When the pilot says
‘as some of you may have noticed, we have flown over N’djamena’ which
was suppose to be our final destination.
The end of a 6 hour flight, you think you are getting off the plane,
then finding out there is another 1.5 hours before landing in Doula, the city
we are being diverted to due to a sand storm in N’djamena.
I don’t have any in flight magazines in the
seat pockets but the man next to me is looking at a map, I ask him what country
is Doula in?
He doesn’t know, I guessed
Cameroon?
Pilot says
‘we will tell you more as we approach Douala’
As we got closer he said ‘We will tell you more once we land’ after we landed… ‘we are going to disembark
the plane’
Walking out of the plane there was
a wall of heat and humidity!
It was dark, there were no lights, there was a airport
worker laying on the ground taking a nap.
walking from the
plane into the airport everyone is quiet and I feel like a lemming, just
following the crowd… a typical feeling for me in the airport.
We piled into a small room where everyone seemed calm and
relaxed.
Remembering how different this scenario would be if this was
a Chicago to San Fran flight, diverted to Los Angelas. People would be asking
questions and agitated, talking to one
another. But on this flight, there are
no tourists. It’s either locals, or
people who are doing work in the country… and anyone who would do work in Chad,
knows that things don’t always go as planned.
People
started getting up and got in line, so I followed, still no announcement. A man came around with a giant bin and
collected everyone’s passports. Then
they took 25 people and we walked through the very long dark hallways of the
airport following a Cameroon women outside where we boarded a little bus,
crammed in. Bused to a hotel, we were
handed a form to fill out, while standing in line and waiting for over an hour
while the one hotel worker checked in the WHOLE ENTIRE flight as I was cut in
front of repeatedly, I finally exchanged my paper for a room key… still no
announcement, but someone in line mentioned we were scheduled to depart the
hotel around 9am and catch our flight at 11am.
No mention of breakfast, or food.
I made friends with Melinda and Omer and attempted to order a water in
the bar that after an hour and half of waiting, jet legged, and with the time
change, I finally went to bed.
A large buffet and mingling with the plane folks, I saw with
a Chadian man who scoffed at my ‘no’ response when asked if I had kids. I asked how many he had…. 24! My next questions was how many wives. 3, but one died. He never went to school, but he had 4 of his
oldest in college in a variety of countries and seemed to be a proud father!
We all
congregated in the lobby while a bus shuttled people to the airport, one group
at a time.
It took 1.5 hours before we
were all there, back in the small room we were in before.
It was 10 minutes passed our
departure time and several of us were impressed that we were actually more on
time than we expected. We finally took
off at noon.
This all made me think about refugees, or people displace
from natural disasters. Not that we were
in a terrible place, or anything bad was happening. But just the thought of
being shipped around with no word or explanation. It’s a strange experience.
