Post by Lara
21 December 2013
Fair warning before you read on—this post is long (5 pages long to be precise), and
pretty similar to all of our traveling stories (i.e. “we attempted to get from
point A to point B in a simple manner, and for numerous silly and occasionally
unbelievable reasons, our plans were thwarted. Except in the few cases when
they worked out fine”)
16th Dec
We left our house in the morning along with 2 of Lara’s
students to attend a conference. Old Meh accompanied us across the river (in a
dugout canoe) where we waited over an hour for the driver we hired to meet us.
He was delayed due to a flat tire. Then, he nearly ran out of gas (every
December there’s a fuel shortage. You’ll find that comes into play a few times
in this narrative). He dropped us at our friend’s house 16 miles into the trip
to wait while he got more gas, eventually gave up looking, and convinced a
friend of his with a diesel SUV to take us the rest of the way [diesel was not
in shortage in this part of the country]. We arrived at the conference site in the
early afternoon. Kevin slept on various foam mattresses at the PCV’s house for
2 nights. Lara slept on about 2 inches of crumbly foam on top of uneven boards
in the dormitory with the students. Lara’s
student “planted” her hair in cornrows with a side ponytail the night before we
left.
18th Dec
Left the conference with our fellow PCV Brooke, who had to
get to the airport for a 7pm flight. We met the car at 6:30 am, waited until 7
for it to load and drive off, only to have it pick up some cargo and return to
the same place to properly fill up with passengers. Then, a fight ensued
between our driver and the driver of another car. Finally left at 7:30, reached
the outskirts of Freetown by about 12:00, and had to send Brooke in a taxi so
she wouldn’t miss the ferry (she didn’t!) and she would make her flight (she
did!). For the whole trip, a loud
pregnant lady alternately complained about our slow progress, pushed Kevin and
Brooke, implored them not to step on her chicken that was sitting where their
feet should be, and generally created a ruckus.
We finally got out of the vehicle at about 2:00pm and promptly attempted
to get a car across town to the PC compound. 2 hours and Le 12,000 later (about
4 times the non-fuel-shortage price), we made it to the hostel and promptly
collapsed.
19th Dec
We went Christmas shopping in Freetown followed by spaghetti
dinner with fellow PCV Justin. We walked
a lot to avoid paying exorbitant taxi prices, so we were pretty tired by the
end of the day. Harmattan winds (dry,
dusty winds from the Sahara) brought clouds of dust to town, and by the end of
the day Lara’s throat was totally raw.
This is not a good precursor to 26 hours of plane travel.
20th Dec
We left the hostel around 8:45am with 3 bags (one a big
duffel bag to check, and 2 carry-ons). Through a series of transfers, we
finally made it to the ferry in time for the 11am crossing. We met our friend
Sahid the taxi driver at the other side of the water, and set off for the
airport. Arriving at the airport by
about 1:00pm, we had no trouble whatsoever with employees (it was odd—last
time, no less than 5 employees attempted to solicit bribes or undeserved “tips”
from us—this time it was zero). We then
had fish ‘n’ chips in the restaurant, chatted with some Wisconsinites, and
watched a plane land and subsequently take off again without ever boarding the
2 American passengers waiting in the terminal.
The passengers left behind were understandably peeved. I hope they made
it home ok.
When we finally boarded the plane, a really old Boeing 767,
we got to sit on the runway for about 30 minutes (long enough for the pilot to
announce that he was going to go ahead and turn off the engine…when it was 90
degrees outside). Why the wait? Well, 4 planes were queued up to land at an
airport that has exactly one runway. Yep—one. When all 4 planes were safely out of the sky,
we finally got clearance to take off.
During the 2 hour flight, we were in the front row of the
coach section. Kevin’s seat cushion (the one that’s supposed to keep you alive
in the ocean) kept slipping out from under him, and at one point, his headrest
came off. Also, the flight attendant who
served us, an incredibly friendly man that we guessed was from Kenya,
encouraged us to get something other than water to drink because, “It’s free!”,
which we thought was pretty endearing, so we got orange juice too.
When we landed in Accra (the capital of Ghana), we followed
a line of transferring passengers, most of whom appeared to be miners and one
of whom was a woman traveling by herself to Hanover, Germany. The miners all got shuffled through a door
under a sign marked “transit,” while the three of us remained, confused, as the
airport employee pointed us on toward what appeared to be the customs line to
enter Ghana.
Our experience in the Accra airport was a glorious pile-up
of frustrating, confusing, panic-inducing, and rushed. Over the course of the
hour or so that we were simply trying to move from one plane to another, we had
to follow a series of airport and Delta employees who all conveyed to us a
certain lack of knowledge of what on earth to do with us. To make matters worse, we did not have
boarding passes, because the Freetown airport worker told us we would have to
print new ones off in Ghana anyway once we arrived. We went to a counter in the customs area and
were immediately asked what our flight was.
