Organization announces suspension of all operations globally and the evacuation of all volunteers.
Amid pandemic, Peace Corps workers are ordered home with little warning
When they commit to a two-year service abroad with the Peace Corps, volunteers expect life in the United States to change in their absence.
Few could have anticipated a global pandemic rapidly reshaping lifestyles worldwide, forcing volunteers to adapt to changing conditions far from home and, more recently, close their service and evacuate with little-tono warning.
From its headquarters in Washington D.C. late Sunday evening, the Peace Corps announced the suspension of all operations globally and the evacuation of all volunteers in an open letter signed by its director, Jody Olsen.
“As COVID-19 continues to spread and international travel becomes more and more challenging by the day, we are acting now to safeguard your well-being and prevent a situation where Volunteers are unable to leave their host countries,” the letter said.
The move is unprecedented in the 59 years of the organization. Volunteers have been evacuated from specific countries during times of local crises, but never globally.
The order to evacuate has hit some volunteers from Florida particularly hard, especially those who were scheduled to finish their service in a few months and counting on extra time to say a prolonged goodbye to their host families, friends and communities.
“The idea that eventually you’ll be leaving is there, but there’s usually a lot of planning behind when you’re supposed to actually leave,” said Alex Greco, 24, of North Port. “It’ll never be enough time.”
Baotran Duong, a 24-year-old from Orlando serving in the Imereti region of Georgia, said many volunteers in that country are concerned about contracting the virus in transit. According to Johns Hopkins University, Georgia had 38 confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of Wednesday.
Duong, who has been serving in Imereti for 11 months, said she and other volunteers in the country were working in rural regions where they were less likely to contract the virus.
“We’re more safe here than we are in the U.S., frankly,” she said.
Peace Corps spokeswoman Marjorie Wass said medical officers within the organization are instructing volunteers how to limit their exposure to the coronavirus while traveling. Volunteers have been asked to selfquarantine for two weeks after returning home, she said.
While current volunteers prepare to leave their host countries, former volunteers have mobilized to ensure evacuees have the resources they need upon returning to the United States. Many of those being evacuated will come home without a job waiting or a plan for what comes next.
‘I feel kind of helpless’
Before the worldwide evacuation was announced, the organization evacuated Peace Corps volunteers from China, where the virus was first identified, and neighboring Mongolia, and had started the process at other unspecified posts.
A March 4 open letter attributed to Olsen announced travel restrictions on certain countries and said the Peace Corps had formed a COVID-19 working group involving members of various offices to monitor the spread of the virus.
In preparation for the pandemic, each post developed a response plan for the virus, she wrote.
Sunday’s letter, addressed to Peace Corps volunteers, acknowledged the effect the sudden evacuation would have on them.
“Evacuations are difficult, emotionally draining experiences for everyone involved. We are here for you, and we will do all that we can to keep you informed and up to date on the latest developments,” the statement said.
Greco has served in Ethiopia since June 2018, in the Gurage Zone and the Amhara Region. Her service, which included three months of training, was scheduled to end in September. Its abrupt end has left her reeling, between the pressure of saying her final goodbyes to her host family and friends, packing nearly two years’ worth of belongings and planning for the next steps.
“I have nowhere to quarantine. I have no job waiting for me,” she said.
While Greco is one of the fortunate volunteers who can temporarily stay with loved ones back in Florida, she worries about potentially spreading the coronavirus. Other Peace Corps volunteers voiced similar concerns that they’ve been exposed to it in their host countries and could bring it back unwittingly.
Duong’s group was scheduled to fly out Tuesday night on a chartered flight, but with those in high demand, their trip was postponed and they are still waiting in Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, to leave the country.
Unemployment presents another pressing concern. In an email about the evacuations sent to Peace Corps volunteers serving in Kyrgyzstan, volunteers were told they would receive an evacuation allowance in proportion with the length of time they served at their posts, and they would lose Peace Corps-sponsored health insurance after an additional free month.
Greco plans to take freelance writing jobs before searching for teaching jobs abroad or starting graduate school later in the year.
“I feel kind of helpless, like there’s nothing I can do,” she said.
Greco said she had to switch her service location from the Gurage Zone to Amhara a month ago. She had planned to return and visit her host family, but now she won’t get the chance to say goodbye.
“I was very, very close with them. It really felt like my family,” she said. “My plan was to go see them again this weekend, and just knowing that I’m about to abruptly leave when I told them, ‘I’ll see you in two weeks,’ I’ll just kind of be a no-show. … It’s heartbreaking,” Greco said.
Uncertainty amid evacuation
During their service, volunteers are expected to integrate into their local communities and are required to live with host families during training. In many countries, volunteers live with local families for the entirety of their two-year service.
