What COVID-19 meant for us...

The last few days we where so scared, scared we needed to go home... I kept saying as only one that I felt in my bones that we could stay. The whole world and especially Europe is going crazy so why go back there?

But today we got the call, and indeed, our Tanzanian adventure ends here. 3 moths early, we were shattered about it. School called us and said that we needed to be back in Holland in about one week, because the situation is still safe here.
But after one hour they called back, we need to go back home immideatly! This afternoon the first Corona patient arrived in our hospital in Arusha.

The people here in Africa don’t have the same health care opportunities as in Europe. So when the virus arrives, it is expected that it will be even worse.
The virus arrived by travellers, from Europe, Belgium to specificy. The people here know this, and blame us (by us I mean people from Europe). We feel this in the streets, people yel at us. When we get on the daladala all the windows open, people talk about us, don’t want to sit next to us and turn there faces away.

I don’t blame them, most of them are just scared. And I don’t give them wrong, it is scaring. Especially when you have a family you need to protect, whiteout health care insurance and whit out money to actually pay any health care.
We saw the cheapest hospital ourselves so we know how bad the knowledge and the supplies can be.

From this day on I never realized how bad racism can be. We only experienced it for a few days, in a way that is not as bad as actual racism, but is was still a little scaring and frustrating.
But I never imagined in this way and I still will never know, how extremely painful and exhausting it must feel like for people who deal with racism day in, day out, for years. Especially the small things like weird looks from other people, people whispering or don’t want to talk to you, nobody sitting next to you in the subway, people turning there baggage always from you...

Equality is always important for me, a specialty as a nurse but now that we have experienced this, I will always, in every situation pay even more attention for this.

Now that I’m writing this it’s 03:27 and I’m 3942 km away from Brussels airport. Brussels yes, not Schiphol because finding a flight was tricky, everything was full and prices where getting higher and higher.
Then there was the risk of boarders which where closing. So we went from kilomanjaro to Addis Abeba. And from there to Brussel. My parents are coming to pick me up at 6 in the morning and after that, back home, to the cold Netherlands...

But for now it’s okay, the past 5 weeks had been the very best of my life, sometimes it was hard, yes. But also beautiful and I learned so much, about the health care in Tanzania, it's culture but also about myself. The last few days we saw some more of the country, and we were able to close this chapter together, for now... I will be thankful when I’m safe at home, with a family who is healthy. But believe me, this chapter isn’t closed for good, I will come back and finish my journey...