Processing

Part 1.

The following is an account of one of the most traumatic weeks of my life. I have been in my hometown of McMinnville, Oregon for almost a week now. Somehow a week has already passed. And I haven’t been able to muster up the energy to write anything down. I think I thought that if I did not process it and did not think about it, I would be able to press on for a little bit longer. I thought that if I wrote it down, it would unleash something inside of me and I was scared what it would look like. I was scared what it would make me feel. Holding it inside and distracting myself kept it from crushing me completely. 

However, I soon realized that was the opposite of my own advice. I know very well that I am a writer. I have to process things by writing them down. So here we go. I acknowledge that I am very privileged in my experience. I am very lucky to have somewhere to come home to. I am incredibly blessed to have a house and a family who lets me come back to it. I am healthy. I have access to enough food. Enough warmth. I am blessed. And yet, I still experienced this pain. As did many other of my fellow (returned) Peace Corps Volunteers. So bear with me. And thank you for being patient. My last post I was explaining how lucky Guatemala was to not have any cases of the virus. At the moment Guatemala now has 20 cases. At the time of this story, Guatemala had 2.

Sunday night. I was sitting in the passenger seat of José’s car. We were listening to music and it was peaceful. It was always peaceful sitting next to him in his car. It was dark out and we were heading in the direction of my house so that he could drop me off. I don’t remember what song we were listening to, but I remember leaning my head against the side of the door and looking out at the blurry trees whizzing by the window. I was holding his right hand on my thigh, as we always did when he drove. I was happy, content with the moment and with the weekend we had just spent together. We were on our way back from having dinner with a fellow Peace Corps friend. Jose drops me off at my house and I vividly remember kissing his cheek, stepping out of the vehicle, making eye contact with him and quietly saying “I love you” and telling him to drive safely. I shut the door and walked towards my house, not knowing that in the next hour, and in the next five days, my world as I knew it would come crashing down.

I enter the house, feeling light and fluttery, as I always do after spending a day with José. I sat on my bed and took a deep breath. “Everything is alright,” I reminded myself. The week before was quite difficult as I had just received news that due to the coronavirus I would not be allowed to take vacation to the U.S. in May to see my best friend get married. I was nervous and worried and the week was rough getting work done with that concern on my mind. But after the weekend I felt a lot calmer. I looked over at my desk and saw a wrapped Twix bar that I had bought on Friday when I was stressed. I laughed to myself and grabbed it to begin eating it. As I was eating the first bar I called Lily, my best Peace Corps friend, and we talked on the phone for a moment about how crazy everything was in the Peace Corps world. “Can you believe we don’t get international vacation until who knows when?” “Are you thinking of taking an interrupted service?” One of the options the Peace Corps had given us was taking an “interrupted service” due to the virus if anyone was feeling worried about not being able to travel internationally for a while. I remember shaking my head as I took another bite of my twix bar and saying “i’m not leaving. They would have to force me to go before I take a step out of this country.” Almost on cue, Lily says “someone just said something in the group chat” (our Kan 14 Peace Corps group chat). We both open WhatsApp to see a screenshot someone in our group sent of an announcement by Jody Olson, Peace Corps head director, on the Peace Corps website. My vision blurs and I just read one sentence: “It is against this backdrop that I have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend all Peace Corps operations globally and evacuate all of our Volunteers.” I read the sentence again, not quite understanding its significance. I hear a gasp and light whimpering on the other side of the phone as Lily starts to cry. “Camille, we are being evacuated. They’re evacuating us.” 

I keep reading that sentence again and again and it doesn’t quite make sense. Evacuation? I keep reading, hoping more words might sink into my brain. It continued, “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.” I look over and see I had dropped my Twix bar half eaten on the ground. Lily is asking me if I’m okay on the line and I’m not quite sure how to answer. “I think i’m in shock,” I hear myself say. I say a couple other things that I don’t recall. Words were coming out but my brain wasn’t following. A couple minutes later we received an email from Peace Corps Guatemala directly explaining the evacuation. The email stated that we had three days to evacuate. Some of us would leave Monday, some would leave Tuesday, and the rest were to leave Wednesday. We were ordered to start packing immediately and to pack as if you weren’t coming back. I look around my room at the furniture I had bought, the decorations, and the full closet of clothes. I see my two suitcases in the corner that I had pushed there to hide for what I thought would be two years. Soon after I received notice that I was a part of the group that would leave the next day at 10:00 in the morning. I look at the clock. It’s about 9:45pm. “Can I call you back, Lily? I have to call José.” 

