Transit Adventures

If you’ve seen my Facebook statuses, you know that I did make it to Kenya alive. However, there was some concern when I flew out that I wouldn’t make it at all. The departure of my flight from Chicago-Brussels was delayed by about an hour, and we were only able to make up a little of that delay in flight. Since I (and about 10-15 other people on my flight also going to Africa) already had a short layover, I only had about 40 minutes to make the transfer in Brussels.

This was not enough time.

I arrived at a C gate and had to find my way to a T gate. This meant a 10 minute walk, a 20 minute wait to go through security again, walking halfway down another terminal – and then taking a bus to get to T terminal! Since I picked the wrong security line, adjacent to a staff priority line, just as I approached about 15 airline staff rushed through and jumped ahead of me. By the time I made it through security, it was already 10:40, the scheduled departure time for my flight. But I finally made it to the plane, which was waiting since it had already received all of the baggage from people from my flight, so it couldn’t leave without us. It was also held up by a security issue regarding a 12-year-old from Scandinavia who had made it into Brussels without the appropriate papers.

By the time we did leave, we had been delayed about 2 hours. We were able to make up half of that en route to Uganda. I had a short layover there, but didn’t have to get off the plane. The last leg was a short flight from Entebbe, Uganda to Nairobi. By the time I arrived it was about 11 pm, and by the time I arrived at my apartment it was midnight, or about 24 hours after I had arrived at O’Hare. I was the last of the four interns to arrive, since they had all been here a couple of days already.

On my first day we were taken to brunch at a café that is popular with expats by a couple of the people from KDI, the group I am working with. In the afternoon I went for a walk with one of the other interns, who showed me everything they know in Nairobi so far. Basically, that meant walking down to Kibera and then to the supermarket. In the evening we went out for Ethiopian food. Today we will be going to a community soccer game and a community meeting in Kibera, and there are plans to watch the World Cup final tonight. Work starts tomorrow! [note: I wrote this on Sunday, July 11, so "tomorrow" refers to the 12th.]