The Foreign Service Journal, April 2021

40 APRIL 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Then the pandemic hit, throwing our plans into disarray. On March 17, 2020, Colombia closed its borders to international flights. Like thousands of other Foreign Service colleagues, we would experience several months of bureaucratic complica- tions and general confusion before we finally arrived at post, where settling in presented another set of difficulties. Our story and the experiences of others recounted here, along with some lessons learned along the way, will hopefully help those members of the Foreign Service facing transfers in the coming months and beyond. Getting There For months, it was unclear if we would ever make it to Bogotá. In March 2020, the State Department began autho- rizing voluntary, no-fault curtailment to employees in any country considered to be at high risk of exposure to COVID-19. By the beginning of April, State had evacuated more than 6,000 American diplomats and their families from overseas posts. That month, the department announced a hold on summer transfers to overseas posts at least until the end of May 2020. Diplomacy Strong, the department’s three-phase road map for returning to normalcy released in the spring of 2020, outlined the difficulties ahead: “The global pandemic pres- ents unprecedented challenges that will require extraordinary patience and perseverance in the face of uncertainty. Missions and employees will need to remain flexible, as the Department adjusts to gradual normalization of travel.” Given early concerns about the dangers of flying dur- ing a pandemic, we were not even sure we wanted to travel. Wouldn’t it be safer to stay at home in Arlington, Virginia, than transit through three airports and sit on two flights to Colom- bia? Moreover, Bogotá issued a strict lockdown order in late March, which ended up lasting several months. Would we be able to get as much out of our assignment as we did at other posts? And would it be more difficult for Monica to feel part of the mission working from home? Ultimately, we decided to go. Even if the pandemic did not abate, and we were required to be on lockdown for our entire year in Colombia, we felt we would still learn much about the country just by living there, and Monica would have a great opportunity to contribute to U.S. foreign policy goals in South America. In April 2020, USAID Bogotá informed us that Monica had been placed on a list of mission-critical embassy workers who would be permitted to fly to Bogotá on a humanitarian flight, even while Colombia’s borders were still closed. Yet much uncertainty about the timing, and many bureaucratic obstacles, remained. Embassy personnel, most forced by the pandemic to work from home, scrambled to help incoming families deal with new Colombian government procedures for obtaining visas virtually and receive permission to enter the country. We greatly appreciated the professionalism of the Foreign Service officers and local staff who helped us figure out this puzzle. Landing in Lockdown While we waited for a departure date, U.S. Embassy Bogotá invited us to participate in virtual town hall meetings designed to keep the embassy community informed about the emerging COVID-19 situation at post. We found these meetings, which have continued every several weeks since we arrived in Colom- bia, to be enormously helpful. Through them, U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and his team have helped both the existing embassy community and incoming families deal with issues ranging from current COVID-19 restrictions in Colombia and permanent change of station (PCS) travel challenges to when Foreign Service families might get the vaccine. It was a sharp contrast to previous postings, when we could get out and see the country—andmeet people— immediately. The youngest member of an FS family, duly masked, naps in the airport during transit. ANNESCHOFIELD