I am an experienced traveler who dealt with catastrophes and challenging situations while traveling around the world. I dealt with getting stuck in the middle of riots in Chiapas Mexico, a military coup and later civil unrests and protests in Argentina, earthquakes in Turkey, hurricanes in the USA, Nicaraguan government’s repression of protests with rioting and looting and Easter bombing of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka just to name a few. Those were all very tangible situations caused by nature or humans, and situations seen on the media or heard about it, it was not a complete surprise. The coronavirus has a different dimension, you don’t see where it is coming from and we are not familiar with it. We don’t know how to prepare ourselves other than with the sanitary precautions we all know about by now. Even with those precautions, nobody can guarantee we would not get affected by it. It is an invisible enemy that brings fear, anxiety and anger that clutters our ability to think straight.
Some of us were traveling due to work and or vacations during the outbreak. In my case, I traveled to attend a conference and a meeting in the Middle East and squeezed in my favorite activity; a yoga retreat. The biggest blow of coronavirus was felt when my first conference was postponed followed a few days later by my meeting. I was left in the middle of my trip hanging on to my retreat hoping to get back to my next destination, South America. Well, that is not happening any time soon.
I am in Dahab, the Southeast coast of the Middle Eastern section of Egypt in the Sinai peninsula. Egypt has canceled all flights in and out until March 31st and canceled all buses for a while. To make matters more challenging, my destination country Argentina banned all flights from Europe, China, USA, Japan, South Korea and Iran and the like for 30 days. The whole country is under quarantine until the end of the month (at least) and everyone is supposed to stay home. Adding more to the ordeal, my return flight was from Cairo to Madrid and Madrid straight to Buenos Aires, Since Argentina banned all flights from Europe, this means that I have no transportation back to that country. Needless to say that I was not intending to be on a long haul vacation waiting to see when to get back. While I am a consultant and can work from anywhere, I had the responsibility of visiting and helping my mother for the next few months. Brother is not happy back there.
I could have had the chance to leave the country earlier. However, it was impossible to find a human being on those travel sites where I did my booking, to answer a phone to try re-schedule my departure I was put indefinitely, and eating up my international phone credit, on-hold hell for hours. Once I was lucky enough to get an answer, it was an automated reply were saying to call later unless your booking was scheduled in the next 3 days. To add wood to the fire, I tried the chat that also had automated replies giving me no answer that could be of any help. So much for technology during emergencies.
Being “stuck” gives you room to panic but also to deep reflection and introspection. We are set to find that spiritual link to a higher power, other than ourselves, that provides a sense of peace, that all is well. It is not a coincidence that I am “stuck” in the Sinai peninsula, a place of deep significant spiritual meaning. The Sinai mountain was the place where Moses was given the Ten Commandments by God. Moses was supposed to share these rules with the Israelites before leaving captivity in Egypt. God gave these rules for us to live a happy life and to be good to our fellow beings. The ten commandments’ guiding principles apply universally. God told Moses that if these rules were not followed, he would punish us. I don’t believe my God (call it Buddha, Mohammed, Allah, Baba, Shiva, etc) is a punishing God. I do believe that this is a wake-up call to review how we want to keep living our lives.
We know that we are not good beings to our planet and to our fellow human beings. The destruction of our natural environment, wars and inequity are just some examples of how bad we are to each other. We know the rules and how we need to proceed when we make decisions about what is right or wrong.
This is a major time for reflection, introspection and to decide how we want to move through life, with goodness or destruction. We have followed no rules other than greed and selfies. When a dark cloud like the coronavirus comes our way, we deal with pain and uncertainty with faith. Faith makes us search for the best part of us to have that sense of knowing that all will be well. Now is the time to witness lots of goodness from people and to discard what does not serve us any longer. It is a must that we need to reason through our choices, make positive changes and learn how to be closer -figuratively at this time- with one another.
