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Lauren Davenport and Daniel Fernandez of St. Petersburg, Fla., were on a camping trip in the Sahara when Morocco announced that it was suspending all flights in and out of the country “until further notice.” They were stunned to return to Marrakesh on Tuesday and realize they couldn’t get home.
They are just two of thousands of tourists stuck in Morocco as the kingdom battles the coronavirus; even more have been stranded in other countries around the globe that have restricted international travel.
Among the stranded in Morocco are American citizens, residents and other visa holders who say the United States government has been unresponsive to their pleas for help, even as British and French authorities have been aiding their citizens.
“France is being very open with the citizens and is moving mountains to get them home; meanwhile the U.S. embassy says ‘call the airlines’ and ‘prepare to be here for a while, but not indefinitely,’” said Cristina Pratt, who was visiting Morocco from the East Bay in California with a friend and the friend’s parents when the ban went into place.
Elizabeth Eden, 38, another American stuck in Morocco, is six weeks pregnant. Ms. Eden said that she spent two days outside the United States consulate in Casablanca, which was only letting in limited numbers of travelers, hoping someone would help her get home or advise her on what to do. She said that she called the emergency phone numbers the United States embassy has online and sent an email to the State Department, but hasn’t heard anything back. She also said that she is running out of money and food and is willing to go anywhere, even if it’s not her home. (She splits her time between Baltimore and Los Angeles.)
“It’s super frustrating not hearing anything from your own government,” Ms. Eden said. “I feel completely abandoned.”
Her sentiment was echoed by Moussa Diene, 44, an American citizen who said he is stuck in Casablanca and running low on his diabetes medication. Mr. Diene, 44, said he has been to the consulate, but did not receive any help.
A State Department official said in an email to The Times that the department “has no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.”
But a number of the Americans pointed out that while Thomas Reilly, the British ambassador to Morocco has been posting useful information on Twitter regularly, the American ambassador, David T. Fischer, has not.
On Monday, Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would allow “exceptional flights” into the country to repatriate tourists. The American embassy tweeted on Tuesday: “With gratitude to our partners at the British Embassy in Morocco, we again confirm there will be 30 commercial flights (easyJet, Ryanair, British Airways and Tui) leaving from Agadir and Marrakech to London until 19 March.”
On Wednesday, Ambassador Fischer said in a phone call that his staff has helped hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans leave Morocco in recent weeks, and is continuing to do so.
“How do you pick who goes on a chartered flight when you’ve got 10,000 people?” he said. “We have put thousands of people on flights, but what we are not doing is going out onto the street or letting everyone who comes in, because we don’t have a space big enough for that.”
Mr. Fischer arrived in Morocco to begin his posting as ambassador in January. He previously was the chairman and chief executive of Suburban Collection Holdings, a car dealership group. He was nominated for the ambassadorship by President Trump two years ago and confirmed in January.
Mr. Fischer said that his staff is working hard to get Americans home and was adamant that travel into and out of the country had not been suspended on Sunday. “The king did not ban planes,” he said. “Morocco has not banned travel. You need to check your facts.”
On Sunday, Morocco’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Cooperation and Moroccan Expatriates said it “decided to suspend, until further notice, all international passenger flights to and from its territory.” The statement was posted on the ministry’s website and shared on the Moroccan Diplomacy Twitter account.
Mr. Fischer said some of the challenges of helping every American who is stranded are logistical. Many people were not registered as being in the country, and the embassy has only recently found out about them. Additionally, beyond the S.T.E.P. program, “we have no way to speak directly to thousands of people at one time,” he said.
The repatriation flights will fly from Morocco two days — today and Thursday — and would get travelers to Britain and France, but it was unclear if they would connect them to the United States. And without specifications about how many people could be accommodated on the rescue flights, Americans were still unclear if they could get on. Photos of crowded airports circulated on social media on Wednesday.
Una Harris, 25, who lives in Brooklyn, said that she and her friends could only find flights from Marrakesh that had stops in France, Britain and Spain, but it wasn’t clear if they would be able to travel from those European hubs to the United States, or if they would be allowed on the flights at all.
“It feels safer to stay where we are versus going to fight with the airlines at the airport where people are crowding and protesting, and priority is being given to people who are citizens of countries like France and Spain,” she said.
She and others also said that one-way flights from Europe to the United States that typically cost a few hundred dollars are currently thousands.
Many of the stranded tourists have been connecting with each other via Facebook and WhatsApp, the messaging service.
“When you see an American, the first thing you do is get their WhatsApp,” Mr. Fernandez said.
In one Facebook group called “U.S. Citizens trapped in Morocco,” people have been sharing experiences and passing on information about the rescue flights, posting messages from the embassies of other countries and seeking advice from one another. Others are using the group as a source of comfort to be reminded that they aren’t alone in a foreign country.
