Within 24 hours, Amber Zafar had to book flights, pack all her possessions and say goodbye to the friends she had made over the past year.
Zafar is a 20-year old journalism student at the City, University of London. She lives just outside of London, England and is one of the hundreds of exchange students who have been forced to abandon their study abroad term and fly home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zafar was studying abroad at Utrecht University, located in the Netherlands, just outside of Amsterdam. For five months before that, she was working for the newly established English website of Italian national newspaper Il Giornale, in Milan, Italy.
“I was the only native English speaker working there,” said Zafar.
Zafar worked there for several months, editing stories and managing their social media. Following that, she was thrown into an exchange program for journalism at Utrecht.
“I never applied for exchange abroad, I applied for the work placement in Milan,” she said. However, her university said she had to do a full year out of the country in order to fulfill the requirements, so she was sent to Utrecht.
Despite not initially signing up for exchange, Zafar greatly enjoyed it.
“The experience is incredible.”
“It’s really great because everyone is in the same boat as you, everyone is just trying to make friends and we were really lucky because our flat was “full of really amazing people,” she added.
“You get to meet so many different people from different cultures, backgrounds and ages,” she said.
Things took a turn however, when the situation of COVID-19 became increasingly serious.
Students in the program first received an email notifying them that their classes would be going online for the rest of the semester, said Zafar. Then they were notified all face-to-face educational activities were also going to be cancelled.
The Dutch authorities shut down all non-essential businesses, promoted social distancing and public events with over 100 attendees were cancelled. These provisions are in effect until April 6. On March 20, U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson announced similar restrictions.
There are currently 4,204 cases of COVID-19 across the Netherlands and the UK has 5,683 cases.
Zafar originally wasn’t planning on going home, and her university had not reached out to her recommending she come home. Instead they told her they would support her if she chose to stay or to come home.
However, while countries across the world have been shutting down their borders and closing airports in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19, the U.K. is not one of them.
On March 17, the government announced that it was advising all citizens against “non-essential travel worldwide” for a period of 30 days. Zafar’s mother reached out to her daughter immediately.
“My mom called me up screaming Tuesday morning,” she said.
Her mother notified her that it would be best to leave due to the escalating travel restrictions. She bought her ticket and left several hours later on a flight to London.
“Everything happened very, very quickly,” said Zafar.
Photo provided by Amber Zafar.
