Before I start this new post a confession, or rather an observation, for when you confess you need to have sinned and I don’t think I have.
I noticed that my drive to write new blog posts fell away completely shortly after my birthday. My birthday must have been the least noticed one since I was born. I received few birthday wishes and almost no gifts. I know I like my share of attention, yet I still don’t see myself as someone who really craves it. However, I was noticeably upset not getting the calls and cards I had secretly hoped for.
Now, of course I rationalized all of this. I know how birthdays in general are hard to keep track of. I myself rely on the birthday calendar in Facebook to keep track of most people’s special day. And I know all of us are submerged in our own lives, doing daily routines, and that with me being away, there is a lack of stimuli to help one remind my birthday.
But in spite me being able to consciously put the feelings of dissapointment in perspective (there is a root in vanity in them, and I don’t subscribe that attitude) I have to confess – there it is- that I did not feel like writing any more. Did I want to punish? Did I seek vindication? Not deliberatly, but it seems like once more the subconscious prevails.
But let’s consider it water under the bridge. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how many people actually seemed to read the scribblings on this blog. You might argue that there is vanity in me writing more to get attention, but then I would stick out my (perfeclty shaped) tongue to you, turn around and walk away, acting like you’re just a whiff of a bad air and stroking my golden blond manes.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll give you some updates, still in chronological order. Let’s see how many I can post in the coming weeks…
----------------------------------
Cote d'Ivoire, my new experience with traveling in Africa. And what a pleasant experience it was, once i managed to get there...
I had to be in the capital, Abidjan, for two days worth of meetings. With the flight network offering limited possibilities, I had to fly all over the African continent to get there. You might want to have a map of Africa next to you if I describe you my route: From Cape Town to Johannesburg, to Nairobi (Kenya) to Accra (Ghana) to Abidjan. All fun and games, and not too big of an issue if it weren't for the flight from Nairobi to Accra departing with a delay of one hour. One hour delay and I only had 50 minutes to catch my connection to Abidjan, and since basic math applies pretty much all over the globe, I had to find a way to make the plane fly super fast, or would be bound to miss my connecting flight. My hijacking skills are yet to be developed, and the captain wasn't available for discussions (something to do with him busy flying a plane) so I touched ground in Accra too late and had to stay there for the night.
The flight operator arranged a nice hotel, transportation and food. The staff and all people I met were very professional and helpful. I did not need a fixer, like I had in the DRC. I did not need to bribe anyone, and only had to ask or explain everything once. So all in all not a bad experience, I just needed damage control so I would not arrive too late in Abidjan. But first I tried to catch a glimpse of Accra.
Accra was definitely in a different league than the DRC, based on what I saw there. I have noticed you can gauge the (economic) state of a country by things you see in the street:
- the type of cars: a lot of new and/or expensive cars mean there are people with money. A lot of 4x4 vehicles means the roads are in bad condition overall. Vans and trucks mean there is room for large scale economic activity.
- How many people are selling in the street, and what they sell. If they only sell bare necessities- food, drinks, alcohol-, it means either people have no money to purchase other items, or it is too expensive to trade in them. If they sell other items – jewelry, gadgets, books, toys- it means small time entrepreneurs can find the means and the consumers to run a shop.
- The presence of big supermarket chains. They do there homework before they enter the market. Especially the international chains. You could look at them as the flowers of the economy: if the soil is rich enough (consumers) and the climate accommodating (government policies) they will bloom. If one of the two is lacking, they won’t sprout.
- Billboards in the street: are they advertising products or mainly glorifying the ruling president. - The buildings and public infrastructure: how many skyscrapers, how big are the houses, in what state are the houses and roads, …
Measuring Accra on these criteria, they scored the highest of the few cities I have seen in Africa. Hawkers were all around selling all kinds of things from food to phone cards over toiletries to clothes. A traffic jam looked like a moving supermarket almost. There are quite a few international supermarkets, and you can see their advertisements on big bill boards all around (side note: there is a brand called “Uncle Sam” complete with the American symbol and all, selling halaal food. I would love to serve a nice plate of that to some of the hard liner anti-muslim US citizens). Cars are new and sleek, no 4x4s needed here and the houses looked nice and big in the (upmarket) area I walked through.
So Accra was nice, granted, but I needed to be in Abidjan, and as fast as possible actually. The replacing flight would leave the following day in the afternoon, thus making it impossible to do any of the work planned for most of the day.