“Our government, embassy, and airlines don’t seem to be helping us, so maybe we can help each other” is the description the group’s creator, Jennifer Bell, came up with.
Some 40 to 50 people used the WhatsApp group to coordinate a gathering outside the consulate in Casablanca on Tuesday. At the consulate many were given a sheet of paper instructing them to email their names, passport numbers, dates of birth, emails and phone numbers to ACSCasablanca@state.gov, and were told they would receive a response “as soon as possible.”
Heather Harget has been using the Facebook group to communicate with other parents whose children are in Morocco. Her own daughter, Colleen Mader, has been involved in a State Department-backed exchange program in Rabat for about six months and was going to return home to Maryland on Tuesday, after her program, along with other study abroad programs, was cut short. Ms. Mader’s flight was canceled when the ban on international travel was announced on Sunday.
“A lot of us are just wondering if other countries are doing this for their citizens, why haven’t we heard anything from ours?” said Ms. Bell, the creator of the “maybe we can help each other” Facebook group.
Ms. Eden, the woman who is pregnant, said she has been teaching English in Morocco for two months. She was taken to a hospital by an American woman and her daughter in Casablanca after she felt sick on Tuesday.
“Yesterday, I felt contractions, I was in pain and was worried that I was going to have a miscarriage,” she said. “Today I didn’t feel any contractions but I felt extremely tired and sick. I was scared enough to agree to someone taking me to a hospital here.”
The State Department, in its email, did not elaborate on any plans it might have to help the stranded Americans get home. “We are aware the governments of several countries have announced suspension of air travel,” it said. “We are considering all options to assist U.S. citizens in these countries and are continuously assessing travel conditions in all areas affected by COVID-19. We will continue to update our travel advisories and safety information for U.S. travelers as situations evolve.”
It also advised Americans to follow guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (C.D.C.) and local health authorities, review its travel advisories at Travel.State.Gov, and enroll in the Smart Traveler Enrollment (STEP) program at step.state.gov for updates from the department.
Morocco is just one of many countries that have put travel restrictions in place with little warning, essentially trapping some travelers. In Peru, which announced plans to shut down travel to and from the country earlier this week, thousands of travelers from across the world found themselves stranded, with their flights canceled and little idea how to get home.
Scott Dyer, 65, and Kathryn Ward, 66, of Pleasantville, N.Y., had a two-and-a-half week trip to Peru planned, and after an overnight trip to the northern part of the country, learned that Peru would “be shutting down completely.” They rushed to get flights back to the capital, Lima, but from there, were unable to get a flight out of the country. They are among the hundreds of Americans now stranded in Peru as other countries, including Britain and Israel, worked to repatriate their citizens.
“We’re calm, but we’ve heard nothing from the embassy even though we registered for the STEP program,” Mr. Dyer said.
On Tuesday, Israel’s foreign minister, Yisrael Katz, announced plans to repatriate its citizens traveling in the country beginning on Thursday. Other nations were still trying to figure out a way forward.
The British ambassador to Peru, Kate Harrisson, said British officials were in contact with Peruvian authorities and commercial airlines to enable the evacuation of British citizens who were traveling there when the country announced its closures.
One British national, Briony Blackwell, wrote on Twitter that she and her husband were stranded in Cusco with no available flights to leave the country.
“We don’t know what to do,” she wrote.
Lynne Fernie, a 29-year-old educational psychologist from Glasgow, got stranded in Hurghada, a seaside city in Egypt, after the country stepped up its travel restrictions and suspended all flights.
Ms. Fernie and her friend were scheduled to return to Britain on Sunday, but easyJet informed them on Tuesday that their flight had been canceled. On top of that, the hotel they are staying at in Hurghada is shutting its doors and they have been told that they should leave their room by Thursday. Ms. Fernie said that the experience has been “hellish.”
“Since Monday we have been sitting at reception to get Wi-Fi to sort it out,” she said in a message on Twitter on Wednesday. They have had no communication with easyJet or anyone, she said and are now waiting for someone to schedule a rescue flight. But the prospect of getting stuck abroad with no currency or a place to stay — some of the hotel staff gave them the option to stay at their houses — and without the ability to speak Egyptian Arabic, remains daunting.
German travelers stranded abroad will be receiving aid from the government to get home, that country’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said on Tuesday.
Thousands of German citizens had been vacationing around the globe before the outbreak of the coronavirus became a pandemic, and Mr. Maas said that 50 million euros had been earmarked for logistics and flights to return them from countries like Morocco, the Dominican Republic, Egypt and the Maldives.
“We will do everything possible to make it possible for the thousands of Germans stranded abroad to return to Germany in the coming days,” Mr. Maas said. He urged Germans already at home to stay there and put off any planned travel. “This warning against tourist travel applies worldwide.”
Megan Specia and Iliana Magra contributed reporting from London. Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin.
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