Emme McKay: Long journey home from world drowning in pandemic

More than 50,000 Kiwis have already returned home this year as Covid-19 has ravaged the world. Photo / Getty

Opinion

OPINION

"Welcome home."

It was two words and the kind smile from the border security worker at Auckland Airport that made my eyes sting with tears.

The feelings of anxiousness, panic and stress trying to get thousands of kilometres home amidst a global pandemic could be replaced with relief. I'd made it.

I'm now sitting in managed isolation. One of the thousands who has made their way back to New Zealand this year after Covid-19 hit. It's not where I imagined myself being, after heading to the UK in January for the long-awaited OE.

I was living in Edinburgh and was having the time of my life until we hit March and coronavirus was no longer small talk or a throwaway joke. We started getting anxious about losing jobs. In the space of a week nearly 20 of my new friends scrambled back home to the Southern Hemisphere.

The city's cobbled streets started to empty. Pubs and shops boarded up. The world went into lockdown. I made the decision to stick it out alongside some other Kiwis and Aussies. We banded together, thinking it would be a couple of months at most.

March turned into June and we were still in lockdown, watching New Zealand starting to re-emerge. We began to get a bit more freedom. Summer nights at the park with bottles of Buckfast where everyone was just happy to be outside. Lying in the warmth of the sun with my six-person bubble and the smell of disposable coal cookers.

I thought things were slowly getting better. They weren't. Cases began surging again, worse than before. There were stricter rules, conflicting statements from leadership. Bubbles began to burst until you could only meet with one other household outside.

I lost my boyfriend suddenly, experiencing the added pain and confusion a pandemic places on people when a loved one passes away. Not being able to meet properly to mourn together, a time when you crave human touch more than any other. Trying to sort logistics of getting a body back to the other side of the world. Live-streamed funerals.

I began working again but was made redundant from my job when it had to close down due to Covid. I found another but then a second lockdown was rearing its head - forcing me out of work again.

I had never felt so far away from home. Things that made the first lockdown bearable like the summer park nights were escaping quickly, replaced with the growing darkness of 3pm sunsets and the bitter cold of winter. The excitement of Zoom quizzes and baking bread had worn off. People were starting to get disheartened, frustrated as other places like New Zealand returned to near normality.

With a second lockdown imminent and no job, I made the decision to come home a month ago. Being a stubborn Kiwi I didn't want to. I felt like a bit of a failure for leaving so soon and not even making a year. I also felt a bit of guilt.

In another reality I would've been refreshing my laptop for Glastonbury festival tickets, it was now for a spot in managed isolation. There was also the constant changing and cancelling of flights and the changes around transit rules to deal with.

All of this was paired with looking at the comments from people on social media having "no sympathy" and saying they "should've come home at the beginning when they had a chance". It's easy to say that from the comfort of New Zealand. In the UK life has been hand sanitiser, masks and social distancing for nine months. Millions of people are unemployed or on furlough. Streets are deserted. Countless businesses in Edinburgh are closing down, a city that relies heavily on its hospitality and tourism.

Even pastimes that'd usually help you get through a British winter, like pubs, are different. When they do reopen, it's with no music, curfews, restrictions on drinks and plastic screens between every table.

I feel for anyone who's trying to come home. It still feels like you're in a country drowning in the pandemic and struggling to stay afloat.

I'm grateful to be home and glad I stuck it out until now. I made a group of friends who are now my family, who supported each other while we missed home during a crazy year. I have a new appreciation for New Zealand. Every time a shop worker or taxi driver heard my accent it was followed by praise of how well the country handled the pandemic and how they wished they were a Kiwi. The kind and welcoming isolation staff who've looked after me the past week have exemplified this.

When I get out of isolation, it's the little things I'm looking forward to. Seeing the smile of a stranger that's not covered by a mask. Being able to put something back on the shelf in the supermarket after you've picked it up accidentally. Listening to live music shoulder to shoulder in a crowd.

Welcome home indeed.

- Emme McKay is a former NZME journalist.