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When I left Uganda for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in January 2020, COVID-19 was beginning to gain momentum. My visit was courtesy of the THRiVE PhD fellowship that allows a research fellow to visit a designated institute in the United Kingdom. When I arrived in the London, I could spot a few, almost exclusively, Chinese with face masks. Sooner, reports started appearing in the
inner pages of the evening metro newspaper which was my main source of information. Then increasingly, more cases of COVID-19 were being reported in the UK. The LSHTM started organizing special committees to explore the novel virus but business was proceeding as usual and the London tubes were as crowded as ever. However, I made a conscious decision to move out of London because the television
news channels had started reporting rising cases in different countries.
My decision was driven by the fear that I could get infected through the mode of travel that I used daily. I moved to Leeds and it is from there that I was evacuated through Manchester airport, via Dubai to Entebbe. In Entebbe, I was placed under institutional quarantine.
The hellish quarantine
While departing Manchester, I was warned by airport officials to expect 14
days of quarantine in Uganda. When I arrived at Entebbe, the officials promptly read out a list of the category one countries in which COVID-19 cases had been reported. Those of us from such
countries had a separate area to line up for clearance. Temperature measurements were taken and our passports removed from us at that point by health officials in full protective gear. Those who had been
to Dubai and others from non-category one countries were allowed to proceed through the normal immigration procedures. We waited in some space at the airport under the close eye of a combination
of ministry of health officials and others in plain clothes security personnel. We never had any formal communication about what was going on until about two hours later when we were told where to pick
our luggage and choose a hotel of our choice which would be our home for the next 14 days. There were a number of options available to us and my choice was informed by a conversation that I had with one of
the less intimidating ministry officials who advised that I choose the Arch apartments in Ntinda. With what I had seen on videos earlier about the treatment of returnees in quarantine, I had reason to worry.
At about 5pm we entered a waiting bus and with a clear road we arrived at out hotel.
