Flying to the Forest Region with Daisy Duke and Mr. T

Saturday, October 21, 2006

My Air France flight from Paris to Conakry was my first introduction to flying in Africa. Got on the plane and was glad that my sense of smell isn’t very good because the body odor was pretty durn overpowering.

And that was Air France.

My flight from Conakry to N’Zerekore today was a whole ‘nuther flying experience. There are three ways to get to N’Zerekore:

1. THE Road. Meaning the [singular] only road leading from Conakry to N’Zerekore, which washed out in the rainy season and the government can’t seem to get their act together to fix it. One option down.
   
2. The World Food Program flight on Tuesday and Friday. But, with the road out and no other way to get to N’Zerekore, these fill up with bigwig UN people and lowly grant writers for NGOs don’t have much of a shot.
3. The Commercial Flight on Saturday. My only option.

They told me that the departure time was “around noon.” The departure time seems to depend on when the Russian pilots finish their cigarettes and feel like leaving. Finda and Emmanuel, 2 N’Z IRC staff and I managed to board the plane at around 1:15. A mad dash to the little rickety stairway to board the plane (why are they in such a hurry?) where I realized as I entered the cabin, that they were hurrying so that they would:

1. Get a seat (no guarantees that they counted the right number of passengers) and
   
2. Get a seat that wasn’t broken.

The runners were already fanning themselves furiously with the saftely cards (Russian and English) when I got on the plane... The seats that were left were the ones with the seat in front broken so that you would have the joy of having head in you lap the whole trip. Lovely.

And better yet, I was sitting next to a mammoth she-man scary woman in an ironically beautiful yellow dress with head wrap and veil. [Picture and angry Mr. T from the A-Team in a yellow dress.] She had, I later found out, put her carry on under my feet so that she would have an empty space under her feet. She spent the whole flight either leaning on me or sleeping or looking at the book I was attempting to read -- glaring at me like she was thinking, “Didn’t you hear that it isn’t right for a woman to read?” Pucker face grouchiness...Pleasant airplane companionship.

Luckily, the temp of the plane got cooler as we got into the air and I escaped into 19th century Chile in my book… only to be interrupted by the flight attendant (yes there was one) offering muffins and “Capri Sonne” (Capri Sun, Safari Flavor) on a tray.

The plane didn’t have a cargo hold, so the front of the plane was filled with luggage… took up more space than the passengers actually I think. When they realized that the luggage took up too many passenger seats, they just asked one of the token white guys on the plan who was wearing shorts waaaay to short for his burly physique to go sit int eh cockpit. Mr. Daisy Duke driving the plane. Excellent.

After an hour and 45 minutes, we landed in the middle of a pasture and debaorded to the joyful singing of a large group of children outside the gate. Wow! Welcome to Africa! Singing children greet me at the airport! GREAT!

And then I found out that there was a Catholic bishop on the plane (was wondering why that guy had so much Bling-Bling crucifix action going on) and the kids were welcoming him. Still, I was pretty happy to enjoy his welcome.

We spent around an hour waiting on them to pull all the luggage off the plane. After around 30 minutes, 5 young guys pushed the first luggage trailer (like an oversized wagon) out of the “gate” into the parking lot and everybody just started grabbing their luggage.

Waiting on the 2nd batch, I got to see the plane refueling method: Two young guys struggled by with barrels of “TOTAL jet fuel” on their heads... uh, scary?

Then, we honked our way through the crowd out of the airport and bulleted down the dirt road back to N’Zerekore.