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Ever wondered what it was like to be stuck outside South Africa because of the coronavirus? Would you have left your life abroad to quickly get back home? Well, in this show, Zola Zingithwa talks to South Africans who were living abroad when Covid-19 became a pandemic, watching as their country shut down its borders. Every Thursday, tune in to hear the weird, fascinating and scary stories from those who lived through them.
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We have come to the end of season one! In this episode, the host, Zola Zingithwa is alone on the mic. She reflects back not only on the first season of Covid Stuck Abroad, but also on the pandemic itself. It is a ramble through her personal history with novel viruses, but also how in retrospect, she argues, we should have seen coming the devastatio…
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“I spent over a week in Shenzhen trying to find flights.”
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On the final episode of the season, Merissa Naidoo traces her life back to her time living in Suchen, China in December 2019. She had fallen sick, but was convinced it wasn’t this new virus that everyone back home in South Africa seemed to be worrying about. What she didn’t know at the time was how much that virus would affect everything in her lif…
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“I’ve found my place here…it’s my home here too.”
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Sinenhlanhla Zungu, a PhD candidate at Lehigh University in the US, was giving her first talk at a conference in New Orleans in February 2020, when she first heard about the coronavirus. She didn’t know it then, but the pandemic would come to determine so much in her life, from the hobbies she would suddenly take up, to whether she could come back …
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The beginning of 2020 marked a year since Gareth Smit had been to South Africa. He was feeling homesick, and planning to travel back home to catch up with family and friends. But in early March, the governor of New York declared a state of emergency, as New York became a coronavirus epicentre. And Gareth was there to bear witness. For verified info…
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“I have no desire to leave Vietnam right now.”
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Madia Ueckermann had many exciting trips planned for 2020. In January, with schools on a break for the Lunar New Year, she travelled to Thailand for a short vacation. Then in March, her parents travelled all the way from South Africa to visit her in Da Nang, Vietnam. The family planned to hit many of the popular tourist spots during the month long …
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“I just didn’t understand what was going on.”
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In episode 5, Kagiso Mogotsi told her story of only intending to go on vacation, but finding herself gone from China because of the coronavirus outbreak. One of the colleagues she left behind at the English language training centre she worked at in Tianjin was Michelle October. Michelle had decided to stay in the country; after all, her mother had …
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The Chinese New Year was an opportunity to travel for Kagiso Mogotsi. January 2020 marked two years since she had been living in Tianjin. After a short break to Vietnam for the holidays, she planned to return to complete her teaching contract. But while on holiday, China went into lockdown to deal with the upsurge of coronavirus cases. She then dec…
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In 2018, Sadia Dhorat moved to the USA to complete a two-year MBA programme. The beginning of 2020 signalled her last semester, with promises of a school trip to China, meet-ups with friends, and eventually celebrating her achievement with a graduation ceremony. But of course, 2020 happened. For verified information about Covid-19, please refer to …
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“I need to believe that it’s going to get better...”
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In March 2020, as South Africa was preparing to go into a level 5 lockdown, the United Arab Emirates was also experiencing its own version of a hard lockdown. Noxolo Pule had to decide if she would rush back to her husband and family in South Africa, before borders closed down, or if she would stay in Dubai for her job, possibly subjecting her to b…
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St. John Hunter had plans for 2020. He was going to start a new job plus take up graduate studies, doing a Masters in Finance part-time. He did both those things. But of course, 2020 also had its own plans: turning most people’s lives upside down. Which, in St. John’s case, included contracting the very virus that had brought the world to a standst…
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At the beginning of 2020, Tina Hsu was working as an ESL teacher at a public school in Jeonju, South Korea. When she travelled home to South Africa for a short vacation in February 2020, she had no idea that the virus she had been hearing about on the news, would ultimately come to impact her life as well. Watching from afar in her home country, as…
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Covid. Stuck. Abroad. A show about South Africans who found themselves far away from home when Covid-19 became a pandemic. What would you have done? Would you have left your job, studies and life behind to quickly get back to South Africa? Or would you have stayed in your adopted country? Decisions had to be made. And every Thursday, we will hear d…
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