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'Take Us Out of the Country': African Students Plead for Evacuation as
Coronavirus Spreads

Salem Solomon

   WASHINGTON - As the death toll from the coronavirus continues to mount
   in China and elsewhere, thousands of African students in China count
   the hours hoping that their governments will evacuate them.

   Solomon Yohannes of Ethiopia, a third-year engineering student at
   Wuchang Technology University in the Wuhan region of China, the
   epicenter of the outbreak, sat in a room in a nearly deserted campus.
   He said virtually all of Wuchang's 15,000 students have left, but about
   200 foreigners, mostly Africans, remain.

   "We are counting on the next two to three days for some solution," he
   told VOA's Afaan Oromo service. Until then he and others will remain
   secluded. "If you leave, you have to wear all the protective gear," he
   said.

   Another student at Wuchang called on the Ethiopian government to take
   action. "We want the government to take us out of the country as every
   other government is doing," the student told VOA's Amharic service.
   "America, India, took their whole citizens out of the country. We also
   want to tell the government to at least take us out of the city where
   the crisis is right now."

   There are an estimated 61,000 African students studying in China and
   they now face food shortages, isolation and uncertainty. Last week a
   21-year-old student from Cameroon studying in the city of Jingzhou
   tested positive, becoming the first reported African student to
   contract the virus.

   Hermes Koundou, a third-year engineering student from the Central
   African Republic studying at Nankin University, about 530 kilometers
   east of Wuhan, said students there are cautious.

   "We buy food online, you see, and we cook inside our rooms because it
   is not easy to get to the common kitchen over there, as many people are
   there cooking," he told VOA's French to Africa service. "And you never
   know, you could be in contact there, with a student already infected
   with the coronavirus. So, we stay in our rooms."

   Antony Waigwa of Kenya, a Ph.D. student of the University of Chinese
   Academy of Sciences in Wuhan, said he and fellow students have been
   offered masks and given free wi-fi and access to an emergency hotline.
   While they wait for information, they are keeping the thermostat high
   in the belief that it may decrease the ability of the disease to be
   transmitted.

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