Malawi/Kenya/France/Iceland - Papers at the ready!

June 18-19

Hello everyone!

Getting a second jab on June 4th made me ‘fully vaccinated’ on June 18th. School finished on June 17th. Timing: fantastic.

Whatever you need, I have in my hand! Well, I hope...

What to do with that relative immunity was the next poser. Even though fully vaxxed, I would still have had to quarantine in a hotel for 10 days had I returned straight to the UK, owing to Malawi’s continuing (and frustrating, though case numbers have risen slightly this week) position on the dreaded Red List. 

Many more have been added since this intital list -
Malawi's presence on it bewilders me 

I was definitely coming back to the UK, mainly for my mum’s 60th birthday. So how to get around the ten-day prison sentence?

Government quarantine currently costs £1,750

Travelling to a country not on the Red List for 10 days would give me a bit of a holiday and then a 5-day quarantine at home before paying for an early test-to-release test. This was fraught with risk, however, and I had seen this first-hand. A colleague was leaving early with her family to get back to the UK for an important event and had decided to go to Egypt (Amber List) to wait for red-list-ness to expire before getting into the homeland. The day before they flew, Egypt was dumped on the Red List. Flights from Cairo to London were cancelled. Big. Mess.

Key updates from the green list
in early June 2021

A surer bet would be a country on the Green List. Trouble is, there weren’t that many of these at the start of June. What’s more, most of them don’t let non-residents in. No chance of kicking it in Australia, New Zealand or Singapore. Then there are places which...well, good luck getting to the South Sandwich Islands.

Portugal was removed from this list soon after
its inception, ruling it out as a possibility

This left two options: Iceland and Israel. A bit of research found that anyone from any country in the world can get into Iceland and do minimal quarantine (maximum 24 hours) if they’ve been fully vaccinated. We have a winner!

I got my second shot on June 4th and booked a flight to Reykjavik that night. A couple of caveats here. One: no vaccination certificate at this point, though I had been promised we would get one shortly. Two: even if I got one, would Iceland recognise it? Added to that the growing uncertainty with lists and travel in general, and it was a fairly fraught two weeks.

Getting stamps in my more official yellow WHO vaccine book proved
to be vital on the journey, though this green card was also useful 

Lots of paperwork, you see. Not just for Iceland. Getting through each section of the flight had potential pitfalls. Leaving Malawi required a negative Covid-19 PCR test (Iceland didn’t). Transiting Kenya, according to the UK Foreign Office website, required different government health clearance and the uploading of the PCR test to an app which wasn’t working. France didn’t have much information, which was a worry in itself. Iceland needed pre-registration 72 hours before arriving.

Covid tests cost about $50 in Malawi

One other person I knew had chosen this convoluted path home, a doctor who has kids at our school. I was told by friends that she had had to argue her way through. And she’s a doctor. With medical knowledge.

The barcode generated from pre-registering a visit to
Iceland - this was asked for three times in my journey

I can’t remember being this nervous before travelling, even though I was armed with enough documentation to fill a section of a library. We arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Hannah was flying back to the US at a similar time on a different plane. 

For those of you who have been to Malawi before, Lilongwe’s airport has been renovated over the last couple of years and now has an improved, more spacious check-in section. It needed all of that space when its systems went down shortly after we arrived. For Kenya Airways, it meant weighing people’s bags at the check-in desk, then taking that info with their passport up to their offices in a different part of the airport to do the computerised check-in. Well, they did until that system went offline as well. I was in line for over an hour and at the front for over 30 minutes, not knowing whether the hold-up was due to any of my paperwork. It wasn’t, and eventually I was through.

My luggage sat here for what seemed an eternity

Next stop: Nairobi. Being allowed on the flight was relatively straightforward once the attendant realised that June 4th to June 18th was 14 days since my second shot. The red light and what seemed like a cacophonous siren when my ticket was scanned didn’t help my heart rate, particularly as the message on the computer shouted, ‘WRONG FLIGHT.’ A new boarding pass, thankfully including my last leg, was issued and I was good to go.

Boarding flight 1 to Nairobi

Possibly part of the Kenya Olympic
team - dressed like them, at least!

To Paris, then. A six hour layover in a sparsely-populated section of Charles de Gaulle. One other passenger, who only spoke Mandarin, for the first four hours of that wait. Plenty of time to ponder. What if they don’t let me on here? What if my card is rejected in Reykjavik? I’ve booked a tour thinking this would all be fine, was that a rash decision? WHERE IS EVERYONE?

Charles de Gaulle airport seemed very quiet, particularly
terminal 2B, which had flights to other European countries

Transpires that a lot of people turned up an hour or so before scheduled departure - a normal time. Gate called, get to the front, show Covid test which is now 3 days old...no problems. On we go.

Flight 543 to Keflavik

Well, eventually on we go. They didn’t really factor in the whole more-documents-to-check element of boarding so still had 20 people to board when we were due to take off. Pleasant enough flight and soon the little landmass in the North Atlantic was visible.

Flying into Keflavik - you get some impressive views

Fingers crossed!

At least I was there now. I couldn’t be stopped on the way. If there was a problem, I would at least be in Iceland to sort it. The main problem seemed to be the gigantic upside-down puffin hanging from the ceiling above the baggage carousel. That carousel itself was surrounded by an enormous snaking line to go through the different immigration protocols. 

The first line took about 40 minutes. Distancing??

Section 1: Pre-registration barcode. Section 2: present barcode again, along with passport and vaccination booklet. All the man did was ask what vaccine it was, then accepted it at face value. Needn’t have worried. In exchange for passing through I was given a vial. This was needed for section 3: the PCR test. Once that was done, it was on the bus, and into Reykjavik.

You get giv na vial after showing your documents -
the testing centre is a tent in the airport car park

I am writing this in my extortionately-priced private hostel room, quarantining until my PCR result comes through. Assuming it’s negative, I’ll be free to explore Iceland. Right now though I need a good sleep, as a rather stressful and paper-laden journey from the southern part of Africa to the most northerly capital city in the world has come to a successful end.

Like the puffin in the airport, I felt l
ike I'd been on a bit of a rollercoaster!

Love you all,

Matt