The COVID-19 pandemic has had massive impacts on the whole world. People have lost jobs and many jobs became more difficult. Over a million have died and millions have survived a virus worse than they had ever imagined. Many have faced devastation because of this pandemic, especially in developing nations like this one. We have been forced to rethink our way of living, and our views on who is essential have changed. We used to think that only doctors, government officials, firefighters, and police were essential. Now we know that they are not the only ones absolutely needed, so are people like grocery workers and truck drivers.
As our opinions change on who is essential, I wanted to hear from a worker that became essential during this pandemic. Today, I will be interviewing Corinna Ybarra Arnold, the Acting Consul General in Honduras. She works in the Foreign Service area at the American Embassy. Mrs. Ybarra Arnold and her team aid around 600 civilians daily. Her section assists US citizens to obtain passports, transmit citizenship to children born overseas, and protect their interests. This area also reunifies families through the Immigrant Visa program and facilitates legitimate travel to the U.S. for Foreigners. Arnold’s team also helps U.S. citizens vote overseas, deals with reports of death, and so much more.
I asked Mrs. Ybarra Arnold how her life has been affected during these times, and this was her response:
“Personally, my life has changed because my family is separated right now. My daughter and husband are in the United states and I'm in Honduras. We were separated for 100 days before I got permission to go visit them. After a month I had to return to Honduras, and we don’t know when we will be reunited. Professionally, work is very different. We normally have a team of about 40 people in my section, and right now, we only have about seven people in the office to do everything that we need them to do. In turn, people are taking on more responsibilities and many more roles than usual. I only go to the office about twice a week, taking the three days I don’t go to work as home-work days (teleworking days). Our section, the Consular section, has many responsibilities to the public so we have to take a lot more precautions when people come in for emergency services. We must clorox everything, use a lot of hand sanitizer, wear masks, minimize the people that can be in our workspace, etc. We even had to change how the air comes in and flows through our building. We used to see around 600 people a day, and now we see less than 30 on a heavy work day.”
I asked Mrs. Ybarra Arnold what the most challenging and most rewarding parts of being an essential worker during these difficult times. She responded as follows:
“The most challenging part has been adjusting absolutely everything, making everything remote, having less people to help, and figuring out how to move a lot of people out of the country when the borders were closed and they had nowhere to go. At the onset of the crisis, people were really scared and wanted to get back to the United States, so when the borders closed, they panicked and called us. We got thousands of inquiries and we had to figure out how to prioritize those calls and get people on planes. For the first two evacuations, we didn’t even have masks. It wasn’t only scary for them, but for us as well. We worked with the military, and later, with other government entities and commercial airlines, to help 11,500+ people, including my husband and daughter, go home. The most rewarding part was getting emails and phone calls back thanking us for treating them well, for getting them home, being responsive, and, in some cases, they called us heroes. For us, just knowing they were home was enough to keep us going since we were working almost around the clock for seven days a week and for about five to six weeks. We couldn’t have done all of that without the amazing leadership, the help from other sections in the embassy who worked with the Honduran government, and the wonderful team we currently have.” Note: The whole American Embassy was involved with these evacuations, not just the Consular section.
COVID-19 has changed the entire world, our perspectives, our communication, and our daily lives in all aspects. However, thanks to our essential workers and their selfless actions in risking their own lives to help others, this pandemic has been much more tolerable. We owe our heartfelt gratitude to all essential workers. Thank you so much!