We rattled off the flight number for the flight we needed to get on
toward JFK, and the woman looked very confused before saying, “no—the flight
you arrived on”. We told her. Another
employee came up, needed to see our passports, and also asked about the flight
number. We went ahead and handed her our printed flight itinerary. She stared. “What
flight were you on?” We told her, the
flight from Freetown, and pointed to the spot on the itinerary where Kevin had
drawn a big asterisk. She stared again. “What was the flight number?” We read
the flight number to her. I was not excited about the prospects we were facing
when the first employee wee interacted with couldn’t read a printed airline
itinerary. After hand-writing our
information in a giant book, she pointed us toward the airport exit, which we
stared at long enough that the workers around us realized we were going to need
some help.
First, we had to go to the baggage claim, escorted by an
airport employee who dealt with us for the first half of our Accra
experience. She will be heretofore
referred to as Trudy, because we decided this story is better if she has a name. Trudy first asked us if we knew the way by
ourselves, and then when we said “no,” led us through the “Diplomats” customs
line, cutting past who knows how many important people, to get out and over to
the carousel that of course did not have our bag on it yet. Trudy then got impatient with us for not
standing 1 foot from the carousel, until we pointed out to her that our bag was
not on it yet, and by the time it appeared we would still be in position to get
it before it sprouted legs and ran off on its own. When we finally got our bag, Trudy then looked
at us and said, “Ok, so you can go out now. You know where to go, right?” None
of the many signs in the airport said anything resembling “transfer passengers
this way,” and this being our first time in Ghana, we looked back at Trudy and
said, “Um, no. We don’t know where to go.” Trudy looked for a second like she
was going to try and describe the route to us, then sighed and said, “I’ll show
you.” We followed Trudy out toward the
Arrivals door, weaving through throngs of people (Trudy weaving a bit faster,
and frequently turning around to tell us to hurry up). The 50-lb wheeled duffel bag that Lara was
dragging made weaving a bit more of a chore, and she fell behind, at which
point Trudy scolded her again for not being able to move faster, and told her
she should have put the suitcase on a trolley (which would have made it twice
as wide—the better for bumping into every Ghanaian between the baggage claim
and the exit, I’m sure). Following
Trudy, we walked down two flights of stairs, passed by literally hundreds of
people waiting for arriving passengers, and took a sharp right turn into the
crowd at one point, walking through an alley and up a ramp, before turning to
the right and revealing…the front door of the airport. Trudy walked us inside, all the while
reminding us that we were about to miss our flight, and pointed us toward the
Delta desk before turning around and going back down to the arrival gates.
The Delta desk was manned by exactly no employees behind the
counter, and exactly 3 baggage movers in orange vests standing in front of the
desk and shooting the breeze. We walked
up to them and said that we were passengers to JFK and we needed boarding
passes and to check our bag. They stared a few seconds, then one employee, whom
we will affectionately call Amos, got on his walkie-talkie and paged himself. Someone on the other line pointed out that he
was paging himself, and he made a facial expression that said, “that’s the
umpteenth time I’ve done that today” before then radio-ing that he had 2
passengers with a checked bag at the entrance.
Over the radio, we heard an announcement that 2 passengers were missing
from the flight. “That’s us!” we
said. Amos continued to stand
there. He asked what to do with our bag,
and though we didn’t understand the reply, we guessed they told him to check it
there. He took us down to the conveyor-belt and had us put it on. The bag was
quickly carried away. Amos then told us
to “go ahead,” which we responded to by saying, “Where?” He made the same anguished face that Trudy
had made and then begrudgingly said, “Follow me.” We got fast-tracked through security (though
still had to take the electronics out and remove our shoes), then told to go to
the gate. What about our boarding
passes? They will be printed, we were assured. We didn’t feel so sure.
To get to the gate we had to walk through the world’s
longest duty-free shop, turn a corner, and walk nearly all the way back to
where we came from, handing our printed itinerary and passports to the employee
at the gate and explaining that we did not have boarding passes. The employee told us to sit and wait, holding
on to the passports and printed itinerary.
Nervously watching him hold our passports, we sat down in the closest
two seats and prayed that the plane wouldn’t take off now, when we were so
close to being on it. About 5 minutes
after we sat down, a female Delta employee who had been sitting there at a desk
when we arrived looked at me and said, “Are you on the JFK flight?” When we told her we were, she quickly
snapped, “You need to go. That plane is about to leave.” Lara glared at her and
informed her that the man from the gate had our passports and itinerary and
told us to sit while he printed our boarding passes. A few minutes later he showed up with passes,
handed us the passes and passports, and let us through.
About 2 steps beyond the doorway, 2 Delta employees
materialized, snapped on rubber gloves, and subjected us to a more thorough
search than the one we had just gone through in the official airport security
line. The woman assigned to Lara
actually folded her sneakers in half during the check, which made us incredibly
nervous because we had just super-glued the soles back on the day before.
