From Peru to global lockdown
MAEVE CAREY DESCRIBES THE SURREAL AND GRUELLING EXPERIENCE OF TRYING TO GET BACK HOME TO IRELAND
WHILE the world was slowly coming to terms with the biggest pandemic to hit the globe in a century, one Wexford woman was completely oblivious to the fact that while she was self-isolating from technology in the jungles of Peru, people around the entire world were self-isolating to protect themselves from one of the deadliest viruses to ever hit the world’s population.
Maeve Carey, who lives in Wexford town, is originally from Camolin, but moved with her parents to Clonhaston when she was still in school.
Always interested in travelling and seeing the world, she made a trip to Colombia last October which reaffirmed her desire to explore the world a bit more.
That led to her deciding to spend six weeks in South America this year and, on February 1, she left Ireland with the intention of spending time in Peru.
However, what transpired was an incredible adventure that saw her emerge from the natural beauty of the jungle to find the world turned upside down.
Speaking to this newspaper about the ordeal of trying to get back home to Ireland, Maeve said it was a surreal experience.
‘When I left I had heard of something going on in China but there wasn’t too much about it at that stage,’ she said.
‘I just wanted to spend time away from the world of technology and the net and to just go off-grid for a while,’ she added.
‘It’s something I had wanted to do for some time and South America is such a beautiful place and it’s a place I wanted to go to for years.’
Maeve highlighted that one of the most striking things about the Peruvians is their friendliness.
‘They are living on very little but yet are so giving, generous and friendly.’
From that perspective, she said the experience of visiting the country was amazing.
‘They are so friendly and anything that is theirs is yours and nobody hoards anything and they basically live one day at a time,’ said Maeve.
She also said that Peruvian people give while expecting nothing in return.
‘If they had a biscuit they would offer to share half of it with you,’ she said.
The jungle village she stayed in is called Libertad and, highlighting how different it is compared to here, she said there is very little crime there and when someone does commit a crime, more-often-than-not, they’re jail time consists of them being put in a cupboard on a platform for six hours.
Some of the locals told Maeve that rarely do people who do commit crimes go into the cupboard more than twice.
‘Two times seems to do the trick and it really is just a cupboard,’ she said.
When Maeve travelled to Colombia in October it was a 10-day trip as part of a group but she travelled to Peru on her own with the intention of spending a few weeks there.
‘I even thought I might spend some time living there for a bit,’ she said.
While she was flying she saw the top of the Andes mountains and said they looked amazing.
One of the things that was a little difficult was communicating with people because Maeve, by her own admission, doesn’t have great Spanish and the people in Peru ‘have no English’.
On her way to Peru she flew from Europe to Bogota, in Colombia, and from there to Peru.
‘I was living with an indigenous tribe and the nearest town was four hours away,’ said Maeve.
‘It was up in the mountains and we were sleeping in hammocks at night, covered with a plastic sheet in case it rained,’ she added.
Some of the villagers had shotguns to protect everyone in case a tiger attacked and they also had machetes to cut through the jungle paths.
‘Cooking was over an open fire and light faded very quickly because of the trees and you’re in the middle of the forest,’ said Maeve.
‘In the evening time we sat around a candle or fire telling stories and jokes and we went to bed early because it got dark quickly,’ she added.
Washing of clothes was done using a bar of soap in a nearby river.
While she was in the jungle Maeve was blissfully unaware of the turmoil that was taking place across the globe.
‘I had planned to be back in Ireland by March 20 anyway because there was an event in Galway that I planned to be at,’ she said.
However, nothing could have prepared her for what greeted her when she emerged from the jungle to the small city of Iquitos.
‘I went into a restaurant there and there were some Americans there who I overheard talking about Europe being on lockdown and I thought what’s that about,’ said Maeve.
From that moment on things began to develop very rapidly and so did the predicament that Maeve was beginning to find herself in.
The Peruvian government gave an instruction that people had 24 hours to get out of the country before it went into complete lockdown.
