Evacuation - hasta luego, Honduras x
- Lois Butler-Kettle
- Mar 31, 2020
- 11 min read
So, what does it actually take to be evacuated from Honduras after two weeks of official lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Well...International intervention, numerous diplomatic agreements, SAS escorts, 14 roadblocks, two flat tyres, a private charter plane, a Mexican drug check, a VIP convoy through Mexico City, four airports and a total of 50 hours of travel.
That’s what.
The day for us to say goodbye finally arrived and it was even harder than I had imagined it would be. Saying goodbye to the people who had welcomed me into their lives so seamlessly and made me feel loved and looked after and truly a part of their world was heartbreaking. I won’t go into too much detail about how we spent our last few days together as I want to keep that very special time private. For our last night, we dragged all our mattresses into the living room for a movie night, and despite Genesis’ and my desperate attempts to fend off sleep and make the night last forever, we eventually gave in and drifted off, only to wake in the morning to the reality that we only had a few hours left before we would be leaving our Candelarian home.
I didn't think it was possible for me to cry anymore as I had already cried my fair share during our 2 week lockdown, but low and behold, hugging my host mum goodbye and feeling her shoulders start to shake set me off and I quickly became a blubbering mess, with Samuelito’s crying and reaching for my hand not helping my case.
During our last few days, Project Trust had been in contact with numerous ambassadors and government officials and had managed to create a plan of action. They had organised us a convoy which would escort us to the capital city of Tegucigalpa where we would stay the night and then take a charter plane to Mexico City the next day, from where we would fly to Heathrow with British Airways. All of this was to be kept on the down low so as to ensure the plan wasn’t compromised, however now that I am back home in England, I am allowed to spill. While this plan sounds pretty straightforward, the reality of putting it into action was far from it.
The (quite literal) hiccups started as we waved goodbye from our convoy truck, with me shouting out final “te quiero mucho”s from the window, trying to hold it together as much as I could until they were out of sight. Thank god Izzy was there and managed to hold it together much better than me. I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t been there to smile reassuringly and squeeze my hand. A few deep breaths later, we drove up to the blockade set up at the exit of Candelaria and were waved through by the mayor in all his cowboy hat and checked shirt glory. Oh how I will miss that man and his unintelligible grunts of acknowledgement :’)) After passing a few rogue cows and avoiding locally placed carefully arranged tree-trunk road blocks, we had to stop due to a flat tire.
Not long after we had stopped, another convoy car pulled up behind to help, and the Mapulaca girls Esther and Libby hopped out!! This improved my mood tremendously as I had missed them a lot, and so we go out of our car, giving each other a hug and laughing at our interesting PPE ensemble, although I have to say I was a little jealous of Esther’s extremely fashionable blue mask. It was nice to know that they were going to be travelling alongsie us, so once the tyre was sorted - thanks to the adorable but not very helpful elderly Honduran man who had come up from his house to see what was happening - we headed off until the Mapulaca car got a flat tyre and we had to stop to fix theirs. The fact that our government-provided convoy trucks were struggling with these roads just goes to show how awful the tracks around these rural villages really are.
During the drive we got to know our driver Ed who has got to be one of the most interesting people I have ever met. The more we found out about him, the more impressed we were. I don’t really know how to sum him up in a way that does him justice but I’ll try. He explained how when growing up he attended a private bilingual school in Tegucigalpa, which was why he was able to speak to us with perfect English, and then at 15 years old he joined the army and trained for four years, after which he did a brief stint with the air force before transferring to the Honduran police for 11 years. After that he continued to train and specialised in security services, personal protection for VIPS at events such as UN meetings held at embassies across Central America as well as worked in the smuggling, trafficking and extraction sectors. He also trained with the British SAS in Belize and has provided personal protection for members of the British royal family. As well as this, he has a degree in criminal law (I'm pretty sure he has three masters degrees in total) and is continuing his studies with the aspiration of becoming a ‘lawyer as a side job’ (his words, not mine). I could keep listing off his accomplishments forever, but I think you get the picture. I don’t think I have ever been more speechless or have ever been in the presence of such a highly qualified professional, and it was extremely reassuring to know that we were in such good hands. However, despite his obviously incredible resume, he will always be just Ed to us ;))
As we chatted, we passed through numerous checkpoints; I kept a tally of all the checkpoints we went through during the whole day and it added up to whopping total of 14. The barriers varied from huge trees that had been cut down and pulled across the road, to lorries parked sideways across the track, to more formal ones at bridges where we had to get out of the car and hosed down with disinfectant by men in military uniform and full body PPE. Ed explained the differences between the blockades; some were manned by health ministry officials who required that he present paperwork/permission for travelling during a time when the government had announced that only essential transport was allowed, whereas others had been illegally put in place by angry and scared villagers.
