“There’s a problem with your baggage. The police are holding it.” These were the words that greeted me as I attempted to board the plane at Ouagadougou airport to take me back to East Africa - or at least that was the translation I got from an Ethiopian Airlines steward a few minutes later! For a moment after being drawn aside at the bottom of the steps to the aircraft, I’d wondered whether they were going to upgrade me to Business Class – but no! It was a security issue. So, just 15 minutes before the plane was due to take off, I was whisked off back through security (where my handbag and laptop bag had been dutifully and rigorously manually searched a few minutes earlier), and back through Immigration. We were met by another steward who it seemed had gone the extra mile in putting my suitcase through the X-ray machine. Of course, there wasn’t anything in there (though my music stand sometimes gets people wondering, as does my flute in my hand luggage – not too many wandering minstrels passing through these African airports, it seems!). The main problem seemed to be that I’d locked it – but then, who wouldn’t?!
Airports vary immensely – and I’ve been through quite a few over the last few months. Jomo Kenyatta, Nairobi – London Heathrow – Dallas Fort Worth – John Wayne, Santa Ana – Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – Philadelphia – Charlotte, North Carolina - Bole, Addis Ababa – Bamako – Ouagadougou. Some have an array of shops, eating places, video screens, wi-fi and electrical sockets so you can recharge your laptop allowing you to continue working for the duration of the next flight! At others, you’re lucky to find a seat. Some have signs letting you know exactly what to do; at others, you’re pretty much left to figure it out for yourself (and it’s not necessarily intuitive). Public announcements about flights were pretty much non-existent in Bamako. There was certainly no departures board, and the occasional tanoy announcement was very difficult to decipher. Ouagadougou Airport seemed to be more of a construction site than anything (that’s where seats were a rare luxury).
However, security is vigilant the world over. X-ray machines in most; physical searches in others. I was none too pleased though when I had to drink all the water that I’d filled my bottle with on the BA flight itself from Nairobi to London, as soon as I touched terra firma at Heathrow. There was still another 6 hours until I’d be airborne again. And they took my contact lens solution – Boots’ sales must be boosted from all the transit passengers who’ve suffered in similar ways! In the States, I flew to California with just hand luggage, borrowing small bottles from a friend, which I filled with the liquids and creams necessary for 4 nights away, and then squeezed them into a quart-size Ziploc bag (stretching the plastic as I did!). And bought sunscreen there which I gave away 3 days later – well, that was cheaper than paying for my weekend bag to go in the hold! My other American trick was to fill up the water bottle at one of the drinking fountains. Why oh why don’t such things exist in UK airports?! I wouldn’t want water from any in African airports mind, though at least there you can keep your water with you until you go to the gate itself, which any discerning traveller knows, you don’t do until you have to (no loos there for one thing!)!
Travelling across Africa can be entertaining. Such a variety of people and outfits. Some experienced travellers; for others, flying is clearly something very new. With the liquid restrictions, the days are now gone of seeing bottles of cooking oil brought onto the plane (I saw one once that had a piece of paper stuffed into the top, the cap apparently having gone missing!). However, you do see a lot of hand luggage. There is generally a bit of a stampede to get onto the plane and seize the overhead locker space. And there is certainly much less observance of matching your boarding pass with the seat that you then occupy! I did quite well out of that one this last trip, For some reason, our travel agent had booked aisle seats for me, when I generally prefer window ones. However, because of people not being able to follow seating plans, I wound up with window seats for most of the 6 flights anyway!
Anyway, the baggage held by the police was released, thanks to the Ethiopian Airlines steward, and I did make the flight (the next one to Addis wasn’t for another 3 days), and was back home in Nairobi the following day.
ve had, the dust has finally settled on the mud road that I walk along to get from home to the office, and the grass is just starting to turn green again. There are reports however of the toll of the drought around the country on wildlife and domestic animals, and of course on people where crops have failed, and water has been so scarce for so long. Some plants, like grass, are amazingly resilient, springing back to life. It seems that the tree outside my flat, which has looked rather bare for a while now, isn’t faring so well. One sign of this has been woodpeckers in it, pecking away at the dead wood, presumably to get to whatever insects are living inside. I’ve heard their rhythmic tapping at various times over the last month, but on Saturday I was rewarded with a good sighting of them. A friend asked me what kind they are. Hmm, - hard to tell. Most of the 13 kinds of woodpeckers in my 'Birds of Kenya' book look pretty similar to these – small, speckled and with a red cap.
