Stuck.

Yesterday Alyssa and I went to the airport in early enough to check-in for an international flight in the US. Normally check-in counters don’t open more than 2 hours in advance of a flight so we thought we had plenty of time. The departure area was a mess and as we looked for the Virgin Nigeria counter Alyssa saw that was flight was boarding. I started pushing through people (not very nice, I realize) and ran to the ticket counter.
“Your flight is closed.”
After trying to clarify that we were on the Dakar flight, the one leaving at 10:25pm, we learned that our flight had already left… hours before it was supposed to. The next flight to Dakar? Tuesday. As we rebooked our tickets we learned that the flight almost ALWAYS switches times to leave a few hours early… didn’t we know that? Well, no worries, people usually miss the flight. They were able to tell us that the check-in for our second flight, the one leaving at “10:25pm” will be closed by 7:30pm. Our only option for leaving last night was to fly to South Africa and then be on stand-by… we obviously didn’t take that flight. Air Ivoirian had a flight at 9am that went to Dakar but it stopped in the Ivory Coast and you need a visa even if you just have a layover. To avoid being thrown in Ivoirian jail we decided to wait until Tuesday.
When we got back to the hotel, there was a Nigerian guy leaving who profusely apologized on behalf of his country and then told us that it’s happened to him a million times – flights leave early and they don’t tell anyone. Our hotel only had a room for last night, however, so we checked out this morning and into another hotel.
Today was Ghana’s first game of the world cup and it was fun to watch that here. During the first half the entire bar cheered every time Ghana had possession of the ball. People quieted down a little during the second half but the bar erupted in cheers and horns when Ghana scored. As an added bonus to the win, before the game the bar owner had the crowd pick 2 Ghanaian players and, if they scored, everyone in the bar would get a vodka and Coke. Luckily for us all, the player that scored the penalty was one of the free drink players. Vodka and coke must be a British drink (the owner of the bar is British) because neither of us had heard of making that combination. It was really interesting to see everyone SO excited behind one team. I hope World Cup Fever is strong in the US and I’m interested to see how it is in Senegal (whose team didn’t qualify).
So for another two days I am unwillingly on vacation. I’m thankful we were able to get a room, the flight isn’t too many days away, and everything’s going fairly smoothly… but I still can’t wait to get back to Bambey. I’m done being on African vacation and I want to be back in my own little corner of Africa. Hopefully we’ll only be stuck in Ghana for another two-ish days. Off to watch the Australia v. Germany game!
KO