Sunday, school was in session and promised to be for the rest of the week. Forty-five percent of the students were in attendance at the beginning of the day, but throughout the day parents arrived at classroom doors to take their children to the airport for departure; the multinational companies were evacuating and other families were following suit. I wonder how many were actually present by the time school finished. Some students were chanting the pro-government slogans that were airing on state television. Weeks before the school had forbidden political discussion of any kind, but it was the elephant in the room that no one could deny. We were all tense; all wondering what was happening. Teachers were gathering in the hallways and in corners to talk about events and discuss evacuation. During one class I caught myself pacing back and forth across the room and had to sit down to stop myself. Not much educating took place at school that day.
I work part-time, so I went home during my breaks to watch the news; it didn’t look good. At the end of school on Sunday students were provided with a letter home stating that due to low attendance rates, the school would extend the already scheduled mid-term break which was due to start at the end of the week. Calling off classes for political reasons would be to side with the anti-government forces and acknowledge that something was wrong. Teachers were free to leave if we wished as long as we provided contact details, and still planned to come back by the end of mid-term break, two weeks later.
After school, Jared and I went home to see the latest news. We met with some of our neighbors and close friends to discuss the situation and consider evacuation. Since the past Thursday people had been itching to evacuate; tensions were high and panic had begun to creep in. For us, the decision to evacuate was very difficult. We have many local friends we care deeply about, and had worked hard to make our home there for three years. We didn’t want to leave if we didn’t have to. The problem is, you generally don’t know you really have to leave until it is too late. All weekend Jared had been saying that we were not going to evacuate, even if others were.
Then, Sunday night we listened to the leader’s son make a speech. We were hoping he would step in with words of moderation and peace. Instead, he vowed to fight to the last man, woman, child. At that moment Jared said, “Pack a bag now.” That swift turn was a lot for me to handle. I wasn't sure that we should stay through anything, but I thought packing a back right there and then might have been rash. As it turned out, he was right and getting a bag packed of critical documents actually helped us feel less anxious because we were prepared if we had to leave at a moment’s notice. It was the first of a series of swift changes and decision making moments that would be so difficult over the next two days.
We were agonizing over whether we should evacuate or not when our local landlord came over to advise us on the situation. He said the government had announced a 48-hour timeline for people to hand in weapons and surrender. After that, D-day would begin. He advised us to leave if we could. We called other local friends and they also said we should leave for the time being. Having the advice of our local friends was so important to us. We struggled with feeling we were abandoning them, but their blessings released us. We knew that when things got difficult we would be in a very different position as foreigners. We decided to try to evacuate.
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