Start of holiday in Burundi – 7 days of isolation due to covid

The first day was for unpacking and settling in as we slowly got used to the tropical heat. Everything was fine until I received an email with the results of the COVID tests, the third one we made in three days. Jessica had tested positive.

What a start to the holiday! In shock, it took me a while to see clearly what the next step was. I had to call my uncle to tell him the news and all the other people we had met the day before. According to the rules in place at the time, we all had to spend a week in isolation. Indeed, Jessica had not been feeling well the night we arrived in Burundi. Her vomiting and headaches made us think it was fatigue from the long journey. But on the second day, she felt better and kept asking when we were going to leave the house to discover the neighborhood. Thus, the email with her positive test really threw us off.

We weren’t really worried about our health because we were all vaccinated and we all felt well. Instead, I was nervous about not being able to go out for a week. Gradually my nervousness turned to gratitude when I realized that this was the best timing in case of a positive test. It could have been in Kigali where we also tested upon arrival. To catch our flight to Burundi, we depended on these results. Every passenger traveling through Kigali airport was supposed to have his results in their database. As for us, we could not get in when we arrived because our results were not yet out. We waited for over half an hour, time during which I began to imagine what we would do if one of us tested positive. This would have meant losing the flight and spending 2 weeks in isolation in Kigali at our own expense. Fortunately, this was not the case.

After all this processing, I realized how lucky we were and I felt better. I decided to take the 7 days of isolation as a good opportunity to rest and plan what to do during the remaining 5 weeks. So, we had plenty of time to unpack, cook, clean, play, dance and for the girls to do their school assignments.