{"id":67393,"date":"2020-03-27T14:11:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-27T06:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=67393"},"modified":"2020-03-27T14:23:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T06:23:14","slug":"covid-19-fearing-coronavirus-african-city-dwellers-flee-to-the-countryside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=67393","title":{"rendered":"Covid-19: Fearing coronavirus, African city dwellers flee to the countryside"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Passengers<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Passengers are seen at taxi station <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NAIROBI\/JOHANNESBURG, March 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Each morning at a crowded bus station east of Nairobi, Kenyans load their bags on to minibuses emblazoned with the faces of pop stars and Jesus, heading to their villages in the hope of escaping the coronavirus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am going back home because of corona,\u201d said Amina Barasa, her yellow headscarf standing out in the dark bus. The electronics shop where she worked had shut, she said, and she was going to stay with her family away from the city crowds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere you just stay in your compound where your movements are very limited. Here in the city you brush shoulders with so many people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Travelers in other African cities – from Nairobi to Kampala, Johannesburg and Rabat – are also heading to the countryside, worrying officials who say this helped spread diseases like Ebola in other outbreaks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Traveling makes it harder to trace contacts a sick person has had and risks increasing transmission through overcrowding, said James Ayodele, spokesman for the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

George Natembeya, the commissioner of Kenya\u2019s Rift Valley Region, had a blunt message for travelers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou are going to kill your grandmother,\u201d he told a news conference. \u201cYou are transporting disease, and if people die, you will carry that cross for the rest of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenya has 28 coronavirus cases. The government has severely restricted international flights, begun a dusk-til-dawn curfew, and informed buses and the public minibuses known as matatus that they can only fill half the seats to prevent overcrowding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simon Kimutai, chairman of the Matatu Owners Association, said trips out of Nairobi had more than doubled the week after the first coronavirus case was announced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was all one-way,\u201d he said. Now, trips within Nairobi were down by 75%, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some, the countryside is a refuge both from disease and the city\u2019s high prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Moroccan authorities closed the restaurant in the capital Rabat where Ahmed Agram worked as a waiter, he went home to the mountains of Taroudant, about 600 km south.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe countryside is full of people who found themselves unemployed due to coronavirus,\u201d Agram said. \u201cIn the countryside life is cheap and people help each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Agram\u2019s city neighbours won\u2019t be able to follow him. Morocco, which now has 170 cases, halted inter-city travel earlier this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Africa, which has Africa\u2019s highest number of cases with 554 coronavirus patients, is going further.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 21-day lockdown will begin at midnight on Thursday that will suspend all commuter and long-distance passenger rail services, international and domestic flights and cruise ships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minibus taxis will still be allowed to carry a third of their capacity to transport essential services workers and those permitted to move during the lockdown. The minibuses must be sanitized after every trip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Student Keitumetsi Kelodi escaped Johannesburg before the lockdown began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am leaving because our school decided to shut down the residences and I don\u2019t have a choice,\u201d she said, as she waited for her minibus taxi to depart for Brits, her small steel-mining hometown. \u201cIt\u2019s better to leave now. I\u2019m going back home to Brits because the virus has not reached there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investment banker Sebastian Pieterse planned to commute between Johannesburg and the countryside after driving his pregnant wife and two small children to her parent\u2019s farm in Limpopo, South Africa\u2019s northernmost province, on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when the new restrictions were announced, he joined them rather than risk being trapped in the city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith her being pregnant we don\u2019t want to risk it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are fortunate enough that we can do it. Many families don\u2019t have that option.\u201d — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Passengers are seen at taxi station NAIROBI\/JOHANNESBURG, March 27 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Each morning at a crowded bus station east of Nairobi, Kenyans load their bags on to minibuses emblazoned with the faces of pop stars and Jesus, heading to their villages in the hope of escaping the coronavirus. \u201cI am going back home because of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":67397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67393"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/67397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}