Halfway through the day, plans seemed to change, although we didn’t entirely understand what was going on as Ed tended to speak with his team mates in code on his radio.
We realised there was a change in plan when we turned left at the junction in San Juan and headed towards Gracias rather than turning right towards Tegucigalpa. It became even more confusing when we passed through Gracias and ended up in Santa Rosa to meet up with the rest of the Lempira volunteers at a closed cafe.
After explaining to one of the other escorts Xavier that we didn’t understand why we had taken a 2 ½ hour detour in the opposite direction to where we should have been heading, he explained that a couple of Lempira girls were having trouble getting out of their village. There were 2 positive cases of COVID-19 in La Union and the village was making it very difficult for anyone to enter or exit. We were still confused, and even more so when we were told that we were going from three cars to two and so had to reshuffle all our luggage while being told that some of it might not even make it onto the same flight as us, but we trusted the team and followed their instructions. Molly and Alice hopped in the car with Izzy, Ed and I and off we went. However, at this point, we had been in the car for about about five hours and were desperate for the bathroom so Ed drove us to the bus station in Santa Rosa where we knew there were bathrooms, but we were met with a very strange sight; normally, the station would be full of buses and minivans and busboys yelling back and forth over the heads of vendors and other travellers, however due to countrywide lockdown, it was absolutely empty and not a soul to be seen, except one. There was a man chilling on the front steps and it was just our luck that I recognised him as the guy who had driven us to Copan Ruinas back in November! Better yet, he recognised us too! Which shouldn’t be such a surprise as there are not many young white teenage girls in this part of Honduras but hey, it's always nice to be remembered. He was happy to see us and let us use his office bathroom, much to Ed’s disconcertion; I can definitely see what it must have looked like from his point of view, and he wasn’t too convinced when I tried to assure him that the guy was a friend but hey ho.
The drive from Santa Rosa to Tegucigalpa was a long one, about eight hours, and after having spent about five hours travelling all over Lempira that morning, we had been in the car almost all day. It was 10pm by the time we finally drove into the outskirts of Tegucigalpa and the view of the city was incredible; the city was laid out in front of us, the pitch black night sky hanging heavily above the sprinkling of bright city lights. It was almost as if the stars had fallen and blanketed the normally bustling capital, coating the buildings and highways and muffling every sound. It was a bit spooky to be honest, driving through a city which should have been alive with car noise and pedestrians but instead was deadly silent and entirely empty.
We couldn't have been happier to finally reach our destination of the Holiday Inn and after organising our plans for the morning and saying goodnight to Ed, everyone headed up to their rooms to get some sleep. When Izzy and I opened our door, we couldn't help but laugh out loud at how amazing the hotel room was. Yea I know it was just your average hotel room, but having a carpet and a hot shower and aircon and soft duvets and mattresses without spiky springs was something we hadn’t experienced in over a year, and so we revelled in it. 15 minute long steaming hot showers? YES PLEASE. Before bed, we gave Lety a call as she had been worrying about us all day and wanted the full run down, and after saying goodnight to her and the kids, we set our alarms and crashed.
The next day was a day of flying. We started by heading down to the breakfast buffet to catch up with the rest of the girls before we were collected by Ed’s team and taken to Tegucigalpa airport. The two boys who had been volunteering on Roatan had flown in with a group of St Andrews research students who were going to be travelling with us. Much to our surprise, when we arrived at the airport, we were met with a huge line of very smartly dressed Mormon missionaries who were also being evacuated. After speaking to some of them, I learnt that the majority of them had been in Honduras for over two years which was crazy, and made me slightly jealous to think they had had so much time in this amazing country that I had started to call home.
Upon entering the airport, social distancing was strictly enforced, and check in and security was very strange as apart from our group of volunteers and the Mormons, the airport was empty.
