Thursday (03/04): This felt like the longest day ever… probably because I had less sleep the night before, worked a full day, had dinner at Winnie’s house before getting to the airport. After getting through all the leaving-Kenya processes, then flew all night to Dubai.
Winnie and John live just around the corner from the airport which means that they generally have at least an hour commute each way, even though it should actually only take 15 minutes if there was no traffic. Most of that time is just getting off the side road that BTL is on and then down about 200 yards more to the roundabout that puts them onto Mombasa Road that goes by the airport. I took a picture of the cars all pushing their way into the roundabout. It feels as if no two cars point in the same direction at any time.
They have two lovely daughters. Abigail is 4 and Deborah is two. Schooling begins at three and “Grade 1” is for 6 year olds. Like many of the families I visited, they have house help. In their case, it includes childcare but also cleaning and cooking. Oddly enough, when I asked where I might wash my hands, John said they didn’t have running water in the bathroom, so they had a water to rinse your hands with at the dinner table. I have no idea what the toilet facilities look like if there’s no running water.
Good thing I asked them to drop me off at the airport at 9 pm instead of the original plan of 9:30. By the time I got luggage checked in, including special packaging/wrapping of the giraffe (gift from BTL), currency exchanged, past the immigration exit process and through security, I really had very little time before bordering the plane.
A quick story about the giraffe. I was told that I'd be able to hand-carry the giraffe home. Not the case! Instead of paying $175 for this 3rd piece of baggage, however, the agents at the Emirates airline counter suggested and permitted me to have the giraffe wrapped, boxed and then strapped to my almost-empty second suitcase and, because it was still under 13 kg (50 lbs), let it go through special. What a nice gesture from a very nice airline.
The airport at Dubai was just as impressive as my time passing through in the other direction. Again, it was fortunate that I had a 3 hour layover. Since the airline only gave me the boarding pass for that first flight, I had to locate the airline’s desk in Dubai and get the next one. I had to go through a security checkpoint twice and, even though there were 8 lines, spent 30 minutes each time in lines of at least 40 people. I have no idea why but, when I got to the actual gate, I had to pass by two people within 5 meters (remember, this is not the USA; the rest of the world uses the metric system) of each other which each compared my boarding pass with my passport. 5 meters later females stood in one line to enter a privacy booth and be body searched by a woman and the males went to an open area where they were checked. Then 5 meters later, all hand-carry items were searched. This was after the security checkpoint with normal high tech equipment. When asked why the repetitive manual checks, the security people simply said that it was the rules.
Then began the nightmare in row 33. I was to have an aisle seat on the 14 hour flight, great when you want to use the bathroom or just stretch, not blocked in by someone that is asleep. When I got to row 33, an Indian woman with a 6 month and a 2 year old asked if I would switch with her. Wanting to be a good neighbor, I agreed. The kids were wonderful…but only the two times they napped. What bothered me, besides the 2 year old that continued to change my entertainment settings, take food off my tray at every meal, poke me while looking me in the eye as I said “no”, was that the mother ignored what was happening. She also showed real anger when she slapped the boy late in the flight when I’d demonstrated that I’d had enough. She also whiplash-shacked the poor 6 month old in anger when I saw no reason (is there ever one). The other BIG thing that bugged me is that I eventually learned that her husband was across the aisle!!! And only once did he do anything with the family, taking the 6 month old for 5 minutes. The rest of the time he read a book, apparently a religious book, most likely Hindu.
I was never so glad that a flight ended. I deplaned in New York and then went through the immigration - baggage collection - customs - rechecking baggage - finding my gate routine. Since I now had a signal on my cell phone, I had a chance to call some family to let them know I was in the US.
My flight from NYC to Charlotte flew [ :) ] by. I fell asleep as the plane took off and woke up 15 minutes before the plane landed. It was so good to see Julie shortly afterwards and to have her drive home on the right side of the road.
I got to bed around 10:30 pm local time and basically slept through the night. I don’t think it’ll be hard to get back to a normal wake-sleep schedule like it was that first week in Kenya.
Winnie and John live just around the corner from the airport which means that they generally have at least an hour commute each way, even though it should actually only take 15 minutes if there was no traffic. Most of that time is just getting off the side road that BTL is on and then down about 200 yards more to the roundabout that puts them onto Mombasa Road that goes by the airport. I took a picture of the cars all pushing their way into the roundabout. It feels as if no two cars point in the same direction at any time.
They have two lovely daughters. Abigail is 4 and Deborah is two. Schooling begins at three and “Grade 1” is for 6 year olds. Like many of the families I visited, they have house help. In their case, it includes childcare but also cleaning and cooking. Oddly enough, when I asked where I might wash my hands, John said they didn’t have running water in the bathroom, so they had a water to rinse your hands with at the dinner table. I have no idea what the toilet facilities look like if there’s no running water.
A quick story about the giraffe. I was told that I'd be able to hand-carry the giraffe home. Not the case! Instead of paying $175 for this 3rd piece of baggage, however, the agents at the Emirates airline counter suggested and permitted me to have the giraffe wrapped, boxed and then strapped to my almost-empty second suitcase and, because it was still under 13 kg (50 lbs), let it go through special. What a nice gesture from a very nice airline.
The airport at Dubai was just as impressive as my time passing through in the other direction. Again, it was fortunate that I had a 3 hour layover. Since the airline only gave me the boarding pass for that first flight, I had to locate the airline’s desk in Dubai and get the next one. I had to go through a security checkpoint twice and, even though there were 8 lines, spent 30 minutes each time in lines of at least 40 people. I have no idea why but, when I got to the actual gate, I had to pass by two people within 5 meters (remember, this is not the USA; the rest of the world uses the metric system) of each other which each compared my boarding pass with my passport. 5 meters later females stood in one line to enter a privacy booth and be body searched by a woman and the males went to an open area where they were checked. Then 5 meters later, all hand-carry items were searched. This was after the security checkpoint with normal high tech equipment. When asked why the repetitive manual checks, the security people simply said that it was the rules.
Then began the nightmare in row 33. I was to have an aisle seat on the 14 hour flight, great when you want to use the bathroom or just stretch, not blocked in by someone that is asleep. When I got to row 33, an Indian woman with a 6 month and a 2 year old asked if I would switch with her. Wanting to be a good neighbor, I agreed. The kids were wonderful…but only the two times they napped. What bothered me, besides the 2 year old that continued to change my entertainment settings, take food off my tray at every meal, poke me while looking me in the eye as I said “no”, was that the mother ignored what was happening. She also showed real anger when she slapped the boy late in the flight when I’d demonstrated that I’d had enough. She also whiplash-shacked the poor 6 month old in anger when I saw no reason (is there ever one). The other BIG thing that bugged me is that I eventually learned that her husband was across the aisle!!! And only once did he do anything with the family, taking the 6 month old for 5 minutes. The rest of the time he read a book, apparently a religious book, most likely Hindu.
I was never so glad that a flight ended. I deplaned in New York and then went through the immigration - baggage collection - customs - rechecking baggage - finding my gate routine. Since I now had a signal on my cell phone, I had a chance to call some family to let them know I was in the US.
My flight from NYC to Charlotte flew [ :) ] by. I fell asleep as the plane took off and woke up 15 minutes before the plane landed. It was so good to see Julie shortly afterwards and to have her drive home on the right side of the road.
I got to bed around 10:30 pm local time and basically slept through the night. I don’t think it’ll be hard to get back to a normal wake-sleep schedule like it was that first week in Kenya.
Comments