Monday, April 2, 2012, begins with family members coming over in the morning hours to Luther Tarpeh's house, where I have stayed for one month. They include Edison Garsuah (younger brother), Israel Garsuah (nephew), Patience Wallah (niece), Wada Wallah (nephew), Salome Garsuah Karnley (niece), Peter Xwor-yonwon (uncle), and Jaamah Karnley (brother-in-law). Salome hands me her demo CD to be given to Bro. Joe Walker, who promised to promote Salome in the United States.
For family time we kick off lively conversations, eat breakfast (plantains with dry bonnie fish), and take a group walk to a cookshop at Rehab Junction, where two of us eat fufu and pepper soup, and the rest have rice. We return to the house for a videotaped family meeting on how to keep our expanding family tree strong and unified from now on. To close off, Salome leads us in singing, before we pray together.
It's after 2 PM already. Family and friends accompany me to Roberts International Airport in Harbel, about 45-minute drive from Monrovia. Riding with me in the Nissan Path Finder are Brother Luther and his wife Christine (my hosts), Jaaman Karnley (minister and brother-in-law), and Pastor Daniel Tarpeh (whose congregation decided to join Church For All). In the Toyota Sienna minivan are Elder Martin Curlon, Edison, Wada, Peter, Patience, and Salome.
From Robertsfield, Delta Flight 27, on a 767 jet plane takes off around 6 PM, and lands in Accra, Ghana, 1 hour 44 minutes later, about 7:40 PM GMT. Passengers destined for Ghana disembark the plane. The rest of us remain on board for about three hours, waiting to continue on to New York. That's when the captain announces that, shortly after liftoff in Liberia, the aircraft experienced a birds' strike, which damaged the plane. Murmurings of disappointment slip through the aircraft, as we prepare to step off the plane.
It's after 2 PM already. Family and friends accompany me to Roberts International Airport in Harbel, about 45-minute drive from Monrovia. Riding with me in the Nissan Path Finder are Brother Luther and his wife Christine (my hosts), Jaaman Karnley (minister and brother-in-law), and Pastor Daniel Tarpeh (whose congregation decided to join Church For All). In the Toyota Sienna minivan are Elder Martin Curlon, Edison, Wada, Peter, Patience, and Salome.
From Robertsfield, Delta Flight 27, on a 767 jet plane takes off around 6 PM, and lands in Accra, Ghana, 1 hour 44 minutes later, about 7:40 PM GMT. Passengers destined for Ghana disembark the plane. The rest of us remain on board for about three hours, waiting to continue on to New York. That's when the captain announces that, shortly after liftoff in Liberia, the aircraft experienced a birds' strike, which damaged the plane. Murmurings of disappointment slip through the aircraft, as we prepare to step off the plane.
Inside the Kotoka International Airport terminal, a Ghanaian Delta employee hands us immigration forms to be filled out for a one-day Ghanaian visa to be issued to each passenger. The worker then takes our passports to keep overnight. Suspicious passengers query him: “How can you assure us we will get our passports back?”
Meanwhile the Delta flight crew, led by the captain, zooms by us unlucky passengers, and leave for their comfort in some luxury hotel in the heart of Accra. How is that any different from a captain jumping ship, like the captain of that wrecked cruise ship did somewhere in Europe, not that long ago?
The nearly 100 of us walk outside the terminal to stand on the street curb, where we wait and wait and wait. The 14-seat buses finally pull up one at a time to haul us off to various hotels around Accra city. It is after 1 AM when my batch arrives at the Travelers Express Hotel. Rooms range from $120 to $180 per night, but Delta Airlines will pay. The Delta rep informs us we will be picked up around 11:30 AM on Tuesday, April 3.
For most of us it's a short, restless night. In the morning, some passengers report being unable to sleep. Passengers are frustrated, anxious from scrambling, but, for the most part, failing to place calls to family members, employers, etc, in the USA to let them know the change from flight to plight.
For most of us it's a short, restless night. In the morning, some passengers report being unable to sleep. Passengers are frustrated, anxious from scrambling, but, for the most part, failing to place calls to family members, employers, etc, in the USA to let them know the change from flight to plight.
On Tuesday, April 3, buses begin hauling us from the hotel around 10 AM. We form a long line to check in. It is past 12 noon before we begin boarding Delta Flight 27 on a different plane brought from the United States last night. Sitting on the airstrip, still being worked on by mechanics, is the bird-stricken aircraft that brought us from Liberia. Little birds can do that to a jet plane? How the force of nature always out-strong man's best!
We take off at 1:20 PM GMT, and the captain shortly informs us that flight time is estimated at 10 hours 55 minutes. The flight crew serves us a large meal around 2 PM, followed by sandwich and chocolate bar at 6 PM GMT. The in-flight entertainment system fails, though the system keeps rebooting, every time a malfunction causes a female singer's voice to blanket the airplane. We hear numerous comments, which actually started last night, about how Delta Airlines only send the oldest airplanes to Africa, while flying new planes to Europe. Finally, the Delta SkyTeam apologizes that we will endure the long flight without music, movie, television, or even the digital navigation map that shows how the flight is progressing. Most passengers use sleep as drug to tamper the drag of the marathon ride.
Some 10 hours and 30 minutes later, we reconnect with the ground, familiar territory to humans, at 7:52 PM EST at JFK International Airport in New York, where a plane lands or takes off every 60 seconds or so. Since this flight was delayed, we will not continue on to connecting flights, and that meant we have to go to the baggage claim conveyor belt and wait to grab our check-in bags.
Gone through immigration & security, we are told to recheck in our luggage to our final destinations. By the time the multitude is reissued replacement boarding passes, taxi vouchers, and meal vouchers, it is after 11 PM. Delta Airlines pays for us to spend the night at Double Tree Hotel of the Hilton hotel chain. I think I fell asleep after 1 AM.
I wake up on Wednesday, April 4, at 4 AM with my phone's alarm blasting away. My iPhone's alarm must have malfunctioned, because I had set it for 5 AM, but the early alarm better suits the rushed morning schedule. Hotel shuttle buses drive us back to JFK Airport around 6 AM Eastern Time to go through security once again. ~End Blog 16~
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