Medical clearance is all done except for one final COVID-19 test, so I’m preparing to go to a hotel in a suburb of Washington, D.C, on Friday, Sept. 23, to meet my cohort going to North Macedonia for Peace Corps service. We’ll get a bunch of information Friday evening and Saturday, then board a bus to Dulles International Airport at noon on Sunday to fly to Skopje, North Macedonia. (We’re changing planes briefly in Vienna, Austria.)
Plenty of people have been asking if I’m worried about fighting in Eastern Europe. Some have flat-out said things like, “Eastern Europe? Are you crazy?”
No, I’m not worried. And here’s why. The nearest conflict in the region is the Serbia-Kosovo dispute. Serbia maintains that Kosovo is part of Serbia, but 97 member states of the United Nations recognize Kosovo as an independent country. Since this disputed area borders North Macedonia, it’s reasonable to be concerned about it turning into a shooting war and it being a danger to North Macedonia.
Of course I’m concerned about this because a shooting war would be devastating to a lot of innocent people. But I’m not worried about it entering North Macedonia. The parties to this dispute probably don’t want to drag North Macedonia into it.
Then there’s the big conflict, the war between Russia and Ukraine. I’m not worried about that spreading to North Macedonia because it’s hundreds of miles away. Ukraine borders Romania, which in turn borders Bulgaria, which in turn borders North Macedonia, so distance is a big buffer.
Far more realistic would be a natural disaster such as a major earthquake. A dangerous situation requiring evacuation can appear anywhere. The Peace Corps has people whose entire job is to be on the lookout for dangers like that and to evacuate volunteers if the situation gets dangerous. Evacuation sometimes happens, but they have good plans in place for when it does.
A YouTuber named Andrea Rene did a good job documenting her 2018 evacuation from Nicaragua on video. Here is Part 1 of that video; here is Part 2. I presume that her experience is better than the norm; it certainly helped that there was a Peace Corps presence in neighboring Costa Rica, a peaceful, stable democracy. However, this does show that the Peace Corps has a well-organized evacuation process.