Out of Africa

Jim emailed this to be shared with you all on the blog:

On Thursday evening around 8:00 PM Jared and I and the rest of our team drove to the Bangui airport to catch our 11:00 PM flight to take us out of Africa. We did not have any of our checked luggage with us because we had to make an earlier trip that same morning to have the bags inspected and checked through to our final destination.

The Bangui airport is unlike any airport to which I have ever been. It is quite small and we were the only flight going out that evening and possibly even that entire day. When we arrived we had to stand in a number of lines and in each line someone (and sometimes two or more people) would inspect our passport and boarding pass. My passport was looked at at least 8 to 10 times. And even though we and our bags went through the typical metal detector and x-ray machine they still hand searched our bags afterwards. There were a number of tables set up for the manual bag inspection and a number of individuals there to search. It was difficult to determine where to go and what to do. It was rather chaotic and the strange thing was that the people inspecting your bag would often ask you to give them some of the items in your bag or try to say that they posed a security risk. I was getting quite concerned that they were not going to let me take my special camera batteries on the plane with me, but they let me keep everything and they only searched my bag once at that point. I think that having my dirty laundry at the top of my bag helped discourage them from digging around too much. However, one young lady on our team had her bag searched five times. The whole process felt rather uncomfortable and like an invasion of privacy.

When we finally did get through security we were able to wait in the waiting area which was nicer than I was expecting by local standards. We were then surprised that they started boarding the plan quite earlier than I was use to in the States. I thought perhaps that we might even take off early. But it was not to be. The reason we had to head out to the plane (you just walk right out on the runway to your plane) was because the airline has their own security check and we and our bags were inspected all over again. Granted, the second time was not feel like as much of a personal violation as did the first time, but it was still an exhausting process.

The last interesting thing was that after we all boarded the plane, the airline crew walked through the cabin spraying a solution designed to kill mosquitos.

We have now arrived at the Rutters home in France just outside of Geneva. It feels like we are staying at the Ritz Carlton after living in the Congo for two weeks. They have running water, carpeting and electricity that works 24 hours a day. I also judged Ian to be an excellent driver because he did not run over a single chicken as we drove around town (something that often happened while in the Congo.)