ANYWHERE BUT HOME
A Father, Two Daughters, and the Journey Back to America
PROLOGUE
Americans Don’t Leave Each Other Behind so I thought ….
The departures board kept changing, but nothing changed for us.
My daughters, Doxa, nine, and Ndagire, seven, stood beside me carrying backpacks that seemed to grow heavier with every passing hour. They had crossed continents believing they were on their way home to Texas.
Instead, we were told we could not board.
Not because we were sick. Not because we had tested positive for Ebola. Not because we had traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We had no symptoms and no fever. The rules, as we understood them when we began our journey, had changed while we were already in transit.
One decision, made thousands of miles away, left us stranded in Brussels.
As the hours passed, I made phone call after phone call. I reached out to friends, hoping someone might lend us enough money if we were forced to travel somewhere else. Every conversation carried the same uncertainty: we would see what could be done.
Back home, my wife carried a different burden. She was alone with our son, who would turn one the following week, making calls and trying to find someone who could help us. I was in Brussels with our daughters, asking questions that no one seemed able to answer.
If this was truly a case-by-case decision, I wondered, who would review our case? Could someone from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention look at our circumstances? Could someone find a way for us to return closer to home for additional screening or quarantine, if necessary?
We were not asking to avoid screening. We were not asking to be exempt from public-health precautions. We were asking for a way home.
Screen us. Quarantine us if necessary. Monitor us. But please, I thought, do not send us to another country and leave us wondering whether that country would receive us, too.
Each hour that passed made one question harder to ignore. How could other countries be prepared to receive us while our own country seemed unable to find a way to bring us home?
I had always believed that Americans did not leave one another behind. I believed that citizenship meant something, especially when a family was frightened, stranded, and asking for help.
By the end of this journey, I would have to reckon with that belief.
Because this was no longer just a story about a missed flight. It was about what happens when government decisions collide with ordinary lives—when fathers become case numbers, when children become exceptions, and when home becomes the one place you cannot reach.
