STAY NEGATIVE! - September 2020
If you go on my IG profile and see that I spent September traveling in France; you will think that this pandemic didn’t bother me much, and that I enjoyed the last bits of summer in a beautiful country. Well, yes you are only partially correct and you are very wrong. I know this sounds absurd, let me explain.
As of September, we started waiting for a flight that will take us to Mauritius. We knew that the day will come but we didn’t know when. We spent September on stand-by as if we could fly anytime. We didn’t make plans, we woke up every morning wondering if there is a change in the situation. As I don't have a job since April, not having a job became very boring after a while. And knowing that the chances of getting a job in Mauritius without being in Mauritius are almost impossible, being stuck in France meant staying unemployed for me. Other than that, it also meant that we won’t be able to settle in for a while more. Sure we were very comfortable staying with our families’. But knowing that we are not in our own home is difficult. We have left Nairobi in August, but since we didn't have another “home” to go back to, it was impossible to comprehend fully that Nairobi is not home anymore.
One of the options to get us to the island was to fly from Paris to La Reunion and take a repatriation flight from La Reunion to Mauritius. Since I’m a citizen of Turkey, I needed to get a visa to La Reunion. And the prefecture could give me that visa because I was already in France. However, the prefecture didn’t accept appointments, instead, they requested that I sent them a letter via post explaining my situation. They took three weeks to respond and they just said that they are not able to help.
While we are waiting for the flight, we still did a few short trips. Two days in Paris, two days in Montpellier, and a weekend in the Alps. Knowing that we could fly anytime or never; it was confusing to socialize. We tried to keep the mask on all the time, but it’s not really possible when you are having a beer with a friend.
Towards the end of the month, Mauritian authorities made an announcement that they will start flights from Paris, London, and Dubai to Mauritius as of October. These flights are open to anybody who wants to come to Mauritius. Upon arrival, all the passengers will have to confine in a designated hotel room for fourteen days at their own cost. Great news. I was so happy to know that I will take a flight, confine in a hotel room, and finally reach the new home that I have never been to before.
Our flight was booked for October 3, Saturday. Paris – Mauritius flight is an 11-hour flight, luckily ours was in the night. Maximum five days before the flight we had to take PCR tests and the results had to be negative. It makes me nervous each time. With our negative test results and four big luggage, we were ready to take off to start a new life on a small island that we've never been before.
We indeed succeeded in our mission of staying negative the whole time from August to October. Even though we traveled to 2 countries, and visited plenty of cities, we always kept being careful and eliminating crowded places. Now it's time to start anew.
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