Have Faith – It Will End

Stuck in China after a fever left her unable to board a flight home, student Jessica has a message of hope for SA

- Jana Van Der Merwe

Her bags were packed, her passport ready and she was all set to fly home. After almost two months stuck in China in coronavirus lockdown, Unarine Jessica Rakole couldn’t wait to get back to South Africa.

All the 22-year-old medical student wanted was to see her family again – even if it meant spending another 21 days in quarantine in a Polokwane hotel.

But sadly, just hours before she was due to be repatriated along with more than 100 South Africans last month aboard a SAA rescue plane (YOU, 26 March), she got some bad news: she wouldn’t be allowed to fly.

Medical tests had shown she and three other South Africans were running fevers – one of the classic symptoms of Covid-19. They had to stay behind to avoid the risk of infecting the healthy people aboard the plane.

Jessica, as everyone calls her, was heartbroken – and what made it even frustrating was that shortly after the flight departed, it turned out she didn’t have the virus.

“I was so disappointed,” she says as she chats to us via Skype. “I was excited to be returning to home soil. I was craving braaied meat and pap – anything besides chicken and rice [what she’d been surviving on for weeks during the lockdown].”

But there was nothing she could do. Jessica simply had to accept the situation with the wisdom and patience only a pandemic like this can teach you.

BEFORE leaving to study in China, she lived with her mom, Portia Tshilidzi, stepdad, Johannes – both teachers – and younger brother, Justin (13), in the little Lim popo village of Mulima.