Influencer Charly Jordan, who has millions of followers across TikTok and Instagram and is friends with Tana Mongeau, traveled to Rwanda earlier in September to post pretty nature content, but ended up posting a whole cross-platform morality play about the follies of traveling for the ’gram during a global pandemic. Because rates of coronavirus remain high in the United States, Rwanda is one of only 30 countries that is currently “open with restrictions to US citizens. And some of the highest-risk American travelers right now are influencers, mostly because they all live together in hype houses and honey houses and continue to throw parties despite the danger of large gatherings. Jordan posted to her 3.3 million Instagram followers on September 2, writing that she “Made it to Rwanda†and that she’s “definitely corona free haha 😂 100 temperature checks later. Crazy where the world is right now.â€
But after dancing in front of a safari Jeep and reciting a poem she wrote on the flight over, Jordan posted a tearful video to her 1.8 million TikTok followers in which she revealed that after her gorilla trek she “tested positive and literally the fucking government showed up at my place, and came and dragged me away from everybody I was with, and I don’t speak the language, and they locked me in this fucking room. And I can’t leave.†In the video, Jordan says, “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, and they won’t tell me anything.†She also said that she already had coronavirus three months earlier and had tested negative since.
In her TikTok comments, as screen-grabbed by Twitter user @defnoodles, Jordan wrote, “The US shouldn’t be letting anyone be traveling out of the country,†and that she was still waiting on her “second test results.â€
When those second test results came, after four days in government-mandated lockdown, Jordan posted another video to TikTok, happy-crying because “I just got my second test results back and they’re negative which means their first test was wrong. They were wrong this whole time. I can leave!â€
And on September 7, Jordan posted an apology to her Instagram Story, saying, “I would like to make an apology for traveling during this time, because I know that it’s a very incorrect time to travel, and I’m completely in the wrong for doing that, and I have learned my lesson one hundred percent. Trust me. I’ve been sitting here in this room, locked in this room for the past four days thinking about it, and I will not be traveling anymore during this time.â€
What an expensive, resource-consuming, elaborate way to learn not to travel to Rwanda for the ’gram in the middle of a global pandemic. Truly a parable for our times. Those gorillas are cute, though.