When the pandemic hit NYC and the city locked down, Ohio natives Bo and Sarah were living and working in Brooklyn. They began volunteering each Saturday at a nearby nonprofit called Mixteca to deliver boxes of groceries to around 100 immigrant New Yorkers who were experiencing food insecurity.
After three months of walking past the morgue freezer truck that was parked outside the hospital in their neighborhood, the pair decided to return to their Ohio roots to stay near family and wait out the worst of the pandemic.
While in Akron, Sarah learned she had been awarded a Fulbright to go to Central America for five months to research the post-deportation lives of individuals who applied for asylum in the United States but had been denied. They left Akron two mornings after Christmas and arrived to a 95-degree afternoon in El Salvador.
“Living all our lives in Akron and NYC, we’ve never skipped a winter. In El Salvador we were living in this little surf town on the coast with a mango tree in our backyard and more sunshine than we could even handle.” Sarah’s new book about her research will be published by Columbia University Press in 2022.
Bo and Sarah flew home to Ohio in May because they wanted to be vaccinated before going back to NYC. “We got our first shot the day after we arrived. It was such a relief after so much uncertainty,” Sarah said.
In June, they finally headed back to Brooklyn after more than a year away. Mixteca’s weekly food distribution program is still in full swing, and the number of families signed up has more than tripled. “It feels like this huge realization of the weight of the pandemic and its longstanding impact,” Sarah said. “Things feel different here. New Yorkers are resilient, but it’s clear that people are exhausted, and some have had to move away. Several friends lost their jobs and could no longer afford to live here and others left the city because they needed more space for their kids to run around during the pandemic. We need to rebuild some of our community, but we’re so happy to be home.”
