Local father, son on trip of a lifetime now can’t get home.
At the end of February, Cecil and Josh Nidiver flew Delta out of Houston. For two years — starting while Josh was still in college — they’d been planning to ride motorcycles across South Africa. A “once-in-a-lifetime trip,” Cecil called it, and a way to celebrate that Josh had come to work with him at Total Leather Care, the leather-repair shop he runs in southwest Houston.
That was, of course, the Before Time, when vacations and planes still seemed normal. COVID-19 was a distant threat, something to worry about if you were going to China or on a cruise. Americans didn’t yet own face masks or sing to themselves while washing their hands. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was just cranking up. People got haircuts, shook hands, sat next to strangers at bars.
Cecil and Josh landed in Johannesburg and spent two and a half weeks riding their rented Harleys all across South Africa, stopping along the way to visit Cecil’s old friends. Some places looked like West Texas, Cecil thought. Others were lush, like
Houston. It was a blast.
But as the days went by, they began hearing more about the new virus. On March 5, South Africa documented its first case.
Commercial flights began to be canceled. Their return flight, on Delta, was one of them.
The American embassy offered them a flight out of the country, but by then, Cecil, who’s close to 70, was nervous about being packed tight with other people on a plane. And besides, he had a mild cough.
He and Josh figured they’d catch a later flight.
The embassy, Cecil says, didn’t warn them that it might be their last chance. They didn’t know that all commercial flights would be canceled.
On March 25, the U.S. State Department estimated that more than 50,000 Americans had been stranded abroad, stuck by shutdowns and quarantines.
Two days later, the Nidivers were clearly in that category.
South Africa reported its first death, and the country went into lockdown.
‘No flights, no flights’
On Airbnb, Cecil and Josh found a bed-andbreakfast in Pretoria — a nice place, if you have to be stuck in limbo.
“Imagine staying at your favorite uncle’s house,” says Cecil. “That’s how South Africans make you feel.”
They’d signed up with the U.S. State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, the one that’s supposed to send security alerts to travelers, but that’s been useless, Cecil says. When he called the program’s number, a recording referred him to its Facebook site and the embassy website. Those, in turn, gave him the phone number.
(When I tried calling the embassy, I was greeted by the same recording.)
Cecil and Josh tried visiting the American embassy in person, but the doors were locked. A guard slid a note with a phone number under the door. But when Cecil called, no one answered.
He was stunned. “Americans shouldn’t assume that the U.S. Embassy will help you,” he says now. “But if you need help, you should go to any other country’s embassy.”
Qatar’s Olympic running team happened to be staying at their B&B; the team trains for six months a year at Pretoria’s high elevation. So Cecil and Josh tried the Qatari Embassy. Through it, they managed to book a flight out on May 7. But at the last minute, that one fell through. “No flights, no flights,” a man at the embassy informed them.
Qatar Airways still hasn’t refunded the $4,800 they paid for tickets, and Cecil wonders what’ll happen with all the other unexpected bills they’re racking up. For once in his life, he’d bought traveler’s insurance, just in case the worst happened. But now he’s afraid the insurance company will go bankrupt.
Guards and barricades
One time they got wind of what Cecil calls “a secret Qatari flight” and followed the running team’s bus into the Pretoria airport. They got past the guards and barricades, Cecil says.
But then police showed up. So they couldn’t get on that flight either.
Another time they thought they’d booked a May 9 flight on South African Airways. But that one was canceled May 7, apparently because the plane was too empty.
As of Thursday, there’s hope for another South African Airways flight.
This one is scheduled to leave May 17.
“The South Africa Airways lady coordinated it,” Cecil says. “The U.S. Embassy is doing jack.”
The airline rep told him not to worry that this flight might also be canceled. It’s full, she said.
That doesn’t surprise Cecil. He says he knows of at least 20 Americans stuck in South Africa, and he figures that’s only a small fraction.
If all goes well, he and Josh will fly from Pretoria to Washington, D.C., then take a Delta flight to Houston.
Still, Cecil worries. “I emailed the U.S. Embassy six hours ago,” he said Thursday. “I was asking, ‘Are you sure it’s leaving?’ I’ve heard zip back from them.
“But the lady from South African Airlines says it’s for sure,” he says.
In his voice, you could hear how much he wants that to be true.