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Life as a pariah in Argentina (part 7)

25 Wednesday Mar 2020

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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.

Life as a pariah in Argentina (part 6)

24 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Argentina (home), blog

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We are on our way to Capital. You can only drive if you have a special permission. Like us, we have a flight confirmation, and a ‘laissez passer’ letter from the Belgian embassy. We have also received a link of the law saying we can go, in case they don’t believe us.

I feel like I am in an apocalyptic horror movie. To me, apocalyptic is horror, and I never watch such movies. So the feeling I now have solely comes from movie trailers.

The road is empty. We went to fill up the car at the gas station on the highway. Normally this is full of people, now it’s just us, and 1 man serving us. The shop is closed and has a big red ‘No entrance’ sign. The guy keeps a safe distance and wears gloves. He tells us they are going to close down completely.

He tells us the robberies in town have started. With this total lock down people can’t work, and many have no money and a family to feed. Argentines have lived through many crises, but this one is particular : the poor can’t even go outside to beg, as there are no people on the streets to beg from.

The highway is as good as empty. The peaje is closed, or rather, open. You can drive through without paying. The animals are already taking over. We have to break for a big bird on the road. Oof. Just in time he flies off.

At the next peaje there is a well organized check up. We are pushed into lanes where several police officers are doing check ups. There is also press, cameras, TV vans with satellite dishes.

We start by saying ‘Somos Belgas’, we are Belgians, and immediately the cop backs off. He asks our documents and takes my phone in his gloved hand. He reads the Embassy letter attentively and checks the flight time. We are good to go.

The 2nd check point is in Capital, what are you doing here? (The airport is the other direction), but they believed our story that we need to hand in our rental car. No proof needed for that. She warned us that we should call the airport first as there have been cancelations. We know all about that. Our flight is indeed canceled. We knew that all along.

We are now waiting on a phone call by the embassy, that some european flight has 2 free seats. That’s how one travels out of here nowadays. At least when he’s Belgian. We depend on the goodwill of other countries to take us along on their planes.

Meanwhile we wait in this little Airbnb appartement in Capital… patiently.

Life of a pariah in Argentina (part 1)

19 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Argentina (home), blog

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It was already some time ago that I decided to come back to Argentina for one month to do a photographic project on the city. I already have hundreds, maybe thousands of photos of the Buenos Aires, but all of them quite old and none as I would want them in the style I make them now. So let’s go!!

March it would be! It’s when (as far as I remembered) there are lots of thunderstorms, and the heat is slowing down a bit. So off I went!

I rented a small airbnb apartment close to where we used to live, and last minute, my husband (completely jealous of my new project), decided to come with me. Me, on a photographic project, him, getting our weekend house back in shape.

It were restless times, the end of February. China was still in full Corona virus crisis, and Italy was just rolling in. Belgium just had its 2nd case, (the first being a Belgian coming from China, the 2nd, from Italy.) Argentina still had to get their first case. There were some signs of a disaster coming but nothing was quite clear, yet!

So there I was, in my adopted home. Many Argentines have Italian or Spanish roots, so they follow close what is happening over there. It was still very far away, and even though they looked at it all with horror, they didn’t seem to think it would ever come here. Not in Argentina, not in this country where they all kiss and hug each other, and, where they drink mate. Quite a typical ceremony-like drinking of some tea-like herb, called mate. Basically they pass a kind of cup, also called mate, with a straw, called bombilla, and every one drinks from the same straw. Imagine they would have to go into a ‘no greeting’ and ‘no drinking mate’ period?? No way!!!

And then day 13 of our stay, all of a sudden, they woke up. The government decided that all flights from affected countries (EU, USA, Chine?…) were cancelled for 30 days, and (among other measures) foreigners and Argentines coming from an affected area needed to go into a 14 day quarantine…

We were in day 13, still one to go. The fact that when we arrived here there were only 2 cases in Belgium didn’t matter. We left for our weekend house where we stayed low until day 14 passed.

The government was quite strict, people were checked upon, tourists that didn’t comply were put on the first plane out, locals were detained.

That is the day when we changed into pariahs.

We are European, we are evil, we not only brought the virus here, we are the cause of all the trouble coming at them. As ever friendly they were until day 13, they turned against us at once. Our doorman looked at us suspiciously. The guys at the entrance of our weekend house asked if we had done our 14 days, people hearing our foreign accent gave us the eye!

By then the country had gone into a de facto lock down. Nothing was closed yet, apart from schools, public buildings like museums, the library, tourist attractions… Restaurants and even the movie theatre were still open, even though in the last, the seats next to you on both sides had to remain empty. But people stopped going out, just like that. One day restaurants were full, the next day they were empty. One day there were still traffic jams all over town, the next streets were empty.

When my shoots were canceled we thought it time to leave the city and go to the quiet countryside. The days of taking the bus all over town were over, restaurants were considered unsafe, and me, a European, was looked at in the same way as that one boy on the bus who was coughing.

My Buenos Aires project was put on hold…