I moved out to investigate other options. There was an other flight leaving in the morning, from an other flight operator. I decided to spend extra money for this ticket so I could arrive before noon.
The next day, I was on my plane, a standard boeing 737, with luggage all checked in and safely on board, ready for the 45 min flight. When we were airborne for about 15 mins, the pilot came on the radio and mumbled some French words about a defect and that we had to return. There are only a few messages that are unsettling when you are flying, but this was definitely one of them. Even more so for the Ghanaian passengers, who speak English and couldn’t understand the pilot but did see the unrest with their Ivorian fellow passengers.
Back on the ground in Accra, the pilot announced that two electrical generators failed in mid air. Two. I am no plane mechanic or engineer, but two generators failing sounds like a whole lot.
Especially considering that I am used to taking flights where a total number of zero generators fail, zero failing generators therefore also being the average per flight. Oddly enough I did not panic at all, I kept reading my book. I figured that I could not do anything myself anyway, and that I could only make the pilot’s job more difficult by panicking.
I noticed that my drive to write new blog posts fell away completely shortly after my birthday. My birthday must have been the least noticed one since I was born. I received few birthday wishes and almost no gifts. I know I like my share of attention, yet I still don’t see myself as someone who really craves it. However, I was noticeably upset not getting the calls and cards I had secretly hoped for.
Now, of course I rationalized all of this. I know how birthdays in general are hard to keep track of. I myself rely on the birthday calendar in Facebook to keep track of most people’s special day. And I know all of us are submerged in our own lives, doing daily routines, and that with me being away, there is a lack of stimuli to help one remind my birthday.
But in spite me being able to consciously put the feelings of dissapointment in perspective (there is a root in vanity in them, and I don’t subscribe that attitude) I have to confess – there it is- that I did not feel like writing any more. Did I want to punish? Did I seek vindication? Not deliberatly, but it seems like once more the subconscious prevails.
But let’s consider it water under the bridge. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how many people actually seemed to read the scribblings on this blog. You might argue that there is vanity in me writing more to get attention, but then I would stick out my (perfeclty shaped) tongue to you, turn around and walk away, acting like you’re just a whiff of a bad air and stroking my golden blond manes.
Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll give you some updates, still in chronological order. Let’s see how many I can post in the coming weeks…
----------------------------------
Cote d'Ivoire, my new experience with traveling in Africa. And what a pleasant experience it was, once i managed to get there...
I had to be in the capital, Abidjan, for two days worth of meetings. With the flight network offering limited possibilities, I had to fly all over the African continent to get there. You might want to have a map of Africa next to you if I describe you my route: From Cape Town to Johannesburg, to Nairobi (Kenya) to Accra (Ghana) to Abidjan. All fun and games, and not too big of an issue if it weren't for the flight from Nairobi to Accra departing with a delay of one hour. One hour delay and I only had 50 minutes to catch my connection to Abidjan, and since basic math applies pretty much all over the globe, I had to find a way to make the plane fly super fast, or would be bound to miss my connecting flight. My hijacking skills are yet to be developed, and the captain wasn't available for discussions (something to do with him busy flying a plane) so I touched ground in Accra too late and had to stay there for the night.The flight operator arranged a nice hotel, transportation and food. The staff and all people I met were very professional and helpful. I did not need a fixer, like I had in the DRC. I did not need to bribe anyone, and only had to ask or explain everything once. So all in all not a bad experience, I just needed damage control so I would not arrive too late in Abidjan. But first I tried to catch a glimpse of Accra.
Accra was definitely in a different league than the DRC, based on what I saw there. I have noticed you can gauge the (economic) state of a country by things you see in the street:
- the type of cars: a lot of new and/or expensive cars mean there are people with money. A lot of 4x4 vehicles means the roads are in bad condition overall. Vans and trucks mean there is room for large scale economic activity.
- How many people are selling in the street, and what they sell. If they only sell bare necessities- food, drinks, alcohol-, it means either people have no money to purchase other items, or it is too expensive to trade in them. If they sell other items – jewelry, gadgets, books, toys- it means small time entrepreneurs can find the means and the consumers to run a shop.
- The presence of big supermarket chains. They do there homework before they enter the market. Especially the international chains. You could look at them as the flowers of the economy: if the soil is rich enough (consumers) and the climate accommodating (government policies) they will bloom. If one of the two is lacking, they won’t sprout.
