By Keith Whitcomb Jr. [email protected]
For her 30th birthday, Eben Brock, of Bethel, took a trip to Peru to finally visit a friend of hers she’d met at the age of 16. She arrived in Peru on March 8 with plans to come home March 17.
The day before she was scheduled to return, Peru’s president ordered the borders closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brock said she’d been out visiting some ruins with her friends, and they’d come back to eat.
“Somebody heard us speaking English and came over and he asked us if we were trying to get back to the States and we said, ‘Not right now,’ and he said, ‘Well they just closed the border, so you won’t be able to for 15 days,” she said.
Brock believes she and about 2,000 other Americans are stuck in Peru with a great deal of uncertainty about how and when they’ll get home.
“My biggest concern with that is I’m not in a big airport town, I’m in a smaller city called Arequipa, which is 16 hours from Lima and at least eight hours from Cusco, which is where, if the government does get involved, that’s where they would be sending flights,” she said.
If the government ends up arranging repatriation or humanitarian flights, she expects she’ll receive between 12 and 16 hours notice. Which is a problem.
“I can’t make it to these places in 12 hours realistically,” she said.
Once she heard the borders would be closing, she rushed to Cusco looking for a flight to Lima.
“We got to the airport at 4 a.m., and there were so many people there already, and we were all waiting in line, and once you got to the front of the line they either didn’t have flights for you, or airlines were canceling,” Eben said. ‘They made an announcement that there would be no international flights leaving Cusco, so again my best bet was to get to Lima, and those flights were already spoken for by 4 a.m.”
Rather than wait at the airport, she returned to her friend’s home. “Which I’m fortunate that we did, because we heard about hostels shutting down that night and being raided and Americans sleeping on the street and having nowhere to go, so I’m pretty confident I made the right decision putting my safety over sitting around an airport and not being able to get out.”
Her friend’s family lives in the restaurant they own.
“I am incredibly fortunate to be in the situation that I am in here, to know people who are Peruvian residents and to have a safe home to be staying in,” she said. “I 100% know my privilege even in situations like this. It’s not just about me, it’s also about raising awareness for the other Americans that are down here that aren’t in the situation that I’m in that were kicked out of their hostels, that are being given wrong information and being told they can’t get groceries, and having hotels, and hostels charge for those kinds of services.”
She said the U.S. embassy in Peru is closed to in-person visits. All one can do is call or email.
“The only official word that came via email that we have gotten from the embassy was that Avianca airlines has put in a request to continue flights here, and so if we were interested in those flights there’s a form to fill out with where we would be leaving from and where we’d be wanting to go, and the idea is if there’s high enough demand for certain flights, maybe three or four of these flights might happen,” she said.
Eben works as a catering manager at the Vermont Law School in South Royalton. She said she’s been in contact with people at the school, her father, as well as Senators Bernie Sanders and Patrick Leahy.
Lincoln Peek, a spokesperson for House Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., said in a Friday email that the Vermont Congressional Delegation sent a joint letter to the U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging him to address the situation with Americans stranded abroad due to COVID-19 countermeasures.
“We urge you to provide all resources and personnel necessary to bring our friends and neighbors home. We are hearing from Vermonters stuck in foreign countries all over the world — Morocco, Peru, Ecuador, and others — that they are not receiving the support they need from U.S. embassies and consulates to leave the country,” reads the letter, which acknowledges that efforts have been made for Americans stuck in Morocco. “There is significant confusion regarding what the Department is willing to do to help Americans stuck abroad and we are extremely concerned that our constituents cannot count on our government to provide a safe and timely journey home. We urge you to take aggressive action now to ensure the safe return of all American citizens abroad.”
Eben said the only places open in Peru, it seems, are grocery stores and pharmacies. Only one person is allowed to leave a household per day, and that’s only to buy food or seek medical aid. The military and police are out, enforcing these measures. She said she’s safe where she is, but is concerned the situation could get worse if people don’t take the spread of the coronavirus seriously.
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