Luckily, she didn’t break them, and we were shuffled on toward the shuttle
bus. At the shuttle bus door, 4 or 5
late passengers were standing in line, which we took for a good sign. The bus pulled up, the door opened, and the
passengers in front of us walked out calmly and took their places on the bus.
As we were following, an employee stopped us, turned to another employee, and
asked who we were. “These are the last 2
passengers” she said. “Don’t they have a
checked bag?” was the response. Then one
of them turned to me and said, “Please. Wait here.” Literally 20 feet from the shuttle bus and we
still couldn’t catch a break! The two
employees argued for a while over the fact that we were apparently supposed to
plane-side check our bag. I’m not sure how that would have worked, having to go
through security with x-ray scanners that definitely wouldn’t have fit our
giant duffle, but very little up to this point had made sense, so we let it
slide. After a few minutes of standing
in the doorway and being asked repeatedly to “Please Wait,” one of them finally
turned to us and told us to get on the bus. As far as I know nothing had
changed, except that we were now closer to take-off time and that made protocol
much less important. As we rolled toward
the plane and boarded, a shipment of checked bags pulled up, with curtains
along all the sides so we couldn’t see if our bag was included. Within 5 minutes we were taxiing, and before
we knew it we were in the air for our second leg, a 10-hour flight.
The flight to JFK was actually quite pleasant. We enjoyed
the food (a side effect of living on rice and plassas for the better part of a
year and a half). On-demand videos were
great, and we watched some fun action flicks (Lara: Die Hard With a Vengeance;
Kevin: Fast & Furious 6), slept a bit, and felt pretty sure that whatever
lie ahead of us couldn’t be worse than what we were leaving behind. Lara’s sore throat developed into a full-on
head cold, which was about as expected.
We landed about 4:30 am local time.
In JFK, we went through customs in record time, made it into
the main airport, printed our last 2 boarding passes, bought Day-Quil,
Raisinettes, and Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, and arrived at our gate to find a
room full of iPads with a sign inviting us to use the iPads and the wifi for
free! This felt a bit like heaven. We updated our Facebook statuses to let our
families know we were on our way, then putzed around online as long as we could
(which is not that long, FYI), before deciding to take a walk. We weren’t really sure when our flight was
supposed to take off—the original printed itinerary said 8:10am. The
newly-printed boarding passes said 7:35am, and the plasma screen at the gate
said 7:40am. It was only about 6 by this
point, so we figured no matter what we probably wouldn’t miss the flight. When 7:10 rolled around, we headed over to
board and learned that Delta was offering a deal to passengers who were willing
to take a later flight. We decided that was definitely not us. The plane ended up getting delayed every ten
minutes for the next 2 hours or so. We left
around 9am after buying breakfast at Wendy’s for $14 and running out of things
to do online. Our plane was pretty tiny,
but the headrest stayed on and we arrived in Detroit with plenty of time to
spare for our next flight.
The Detroit airport has free wifi now as well, so we were
able to keep family and friends abreast of our status—even our good friend
Angie, who was stuck in rural Alaska watching our story unfold, and remarking
that it was rather silly that we were able to make it home from West Africa
more quickly than she could get out of her state. We had hot dogs, chips, and beer in Detroit.
We ran out of things to do quickly, but sitting at the gate and waiting to take
off was not an option, as our flight was delayed by about 2 hours and the gate
was reverberating with the voice of one incredibly talkative passenger whose
life story we could recount after sitting across from him for about 20 minutes.
Lara actually can still remember his full name, where he came from that day,
what he is studying in grad school, and that he used to work in a lighting
store and therefore knows all there is to know about lighting. We walked the length of the terminal twice
before finally settling down at the gate, commiserating with another couple who
also got some fresh air after learning everything (and more!) they cared to
know about our chatty fellow passenger. The
plane took off a few hours late, and we made it into Dayton with about 3 hours
to spare before Lara’s parents’ Christmas party.
Arriving in Dayton, we practically ran to the baggage claim
and into the loving arms of our dear Pattycakes, who had come to pick us up
while Kevin’s mom, Jane, waited in the cell phone lot. After a bit of catching up, we called Jane on
the phone and she told us she would come right away. A few minutes passed while we complimented
Pat’s beard and gave him half of his Christmas present, a Mende Bible and a
Krio New Testament that we had bought almost a year prior. Then the phone rang, and Jane told Pat that
her car wouldn’t start. Jane doesn’t
have AAA, but Pat does, so he offered to call them, at which point Jane let us
know that Lara’s dad was in fact on his way to come jump the car. About an hour later we were back in business,
speeding toward Kevin’s parents’ house only to turn around and drive back to
Lara’s parents’ house with about an hour to spare before the party.
And that’s how we made it home for Christmas 2013! We will post some photos of our exploits in
the next post. Merry Christmas and Happy
New Year!
