Hempfield teacher details desperate dash for medical evacuation from Africa to save eyesight

It was mid-June in Lagos, Nigeria, and Andrew Mewbourn was desperate.

After more than two decades as a teacher at American International Schools in Brazil, Eritrea, Mongolia and Nigeria, it took a lot to rattle the Hempfield man. Mewbourn, his wife Pamela and their two children had traveled the world extensively, rarely missing a beat.

When Americans abroad were urged to consider returning home in March as the coronavirus pandemic exploded, they decided to stay and finish the school year.

But Nigerian officials closed airports. Flights had been canceled. And Mewbourn, who first noticed the symptoms of a recurrent detached retina in May, faced the prospect of losing the vision in his left eye if he couldn’t get medical attention soon.

He knew what he was facing, as he had already experienced detached retinas twice before — once each in his left and right eyes, at different times.

“I was afraid. In my heart, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’m a teacher. If I go blind, I’ve got a problem,” Mewbourn said. “There must have been 10,000 Americans in Nigeria at that time, and I was just one of about 1,000 who were trying to get home.”

Things kept getting worse.

His long-planned June 6 flight on British Airways from Lagos to London to Pittsburgh got canceled. His vision was getting worse.

He got tickets for a June 14 flight to Pittsburgh on Delta Airlines. It would be close, but he thought it would be good enough to stave off permanent damage to his sight. The Nigerian government closed airports indefinitely, which canceled that flight.

Mewbourn decided he had to do something he’d hoped not to — undergo surgery in Nigeria.

But he had a 102-degree temperature by then, and the hospital required him to get tested for covid-19, and be negative, before a surgeon in Lagos would see him.

Around then he discovered the reason for his fever — malaria.

Mewbourn said he was “alternatively shivering cold or sweating bullets.” He couldn’t sleep. He was too weak to walk.

The hospital that treated his malaria had no covid-19 tests to give him. It also could not fix his retina.

When he finally found a hospital that could administer the test, the results that were supposed to have been available in two days were lost.

Mewbourn had already contacted the U.S. Consulate in Lagos. He was told they would put his name on a list to be contacted if there were any new emergency evacuation flights.

Finally, he reached out to his congressman back home.

He’d never heard of freshman U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, a Republican from Peters.

“I couldn’t even pronounce his name, but I emailed his office,” Mewbourn said. “I explained my problem, though I have no idea what I thought my congressman was going to be able to do. I very quickly received a reply from his Senior Legislative Assistant Mike D’Orazio. The email was sympathetic, but he did say that there wasn’t much the congressman could do.”

Then someone from Reschenthaler’s office followed up with a phone call to see how things were going.

“I told him about the covid test. He said ‘good luck,’ ” Mewbourn said. “I don’t know what he did, but the next day the office of the head of the Nigerian CDC called and said he would find the test. They found it and got it released.”

The next day, he was sitting in a Nigerian hospital waiting to see a doctor. A text message popped up on his phone. It was from the Consulate.

“They said the French had an emergency evacuation flight and I could get on it,” Mewbourn said. “We got our tickets, and I was back in Greensburg on June 19.

“On June 22 I saw my doctor, Dr. Thierry Verstaeten at Allegheny General Hospital. He did the surgery the next day.”

When fluid built up behind Mewbourn’s eye, Verstaeten performed a second procedure.

Mewbourn’s vision is returning slowly, having progressed from pitch black to blurry.

Thankful

He believes D’Orazio and Reschenthaler prompted the sequence of events that landed him on a plane out of Lagos.

“I don’t know what they did, but I want people to know how thankful I am for this,” Mewbourn said. “I cannot thank Rep. Reschenthaler enough, nor could I fully express my gratitude to his legislative assistant Mike D’Orazio, who has kept in touch with me to check on the progress of my condition.

”Without the effort of these people, I would not be comfortably recovering from a condition that was frightening, to say the least.”

Congressional handbooks offer little in the way of advice for assisting Americans stranded abroad, and insiders say such incidents have always been fairly rare.

The global pandemic changed that.

Reschenthaler, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and D’Orazio have spent late nights trying to expedite work at the State Department to assist 20 constituents who were stranded when airports around the world closed.

“Since the covid-19 outbreak began, people in our region and throughout the world have urgently needed help,” Reschenthaler said. “Assisting the Mewbourn family’s return to the United States has been a privilege. I was pleased to hear that Andrew made it home to Southwestern Pennsylvania in time to receive the medical care he needed.”

About 9 million Americans live overseas, the U.S. State Department estimates. That’s on top of some 44 million trips overseas U.S. citizens made last year.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, the State Department organized emergency evacuation flights to ferry Americans home. Even the military got involved. As of June 10, the State Department reported it had assisted more than 101,000 Americans stranded abroad in 136 countries return home.

Back in the Hempfield house they come home to every summer, Andrew and Pamela Mewbourn are making plans to return to Nigeria. She teaches pre-schoolers at the American International School; he teaches history, psychology and the theory of knowledge at the high school in Lagos.

The American International Schools, established to educate the children of U.S. diplomats, also draw heavily from the families of government officials and international businessmen in the countries where they are located.

Global life

Pamela Mewbourn is a Hempfield native. But Andrew, whose mother was at teacher at American International Schools in the 1970s, grew up in Iran and Morocco.

Mewbourn said the emphasis at the schools is on academics and students are intensely competitive.

Teaching in countries that many people would be challenged to locate on a map has opened new doors for the Mewbourns and their children. Amanda, now a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Jeffrey, 17, boast a global pedigree.

“My kids have seen kids who use eagles to catch foxes on the Mongolian steppes. When he was 5, my son could ask for five green apples in Mongolian at the market,” Mewbourn said. “My wife and I have had a chance to become friends with people we otherwise would not have been in a position to meet.”

In Eritrea, an eastern African nation across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, the authoritarian government made it difficult for foreigners to move about. Mewbourn became friends with the Israeli ambassador in the small, close-knit international community.

“And I have a picture of the Mongolian prime minister greeting my wife at a New Year’s celebration in his home. His daughter was one of my students,” Mewbourn said.

He’s eager to resume that life this fall. But nothing is simple in a world turned upside down by a global pandemic.

“The next hurdle is getting a flight back,” Mewbourn said.