The military were brought in to patrol the streets of Iquitos and another problem facing Maeve was that for her to get out of the country she would have to get from Iquitos to Lima and then get a flight out of Peru.
‘Flights weren’t going and I began to think I was going to be stranded there,’ she said.
She went to an Airbnb because it was cheaper and was lucky to find one on the outskirts of Iquitos that was run by an Italian named David.
‘He had very good English so he began to fill me in on what was happening on the TV,’ said Maeve.
She admitted that while she was off-grid she had no idea at all about what was happening and it shocked her when she did find out in Iquitos.
She said that while she was trying to sort out her own predicament and find a way of getting to Lima and on a flight home she was also worried about what would happen if the virus hit Iquitos and the people in the jungle.
‘Iquitos is a really poor and many people rely on markets and selling food to make a living,’ said Maeve.
‘There are also taxi drivers who basically ride motorbikes and that’s how they make their living,’ she added.
Because of the lockdown now in place they have no means of income at all and Maeve said that’s something she thinks about still.
‘The curfew meant they could drive between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. but not after that at all so taxi drivers could not work during the day,’ she said.
‘That is how they put food on the table so their position is very serious,’ she added.
Through social media and platforms like WhatsApp, Maeve got in contact with other Irish people caught in the country and there was also a social group for UK and Irish people in Iquitos.
‘People kept finding each other and the groups got bigger.’
Through such interaction Maeve heard that the Irish Embassy was trying to arrange to get the Irish out of the country and back home.
She got to know another two people from Ireland, a woman named Ciara and a man from Louth, named Danny.
Maeve said that as the seriousness of the situation developed she began to wonder would she ever get out of the country.
‘You start hearing about countries that were getting people out but to make the plane you obviously had to be healthy so you could on a plane if the chance came,’ she said.
Maeve went into self-isolation to enhance her chances of not getting sick and she said she got great help from David, the man who owned the Airbnb.
‘He would ask me of I wanted anything when he went to the shop and would bring it back for me,’ she said.
‘I got an electric kettle, oats, milk power and chia seeds and lived on that, and boiled tap water, during my self-isolation.’
The building she was in was three-storeys high with a fourth floor under construction.
‘Because the fourth floor wasn’t completed I was able to go up there to get some fresh air.’
‘I stayed in my room and then after 12 days I had to get out just for the sake of my sanity,’ said Maeve.
‘There was an open kitchen there downstairs so it was ok because we were able to keep our distance,’ she added
‘After 12 days and with the [planned] flight not happening I said to myself that I couldn’t stay in my room any longer and that’s why I went down.’
Maeve heard about a possible flight leaving from Lima but she still had the problem of getting from Iquitos to the Peruvian capital.
She also heard about a group of Israelis who were leaving from a city called Cusco for Lima.
However, the Peruvian government stopped that flight because the Israelis would have been in Lima for more than three hours.
‘The government just wanted people arriving in Lima and then leaving again straight away,’ said Maeve.
‘They did not want anyone staying there for too long and instead wanted you moving on as soon as possible.’
Maeve said that upon hearing reports that the Irish had got out of the country she was worried that she would be left behind and possibly even be forgotten about.
Ireland’s Ambassador to Chile, Peru and Ecuador, Paul Gleeson, then contacted Maeve and offered assistance.
He put her in contact with the Austrian Honorary Consulate to Peru, Stephan Germuth, who was helping get people from EU cities out of the country.
‘We still had the problem of getting from Iquitos to Lima because if we couldn’t do that we wondered how we would ever get out,’ said Maeve.
Her predicament was compounded by the fact there is no road access to or from Iquitos.
Eventually, Maeve got word that her name was on the list of passengers for a scheduled, approved flight to Santiago and from there to Frankfurt but she still had to get out of Iquitos.
‘I had to get a motor taxi to get to the meeting point to get the bus to the [Iquitos] airport,’ she said.
However, that was a precarious position to be in too as that trip took place on a day when women were supposed to be in quarantine.
