A Personal Odyssey

Tuesday afternoon Alyssa and I had our last meal in Accra (Chinese food) and set off for the airport. I had confirmed over the phone that our flight was leaving at 8:35pm (contrary to the official flight time of 10:25pm) and that check-in would open at 5:30 or 6 (depending on who you asked). We got to the airport around 4pm and went to the ticket office to triple check the flight was leaving. "The Dakar flight? It's cancelled," explained the ticket guy but before I flew into a storm of rage he added, "just joking!" Yeah. Really funny. We then waited for an hour and a half for the check-in counter to open. Before checking-in we had to have our bags "checked" by customs... the customs woman asked me what I had in my bag (she didn't open it) and she asked Alyssa if she was traveling with me and then let us move on to check-in. We were waiting in line to check-in and twice the agent called me forward to the counter and then reprimanded me for not letting her finish with the people in front of me. Finally it actually was my turn and we checked in and moved on to the second customs area.

Just a fun fact, the entire Accra airport is filled with posters about drug trafficking, for example: parents, watch your children's bags and toys - traffickers will stuff drugs in them; are you trafficking drugs? You WILL be caught and sentenced to 10 years hard labor.

After customs we picked up some chocolate for our host families and waited to go through security (which we couldn't do until our flight was called). Finally a woman walked by and mumbled something about the Virgin Nigeria flight and we ran after her and got through security. While waiting to have our tickets and passports checked for the 4th time we heard an announcement for the Virgin Nigeria flight to Banjul (capital of The Gambia) and Dakar... when asked what city would be first - because this was the first time we'd heard ANYTHING about The Gambia - we were assured Dakar was the first stop. Once the Brazil v. North Korea World Cup match was over we boarded the flight.

Not too surprisingly there was someone in my seat and when I tried to explain I was told that as a "new comer" (the flight left from Nigeria) I had to go find another seat regardless of whether it was my assigned seat or not. We ended up sitting one row behind our original row. I had my seatbelt on and made the mistake of thinking that there could be no more surprises... SURPRISE! THE GAMBIA WAS THE FIRST STOP! Alyssa and I were apparently the only people who didn't know we were taking a detour to a 3rd country (our tickets said nothing about Banjul, our flight was never on the departures board, and when we asked we were told Dakar was the first stop).
5 hours and 1 country later, we finally landed in Dakar. I never thought I would be that happy to be back in Senegal but I was ecstatic. I loved when we got in an argument over cab price, when everyone was yelling at me - it was amazing. Around 2am we made it to the regional house which was pretty empty and passed out.

The next morning I was in a car to Bambey by 10am. After being stuck in traffic for an hour we got a flat tire and had to wait for it to be changed. Normally that would have driven me crazy but I was just so happy to be back I was fine. When I got out of the car in Bambey someone who knew me (I didn't know them) helped me get a good price for a donkey cart to take me to my house ("she's not a foreigner! she's Senegalese!), and the post office was still open 30 minutes after they normally close. I had 6 packages (from my parents and Sarah Lowry THANK YOU!!) and rolled into my house like Santa on Christmas. I kid you not neighborhood kids appeared and helped carry everything up to my room. As I got in lunch was being set down. It's as if Senegal wanted to prove that it wasn't so bad after all and, even if things never work in Ghana, they sometimes work here.

I have a fair amount of work to catch up on now and I'm trying to keep busy. Things with the camp should become definite over the next two days. I hope everyone watches the US game tomorrow!

KO