I hang up and try to take a deep breath. And that’s when the tears come. They flow heavy and I can feel my chest constricting. 10:00am? I had to be out of the house by 10:00am? I had to pack up my entire life, tell my host family, say goodbyes, sleep, AND leave in the next 12 hours? I looked at my phone where I had brought up José’s contact, but I couldn’t get myself to press on his name. “This is going to crush him,” I think to myself. How do you call someone and tell them something that is going to change everything? I took a deep breath and pushed the button. 

The next 12 hours were insanity. I cried until my eyes were swollen as I frantically shoved things I found important into my two suitcases. I slept for four hours and then woke up and had to tell my host mom that I was moving out of her house in three hours. Bless that family, they let me leave so much stuff in their house. It was impossible for me to pack up my entire room plus my kitchen. I didn’t have room for over half of it. I sat on my bed looking at the room that had become my home. The room that was my safe haven after a hard day of work. The room where I journaled every night about how my day went. The room where I watched movies and facetimed my friends back in the states and called my family. The room where my little host nephew danced and asked me how to say things in English. It looked the same, but I felt ripped apart. José was able to leave work in Guatemala City and come rushing to my house. When the doorbell rang I was scared to open the door and see his face, knowing what I had just done to him. I got up, opened the door, and walked outside for a moment, closing the door behind me. “What are you doing?” he mumbled, but then I put my arms around him and just hugged him. And we stood outside the front door of my house holding each other as the cars drove by on the busy highway. I didn’t care who saw us. I just needed that moment. Then I broke away, looked at him in the eyes, took a deep breath, and let him into my house. He helped me pack up the rest of my belongings I wanted to take with me, and I gave him some stuff to take to his house and keep safe for me. Eventually it was almost 10:00 and we had to go. We carried my suitcases together to his car. My host mom had gone somewhere so I said a quick goodbye to her over the phone. I didn’t get to say goodbye to either of my host brothers, my host brother’s wife, or their kids. We drove silently to the Peace Corps office and when we got there he parked in front and turned off the car. We were directly in front of the school I worked at where my office was. I sullenly stared at the rusty gates, thinking that I do not know if I will ever return. I never even got to remove all of my stuff from my office. I never go to say goodbye to any community members or any work partners. This was a community that I was leaving abruptly after I promised to give them my everything. 

My heart felt like it was physically breaking. I leaned over and rested my head on his chest and gripped his waist. I didn’t want to leave this town. I didn’t want to leave this country. I didn’t want to leave my community. I didn’t want to leave him. I had worked so hard to get there. Heaving sobs, we held onto each other, for fear that if we let go we might break. My breaths were coming out of me too rapidly and he gripped my face with both of his hands and made me meet his watery eyes with mine. And I will never forget the smile he had on his face despite the tears in his eyes. The contrast was striking. And I knew in that moment he was doing it for me, so that I would be able to hold myself together and walk through that door. We took deep breaths together looking into each other’s eyes as he continued to smile and nod. We unlocked the doors, stepped out, grabbed my luggage from the trunk, and I grabbed onto them. We both stood there for a moment, looking at each other. “I can’t do it,” I said. “Yes, you can,” he whispered back. “Yes, you can.” The sobs broke out of me again and I knocked on the Peace Corps office door to be let in. José watched me with a smile and I turned around for one last hug. The door opened and, with heart wrenching sobs, I turned around and walked through the door. I still do not know how I had the strength to take those steps away from the person I have fallen in love with and into the unknown.

Inside the office, I continued to sob violently while dragging my suitcases inside the office, returning my Peace Corps badge, my mosquito net, my phone SIM card, and all of the books they gave us. With the heaviest heart I ever felt, I loaded my bags and myself into a van and let them take me, along with several others, away from the Peace Corps office and towards the airport….(To be continued).