‘I had been told that if we were stopped by a policeman not to go to the station because that would mean a big delay and I’d miss the flight,’ she added.
She kept her head down in the motor taxi but on the way to the meeting point was stopped at a military checkpoint.
‘We were stopped as we headed to the meeting point and I gave the driver my phone so he could show it to the soldier as it had my [travel] permit on it and the soldier the let us go.’
After she arrived at the meeting point she had to take a 20 minute bus journey to the airport.
However, once there they had to wait for 40 minutes before being allowed into the airport and then they had a further four-hour wait because there was something wrong with the plane.
‘Once we were on the plane we had to wear masks but when we landed in Frankfurt people were not wearing them,’ said Maeve.
She had to stay in the transit area of the airport and ended up sleeping on the airport seats along with Danny, from Louth, and another Russian man they met.
‘We had the whole run of the airport to ourselves it was a bit surreal,’ said Maeve.
‘We slept on the bench and the we flew out the following day,’ she added.
Arriving back in Dublin airport was an emotional moment for her: ‘It was just great to be back home in Ireland.’
She got a Bus Eireann bus back to Wexford and there was only a couple of other people on board ‘so there was plenty of space to keep apart’.
Her parents were waiting outside her flat in the car when she got to Wexford and her mam had done some shopping for her and left the items at her door.
Happy to be home she said everyone needs to be aware of the danger posed by the virus and said if that means staying inside that’s what people need to do.
‘You have to do it, because everyone is doing it and playing their part,’ she said.
Having already done a period of self-isolation Maeve knows she could do it again - especially given the circumstances in which she did it the first time around.
‘Well this is luxurious compared to before so that’s ok,’ she said.
‘At the moment just having the sense of security and safety or being in your own apartment is great,’ she added.
‘At least you know that your family and friends are just a drive away and at the end of the phone so that’s good; it’s a nice place to be.’
Maeve also feels that lessons can be learned from the situation the world now finds itself in.
‘People need to realise that other countries aren’t just neighbouring territories,’ she said.
‘If something happens in a poorer country it can have an effect on the entire world and there is absolutely no reason why there can’t be a reasonable standard of healthcare for everyone all over the world,’ she added.
‘People should also have enough food to eat; good things can come from all of this but we have to approach things differently.’
Maeve also commented that the gardai shouldn’t have to force people to stay at home.
‘People should just stay at home,’ she said.
‘The gardai should not have to force people to stay at home,’ she added.
‘What needs to happen to get people to realise that this is real.’
Iquitos only has a small hospital which has one ventilator and Maeve heard that police officers are beginning to get sick there now.
She said the hospital will not be able to cope with any kind of pandemic.
‘They are also trying to deal with dengue fever, which people are dying from, and now they have to deal with this as well.’
David, the man who owns the Airbnb where Maeve stayed, bought up a lot of paracetamol and malaria medicine so that if someone needs it he has something to give them.
‘The hospital is not going to be able to handle it but Iquitos is surrounded by the jungle so hopefully the people will be protected to some extent because of that,’ said Maeve
Some of the measures brought in include men only being able to venture out on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and women only getting out on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Thursdays, with nobody allowed out at all on Sundays.
‘They also brought in new quarantine measures as I left which meant nobody could go out on Thursdays and Fridays as well as Sundays,’ said Maeve.
‘I am really afraid that if it hits there it will get really bad and when I left they were bringing in that people could only be out between 5 a.m. and 4 p.m..’
She heard that 21,000 people were arrested in Iquitos under marshal law measures for breaking the curfew as efforts intensify to keep the pandemic to a minimum.
‘The rubbish is put into bags and placed out on the streets at night and then a lorry comes along at night to pick them up but I heard of a man who put out his rubbish after curfew hours and was arrested and put in jail for 24 hours,’ said Maeve.
She plans to work on her Spanish: ‘I want to build up my Spanish because it was frustrating not being able to communicate.’
For now she’s happy to be home but for Maeve the world has many more places to explore when the time is right.