Setsabile Shiba will have to wait one more semester to be an MU student.
Born and raised in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), a country in Southern Africa with 1.1 million residents, the 25-year-old was accepted for fall 2020 as a master’s student in Animal Sciences, but instead she will start her program in spring 2021. She wasn’t able to get her visa in time, and in addition there were no international flights from any airport nearby because of the pandemic.
Eswatini has had almost 5,000 total COVID-19 cases, but its closest neighbor, South Africa, has had more than 627,000 cases and 14,000 deaths from the illness.
“Since our country is so small, we don’t have an international airport and we rely on South Africa for international travel,” said Shiba over a video call.
But the O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg — the busiest in Africa serving more than 21 million passengers in 2019 — closed all flights since March.
Shiba is one of 62 MU students who opted for a deferral to spring semester because they were not able to arrive to Columbia this fall. Forty-seven of them are graduate students, and 15 are undergraduates.
MU officials told the Missourian there has been an 18.8% overall decline in the number of international students on campus this fall.
Opening-day numbers showed international students were down from 1,552 in fall 2019 to 1,261 on Aug. 24. However, the number of international freshmen is up slightly, from 31 in 2019 to 36 this year.
“We attribute these deferrals, as well as the decline in international applicants, to the pandemic, and we continue to work with international students to assist them in whatever way we can,” said Liz McCune, MU spokesperson, in an email.
But international students aren’t the only ones who didn’t make it to school this semester.
In Louisville, Kentucky, Galen Zavala Sherby didn’t have to deal with international flights, but with his landlord.
“We thought it was kind of ridiculous for me to ask me to go back physically just for one class,” said Zavala Sherby, 19, a sophomore journalism student. Four out of five of Zavala Sherby’s classes will be held online, so he managed to enroll in full remote learning this semester.
Ellen Sherby, his mom, tried using Facebook groups to find somebody to take on their lease for an apartment in Columbia.
“We are trying, but if we can’t find somebody, we can’t find somebody, and we’ll just have to pay the money,” she said. “But it does bother me to be renting a place that he might not use the whole academic year.”
On the other side of the world, online classes did not sound attractive to Shiba, who opted instead for a deferral for the next semester, starting in January.
“Online learning would not be the ideal for me based on what I’m supposed to be studying, and, additionally, I’m from a third-world country,” Shiba said.
“Imagine if I am taking classes and there is not power, not internet connection for the whole day, because those things happen, and I felt it was not going to work from me,” she said. “I would rather have my mind fully in school than to worry about things like the internet.”
Shiba, who works at the Food Security department of the Red Cross at Manzini, the most populated city in Eswatini, will keep her job until she has to resign next year to pursue her master’s at MU with a Fulbright scholarship.
“I do not limit my timelines to say, ‘By the age of 26, I must be done (with) my master’s.’ No, I was flexible, and when it comes to the coronavirus I just reevaluated, and it is still within the plan,” she said. “I can’t complain, I’m just happy that I do not get to lose my scholarship.”
Sherby, on the other hand, is worried about her son not being able to build a community in college, but is skeptical about MU’s decision on returning to in-person classes.
“Of course, it’s better to be able to have a class face-to-face, and I would love that for Galen, I want that for my younger kids who are in high school and elementary school, but it is a good idea? I think is not very realistic for that to happen right now,” Sherby said.
“Until it passes it, we probably have to make sacrifices and not be together face-to-face socially and academically,” she said.
