO LONG.
We were shuffled through border control, and my first thought was “WOW, why are border control officials SUCH major assholes?!”
We had all been through major trauma and were definitely accustomed to a very inefficient Ukrainian way of life full of dawdling, pleasantries, kindness and personal connections.
Yeaaahhhh, the U.S. is NOT like that.
We were all smiling and laughing and talking about Chipotle and enjoying our last few moments together as Peace Corps Ukraine Volunteers, and border patrol started snapping at us to move quicker, to go this way, to stop talking, to stand still.
My agent literally snapped at me when I said we were all coming in from Europe: Kyiv, Ukraine routed through Madrid, Spain. (At the time, Spain was a MASSIVE COVID hotspot, remember.) He flipped out and started demanding WHY we had been routed through the Madrid airport, as though that was literally anything I, personally, had control over. I was on the verge of tears at that point after the past week. It was not a happy welcome back to my homeland.
After we got through border patrol, I shuttled to the hotel, checked in, showered, and then… just let the surreal feeling of being back in the U.S. wash over me.
I started noticing little things, like… wow, our roads here are so nice! Or, I tried to plug my Euro adapter into the wall and I stared at the outlet for a bit trying to figure out why it looked so weird. (I was also sleep-deprived, remember.)
After showering, I went outside the hotel to sit with my friends. We all ordered our first meal back in the U.S. (mine was Chipotle! God I missed Chipotle!) and hung out drinking (American) beers and talking.
It was actually really, REALLY funny. Every five to 10 minutes, an UberEats/ GrubHub driver would pull up to the front. A PCV would run out, grab their Chipotle order, and run back inside.
(Again, this was before everything just completely shut down, so things still felt almost normal.)
There was a group of PCVs that took an Uber to Taco Bell, and it was honestly a lot of fun.
We all stayed up way, way too late sitting outside and talking because it was the last time we’d ever be together. Finally, we called it a night.
My flight was scheduled for really early the next morning, and my friend Rachel was on it because we were both heading to Detroit. We Ubered to the airport together, and then checked in and went to our gate.
It was so weird. The D.C. airport was completely empty. COMPLETELY. There was no line at bag check, no line at security. Every gate was vacant, seemingly, except ours.
When we got there, the only other people on our flight were other PCVs being evacuated from other countries and sent back to their homes on record.
I know I keep saying it, but so, so, so weird.
We boarded our flight and it was only about a third full. I spent the flight journaling and talking with Rachel about how we were both just having such a hard time processing things.
Finally, we landed in Detroit.
Rachel and I both left the airport and said goodbye, and walked in opposite directions.
And then, I was alone.
It feels really weird to say, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone in my life. After a week being crammed into hotel rooms, buses, planes and terminals with hundreds of other people experiencing the same thing as me, it hit me that things had changed and nobody in my life would really truly understand what I had gone through, short of those few hundred people. I just felt so hollow, and alone, and sad, and numb.
I had a few moments by myself to sit with those thoughts until my sister (and her golden retriever, Duchess) pulled up to pick me up from the arrivals lane.
We loaded my luggage into her car and then drove into Ann Arbor. My sister Kelly — who lives in Ypsilanti and works in Ann Arbor — explained that the bar she bartends at part-time for fun was shutting down for the two-week quarantine period.
All the employees were invited to come in and take whatever they wanted from the fridges, she said. Otherwise it would all have to be thrown away.
So, we drove straight from the airport to her bar to load up on fries, salad mix and other random foods. I waited in her car while she raided the kitchen, and I was just blown away by how deserted downtown Ann Arbor was.
I spent pretty much my whole childhood growing up outside of Ann Arbor. I spent college summers working in downtown Ann Arbor, and a lot of time visiting.
It was shocking. It felt like an apocalypse movie.
After we grabbed enough cheese to make at least 6,000 servings of nachos (which is actually all we ate for like, all of quarantine), we drove back to her apartment.
My sister is the world’s sweetest human, by the way. She had Jeni’s ice cream, flowers, macarons and Bell’s Oberon waiting for me at her apartment. GOD BLESS.
Then, that was it. As one last “welcome home!” surprise, my sister took me to Jet’s Pizza to pick up dinner for the night, and then we settled in for our two-week quarantine.
And… that’s it. That was the unexpected, abrupt and completely unwelcome end of my Peace Corps adventure.
I’ll blog more about my feelings, thoughts, emotions, etc., but for now, that’s it. That’s the end of the evacuation saga, the end of my service, the end of my employment, the end of my adventure, just… the end.
And yes, it hurts.
This post was originally published May 4, 2021. Its timestamp has been updated to better reflect the timeline of my Peace Corps service.
