A few days ago I left Sweden, travelling by air to Pointe Noire in Congo to join the ship. Now, I was flying over night and had a connection flight from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. This is the story...
It was with sleepy steps I made my way through the airport only to get stuck in the queue to security. As I reached the desk I was suddenly struck by an immense sense of nausea and almost threw up in the security box. It was with wobbly steps I managed to drag my faint self away, and once I recovered I discovered that cold sweating doesn't make a cold waiting hall any more comfortable. As I was sitting there shivering I counted down the minutes until I could finally board the flight to Congo. Well, I was to discover flying African can be unreliable.
First of all, they didn't start boarding the planes until the said departure time. Secondly, most planes seemed to board from the same gate, no matter which gate was displayed at the screen, causing passengers to rush through the waiting hall in order to catch their flights. When the time had finally come for us to board we were told to sit down and wait. Instead they boarded the plane to Togo. We waited as our flight was delayed one hour. The next thing we knew, our flight was removed from the screen and people went up to query what was happening. Our flight reappeared, delayed yet another hour, and I was devastated. At that point I was both cold and hungry, nodding off from lack of sleep during the previous flight. As I looked up again I discovered our plane had been delayed a third time, and I decided to join the group of unsettled passengers gathering near the desk by the gate. No available planes they said, and we all wondered what the planes fully visible outside the windows were being used for. They said we might have to switch airlines, and asked us to wait another twenty minutes in order for them to sort things out. Then our flight was removed from the screen again - cancelled, they said. At that point we were all cold, hungry and moody, and upset passengers started shouting at the staff, demanding to see the manager. It all got really feisty, and once the manager finally came around a mob of twenty angry African men literally cornered him and shouted at him in various dialects for a good few minutes. The next thing we heard, there would be a plane ready and fuelled up within 38 minutes. And wouldn't you know it, after about 40 minutes we got told we could start boarding, and we all rushed through the gate like it was a race for life or death, eager to get a seat on that plane.
All in all our flight was delayed 5 hours, but then, at least we got there in the end. Uncivilised perhaps, but effective - I am grateful to the men that dared to threaten the airport manager in order to get us a plane to Pointe Noire that day!
All Love