Greco said she and other volunteers in Ethiopia had been tracking the evacuations of individual posts in a group chat and speculating whether they would be next. Many Chinese companies have investments in Ethiopia, she said, so Ethiopia’s airports commonly host flights to and from China.
In many cases, Peace Corps told volunteers specific countries were being evacuated without giving a reason why, and volunteers learned the coronavirus was to blame afterward, Greco said.
Ethiopia’s volunteers, which number around 130, on Sunday were placed on standfast, meaning they had to stay in their villages and prepare to leave if necessary.
Greco said she and her fellow local volunteers received the evacuation news around 8 a.m. local time Monday, and she learned about the evacuation as she was headed to teach an English class.
“I knew that when I assigned that homework, I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to check this. I won’t be here to check it,’” she said. “But I did my best to continue with the lesson.”
Hours later, Greco’s cohort received word they should prepare to be in the country’s capital, Addis Ababa, to fly out in one to three days, despite having previously been told to stay out of the area to avoid the coronavirus. As of Wednesday, Ethiopia had six confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease the virus causes.
But information, sent from Peace Corps headquarters and the individual directors of each country’s post, has been changing so rapidly that she and her fellow volunteers are not sure what to expect and are left waiting for further information, she said.
“Information’s given, and then it’s changed,” she said. “I wish there was a lot more transparency. I like to think they have their reasons for not being as transparent, because even now, it feels like a lot of the emails are very vague.”
In an emailed statement, Wass called the efforts to evacuate volunteers a “full agencywide effort, with significant input from the field.”
“The health, safety and security of Volunteers are the highest priority of the Peace Corps,” she wrote. “As COVID-19 continues to spread and international travel becomes more and more challenging by the day, we are acting now to protect the health of Volunteers and prevent a situation where Volunteers are unable to leave their host countries.”
Duong said the uncertainty about evacuation has made it hard to plan ahead and prepare for life back in the U.S.
“I’m not thinking about what’s going to happen when I get to the States,” she said. “Every hour, we’re just constantly checking our emails.”
Volunteers organize help upon return
Greco said few locals were informed by Peace Corps officials that volunteers would be leaving, letting the task of breaking the news to communities fall to the volunteers themselves. When Greco told her school’s director she was being evacuated, she said he told her, “If I was in Peace Corps’ position, I would do the same.”
In the midst of the upheaval, volunteers are determined to persist until their evacuation, and many feel guilty about leaving projects and work unfinished.
“I think it’s really important that we as volunteers stay calm about the situation and that we try not to let it deter us from working until the very end,” Greco said.
Support groups for volunteers have popped up across social media in the past few days, despite volunteers at some posts being advised not to speak publicly about their evacuation until everyone had returned home.
The Tampa Bay Returned Peace Corps Volunteers group is circulating a spreadsheet, started by two former volunteers who served in Kyrgyzstan and are not part of the Tampa group, that aggregates resources available to returning volunteers nationwide.
Members of the Tampa Bay RPCV group are offering rides from the airport, petsitting services and even rooms in their homes to evacuees who may not have anywhere to go upon their return or who need to self-quarantine, group coordinator Heidi Bissell said.
“Peace Corps, historically, has had a home stay network,” she said. “We’re all used to making do with very little, so Peace Corps volunteers aren’t going to be fussy if you’ve just got an air mattress on the floor.”
Bissell, who served in Witnica, Poland from 1998 to 2000, said volunteers share a bond even after returning to the U.S., and many join local returned volunteer chapters and groups for cohorts who served in the same country.
Florida has the fifth-highest number of Peace Corps volunteers nationwide, with 341 Floridians serving in the organization currently, according to Lissette Rutledge, public affairs specialist with the Peace Corps.
Since Orlando does not have its own local group for returned volunteers, the Tampa Bay group serves a broad region that includes Central Florida, Bissell said.
The outpouring of support from returned volunteers is unsurprising, given Peace Corps’ philosophy.
“Peace Corps has what we call the ‘Third Goal,’ and that is bringing back and sharing with Americans what you’ve learned abroad,” Bissell said. “It’s just also to kind of keep giving back to the community. One way that we’re doing that is trying to help Peace Corps volunteers and get them connected to services.”
Emotional support will be crucial for evacuated volunteers, who can expect to experience months of culture shock upon their return to the United States.
“Here, there’s such a collective society,” Greco said. “Going back to that individualistic society is going to be a lot.”
Heading back to a life where people won’t relate to the experiences she’s had in the past 21 months and vice versa feels intimidating. Greco has already found it hard to relate to her friends in a shared group chat and anticipates the stark contrast in their lived experiences to become more pronounced once she returns.
“It’s difficult to navigate that socially without bringing it back to something that’s unrelatable and very singular,” she said.