Lety kept calling and facetiming every ten minutes, wanting to be kept up to date which made me laugh and miss them, even though I had only been away for less than 24 hours. Eventually we were shown to our plane which all took us by surprise as it was nothing like what we had been expecting; it was a small, sleek, private charter plane which made us feel very VIP, and this was where the fun began...
The views of Teguc from the sky were incredible, and it wasn't long before we reached our first top in Tapachula, a small town just inside the border of Mexico, for a drugs check. We got off the plane, were checked by sniffer dogs and then put through some more customs checks. We were constantly being handed hand sanitizer at what felt like 5 minute intervals, along with temperature checks and seemingly endless forms on where we had been in the last two weeks whcih relayed how seriously people were taking COVID-19.
Something I wasn’t aware of at the time was that as our evacuation was ‘top secret’, our parents had not been made aware that we would be making a brief stop off in Tapachula, and so I only found out later that this caused a lot of panic for our parents who had been tracking the plane online and had watched it disappear off the map as soon as we had entered Mexican airspace. Fortunately, one of the volunteers messaged their parents to let them know about the drug check and so all the parents were able to calm down and breathe again once they could spot the plane reappear on its route to Toluca.
Arriving in Toluca, the plane pulled into a very fancy FlyMex aircraft hanger and we were met by a smartly dressed and smiling Francisco, the man in charge of the whole operation. He led us through the hanger to the reception where we all immediately descended on the popcorn machine. After loading up on snacks, we walked outside and were greeted by a convoy of 7 huge, shiny, very new 4x4 Chevrolets.
I mean, the day just kept getting more and more weird; it felt as though we had stepped onto a movie set, and the huge VIP sign above my head was the cherry on top. Each car had its own chauffeur, suited up with ear pieces and sunglasses (making me question whether or not we were actually starring in the Matrix, fully expecting Keanu to step out at any moment). I must add at this point just how out of place we must have looked; we were a group of relatively pale British teenagers, dressed in leggings and crumpled t-shirts, exhausted, dishevelled and squinting in the glare from the pristine windscreens, struggling to understand how we had got here. Fransisco must've noticed this as he laughed and guided us to the cars, putting four of us in each and explaining how he would meet us at the airport for the final send off. Emily and I were in the back of one of the trucks and for a while we just sat there speechless, looking at each other in awe as our brains struggled to comprehend how we had managed to get ourselves here. I need to thank Project Trust, especially Alex our Overseas Director, for not only putting this all together but managing to pull it off so smoothly.
The ride to Mexico City was probably the easiest leg of the whole journey so far as all the roads were tarmacked and empty and so we arrived there in just over an hour. The car ride through the city was magical, and had me marvelling at the beautiful Mexican neighbourhoods made up of wide streets lined by blossoming purple jacaranda trees and stunning Tuscan style mansions.
The airport was relatively empty, and after unloading our bags and making it through check in, Francisco waved goodbye and we headed through security and into duty free. We had had such a long day and were all starving so we set out in search of food and landed on a restaurant where we found a long table and sat down, treating ourselves and trying to relax and unwind after the stress of the last few days. We stocked up on snacks as the check in staff had told us that there wouldn’t be much food available on the flight due to the new COVID-19 restrictions, and before boarding, I quickly called Lety to send my love and reassure her that everything was going to be okay (she hates flights so was nervous for us).
The flight home was so easy and pretty normal, apart from the staff starting the flight by walking through the cabin, spraying aerosols with some sort of disinfectant above our heads. Once we took off, reality started to set it and I found myself hooking arms with Esther and Libby as we looked out over the sleeping city. I had sat next to Libby on the flight out to Honduras last August, so it felt only right to do the same for our flight home. After a few tears and giggles, we settled in for our 10 ½ hour flight, watching movies, snacking, chatting, sleeping, but I spent most of it thinking back over my time in Honduras and how much my outlook and attitude on life has changed as a result of my time in Candelaria.
I feel so lucky to have gained such a wonderful family during my year out there. Not only my incredible host family whom I will never stop loving and will go back and visit as much as I can, but also the other volunteers; these girls have become some of the most important people in my life and I have experienced so much with them that I know they will be in my life forever.
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