- Billboards in the street: are they advertising products or mainly glorifying the ruling president. - The buildings and public infrastructure: how many skyscrapers, how big are the houses, in what state are the houses and roads, …
Measuring Accra on these criteria, they scored the highest of the few cities I have seen in Africa. Hawkers were all around selling all kinds of things from food to phone cards over toiletries to clothes. A traffic jam looked like a moving supermarket almost. There are quite a few international supermarkets, and you can see their advertisements on big bill boards all around (side note: there is a brand called “Uncle Sam” complete with the American symbol and all, selling halaal food. I would love to serve a nice plate of that to some of the hard liner anti-muslim US citizens). Cars are new and sleek, no 4x4s needed here and the houses looked nice and big in the (upmarket) area I walked through.So Accra was nice, granted, but I needed to be in Abidjan, and as fast as possible actually. The replacing flight would leave the following day in the afternoon, thus making it impossible to do any of the work planned for most of the day.
I moved out to investigate other options. There was an other flight leaving in the morning, from an other flight operator. I decided to spend extra money for this ticket so I could arrive before noon.
The next day, I was on my plane, a standard boeing 737, with luggage all checked in and safely on board, ready for the 45 min flight. When we were airborne for about 15 mins, the pilot came on the radio and mumbled some French words about a defect and that we had to return. There are only a few messages that are unsettling when you are flying, but this was definitely one of them. Even more so for the Ghanaian passengers, who speak English and couldn’t understand the pilot but did see the unrest with their Ivorian fellow passengers.
Back on the ground in Accra, the pilot announced that two electrical generators failed in mid air. Two. I am no plane mechanic or engineer, but two generators failing sounds like a whole lot.
Especially considering that I am used to taking flights where a total number of zero generators fail, zero failing generators therefore also being the average per flight. Oddly enough I did not panic at all, I kept reading my book. I figured that I could not do anything myself anyway, and that I could only make the pilot’s job more difficult by panicking. As we were safely on the ground, it was time to observe a big difference in culture. The passengers on board did not start asking questions to the flight attendands. They had a chat on the situation, yes, and they did not like it. But they remained quite calm. No one started shouting, and there was no individual getting angry with the pilots or anything similar. That would be behavior that could be expected if this were to happen in Europe. Or people getting scared maybe, and nauseous with anxiety. I think the crowd, being almost exclusively African, was accustomed to these type of challenges and therefore able to handle it calmly. They knew something would come up eventually.
But I had bought this ticket to get to Abidjan earlier than my original back up flight, which was still set to leave a couple of hours later.
So I politely asked a stewardess when she thought there would be clarity on the back up plan. She reassured me there were two planes contacted to take the people of this flight. One was secured already, the second plane they were contacting now. But she couldn’t tell me when it would all happen earliest, so I asked the senior flight attendant. Yes, he said, the first plane was confirmed and the other looked like would be secured any time soon. But it still had to land in Accra. A slightly puzzled look from my side. Still to land? Yes, it is leaving Abidjan now and flying this direction, we expect it to land in three hours. I thought about all the hassle and the time it would take before that plane would actually take off. The first plane would be my best bet. So how many people can board that first plane, I inquired. Oh, about six or seven probably. A very puzzled look from my side. Six or seven? Yes sir. And the other plane, how many people would that take? That plane is not confirmed yet, sir. Yes, I understand, but how many people would it take? Around sixty maybe. The puzzlement changed to disbelief. I turned around to the crowd of passengers behind me in the Boeing 737 and quickly estimated around 120 people present. I smiled and thanked him, he did not seem to notice I questioned his contingency plan.
Some other passengers saw me asking questions, and watched me as I calmly stepped out of the plane. I asked for my luggage, and set course to the agency that sold me the ticket. I had 1 hour and a half to sort things out and catch my original plane: get a refund for my ticket, get my luggage, and check in again for the other flight. Much to my surprise, it all went smoothly.
I had expected at least some shrewd villains to want to take advantage of my vulnerable state by asking for a bribe or wanting to keep the money for the ticket. That would most definitely have happened in India, I ll take poison on that. But none of that, some of the luggage attendants even scolded a colleague for not being professional because he was slow.When I boarded that plane, I saw my previous passengers sitting in the hall. Still sweating and puffing and not certain of their options. I wonder how long they remained there.
I finally made it to Abidjan, and was able to do all the things I had to do. But they were very worried there as I hadn't been able to update them on the delays. It's the last time I'll decide to leave my cell phone at home "because I have never needed it before, what could possibly happen"...
No comments:
Post a Comment