Its grey and gloomy when we drive out of the city towards the airport. The roads are as good as empty, here and there a lost metro-bus, some cars. It seems particularly eerie if you know the situation. The country is in lock down, people are stuck in their houses, this in trying to contain a dangerous virus that can destroy life as we know it. It feels like I am moving into a war movie. There are roadblocks everywhere. The majority of the access roads to Capital are closed off. On several points in town and on the highway there are check points, where your permission to move is checked. If you fail to show one, they just confiscate your car.

We get to the airport with a ticket of Ethiopian Airlines tonight, but we first wanted to try and get on the Air France flight to Paris. With the situation as it is, where people are stuck all over the country, we were hoping in ‘no shows’ and get on the waiting list. Air France flight is only 13h, and when we’re on it we’re on it. Where as Ethiopian airlines will be 16h plus 7h in the plane and take off isn’t certain until it has actually taken off…. so we decide to spend all day in the airport.

The airport is closed. People from the French embassy are organizing things. We wait hours outside in the cold, until we get confirmation that it won’t be possible.

So we check in to our Ethiopian Airlines flight online. Here on the tv screens the flight does not show. There is nobody we can ask. There is nobody. We call Ethiopian airlines in Buenos Aires, in Sao Paolo, in Belgium. They all say everything is normal and the plane will come.

We meet some people that are on top of the waiting list of Air France. One of the 4 can go. Then Air France decides it’s not him but another one of the group who must go. The first guy must get back off the plane, his luggage must stay in the plane ‘for sanitary reasons’ and when he gets back into the airport they say he must go into 2 weeks quarantine. These are crazy times. They hope their embassy can help them out.

We come across a guy who works in the airport and ask him about the Ethiopian flight. He says not to worry, it’s coming. Bit by bit I start breathing again. I won’t be happy until I see the plane take off in São Paulo ánd is on its way here.

We wait hours and hours, regularly checking the internet. The Ethiopian airlines website, the website of the airports of Sao Paolo and BA. Until the news comes. According to the airport in SP the flight is canceled. It confirms the rumors that commercial flights are no longer allowed to land here. The 2 other companies that were scheduled today, air canada and Qatar airways, were also canceled. Only repatriation flights, chartered by the governments can land. Ethiopian airlines on the other hand, still say the flight is operating as normal.

We must now wait an official ‘cancel’ message, or we can’t get back into the city. I wonder if the magical letter from the embassy will still do it’s wonders….

So what is next? We don’t know. Only repatriation is possible now. What a pity we are Belgian and not French or Dutch. They seem to have several flights coming. But no, we are Belgian, I check my passport again, and yes. We are Belgian.

Slowly but surely desesperation and frustration are taking its toll.