A Norfolk couple are stranded in Uganda where they say they have received abuse for being travellers amid coronavirus.
Bev Cannar and Chris Emden, from Attleborough, flew to Uganda on March 10 to volunteer for Uganda Support Fund, also based from Attleborough, where they helped paint a health care clinic and worked with a junior school.
After volunteering, the care and support workers had a week-long safari at Murchison Falls and had a flight booked home for March 29.
But as the pandemic spread and foreign borders were closing one by one, the flight home was cancelled leaving them with one option, two tickets back to Heathrow costing nearly £10,000, which they could not afford.
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Ms Cannar, 51, said: “We don’t know what is happening next as there are no flights out anymore. It has been unnerving as it changes on a daily basis. It was a bizarre situation coming out thinking we’re helping other to then be caught up in all this.”
The couple have also suffered abuse from some people who have accused them, as foreign people, for bringing in coronavirus and have had stones thrown at them.
Ms Cannar said: “I want to make clear the people in Uganda are lovely, welcoming, friendly and wonderful and have been amazing along the way. But since coronavirus, a few people have hurled abuse at us in the street and there has been some hostility. When we were travelling in a car we had people throwing stones at us and shouting. “I can understand the anger as people have had their livelihoods taken away from them and nowhere to go but it made us fearful for our safety at the time.”
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Ms Cannar said: “We both have elderly parents at home, mine are both 93-years-old, and we are worried about them. I also have three children and one of them is turning 21 next week and I know they’re stressing. It is so hard being so far away from home and knowing that you can’t get home. But I’m just trying to stay positive there are people who are far worse off.”
Currently, the couple can only get home if a repatriate flight is arranged.
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