On the Way!

Hello world!

We’re lounging around at the Backpacker’s Lodge in Lusaka, Zambia, recovering from jetlag and chasing geckos up the walls (okay, actually, I’m the only one chasing geckos…). I thought I would share the journey with you…

After a short week and a half at home, I reloaded everything back into my car and drove south to Nashville again.  A dear friend who studied abroad in Italy this spring had just gotten home, so she and I stayed with another friend in the city to catch up with each other and essentially just enjoy each other’s company for the night. The next day consisted of frantically running from place to place to get passport photos and Spiderman movies (you’re welcome, Troy) and milkshakes (totally necessary…) and every other odd and end that still hadn’t been picked up. David and I traveled on the same itinerary, which means we were basically trying to pack in the same bags while residing in two different states, which—I might add—is actually physically impossible. A week of anxiety and obnoxiously late phone calls and micromanaging on my part culminated into about a two-hour packing experience in the lobby of my old dorm at school.  We laid out everything we hoped to pack in order of importance and then stuffed every suitcase until it was exactly 50lb (or at least reaaaally close). Almost everything made it in, and the things I had to leave were not items I felt bad about leaving behind. So that’s nice.

The next morning, we met at the airport parking garage, stuffed one last suitcase full to bursting with kids clothes (they were just too cute to leave behind), and made our way to the United Airlines counter.  We intended to check an extra suitcase, and the travel agency we work with (Golden Rule; I highly recommend them for any kind of missions travel) had been kind enough to make the phone calls for us and figure out the prices and logistics.  United charged us $200, which is about what we expected. The travel agency warned us that Ethiopian Air would probably try to charge us again when we transferred our bags over, so the lady at the United counter went through the trouble of printing up a receipt for the extra bag stating that it was good from DC to Lusaka.

Then she discovered that we were both booked on two flights from DC to Addis Ababa. Several weeks ago our travel agency notified us that the flight had changed, but apparently it wasn’t canceled appropriately in the system.  The United lady’s initial statement was, “Oh well, that doesn’t really matter for us. It’s an Ethiopian issue.” After a minor amount of sheer panic and pleading with big eyes, she did sort it all out for us.

The flights from Nashville to Chicago and then to DC went flawlessly.  Navigating the DC airport with 312lbs of luggage in tow was quite an experience, to say the least, but we managed to follow the signs and the PA announcements until we found the shuttle pick-up. Two other missions groups were trying to get to the same hotel we were with the same obscenely large amount of luggage, so there was a bit of jostling to get on the shuttle both that night and when we reloaded to go back to the airport Sunday morning.  One of the groups was really nice; the others’ attitudes left me frustrated and irritated, but more on that later…

Checking in with Ethiopian Air in DC was… sketchy. That is the terminology we have settled upon.  I really like Ethiopian Air a lot; Stateside it just seemed to be a bunch of congenial friendly people unaccustomed to bureaucracy who were nonetheless working within the confines of bureaucracy. Things run pretty smoothly, and if something glitches, you just sort of shrug and move on and fix it later. For instance, they didn’t have our second boarding pass “ready” (translation: oops, somehow you’re not actually on this flight… let’s fix that…). When we got to Addis Ababa, we just sauntered up to the nice lady by the gate and asked if she happened to have it. There was a whole stack of them on the counter next to her. She rifled through them, pulled ours out, and sent us on our way.

Finally, we boarded (what we thought was) our final flight into Lusaka.  Fully jetlagged and only slightly coherent, we somehow missed the pre-flight PA announcement notifying us of a flight change. The thick Ethiopian accent of the announcer didn’t exactly help. I kept glancing at my watch in confusion, thinking how much longer the flight seemed than last year. Finally, the plane began to descend, and I eagerly leaned towards the window to see… a completely unfamiliar and foreign landscape.  In retrospect, the nice Chinese-man-across-the-aisle’s repetitious query of “Harari? Harari?” made a lot more since. We were, in fact, in Harari, Zimbabwe.

Luckily, it was only a brief (incredibly confusing) pitstop. A few people got off, and a few more people got on. An hour and a half later we finally stepped onto the tarmac at the Lusaka airport.

Getting our visa and getting through customs was a breeze. One of the luggage attendants piled all our luggage on a cart and literally walked us through customs, waving off the officials and getting us through without even having to stop. We grabbed a taxi and made our way to the Backpacker’s Lodge. Two of the other girls who are also traveling to Kazembe this summer, whose whereabouts were ominously unknown upon landing, were already there (much to our relief).  Due to the Zimbabwe mishap, we arrived too late to change currency over, which basically postponed all of our errands and responsibilities until the next day.

The night ended with a long look towards the Southern Cross, a deep breath of African air, and a peace in my soul that has been painfully absent since August 6^th of last year. Tomorrow we board the bus for Kazembe, and I eagerly await that moment Thursday morning when the orphanage appears on the horizon. And when Johnny pipes up with, “Auntie Meghan, you came back!” I’ll cross my arms, turn sideways, and smile mischeviously just like he does and say, “Of course I did monkey. I told you so.”