Travel Story, Week 1

I have so many fantastic travel stories that remain undocumented. I have been meaning to start a journal of some sort to write down all the random stories that I love, but have yet to do it! My blog is my best journal, so I am going to start documenting them here...hopefully, depending on time, I will write one a week. We'll see if that actually happens though.

So here we go. After hunting through a few thousand photos, I came across this photo and felt the the picture alone wins the competition. You look at this and KNOW there has GOT to be a story behind that photo. Don't worry. There absolutely is! This photo is actually what happens when you miss your first flight - yes, the one leaving your home city - to Ghana, where you don't have many options to buy what you might need if your luggage gets lost in the process of getting there.

I have always had a tendency to pack last minute. Yes, I am a procrastinator, to say the least. I will be up all night stressing about what to bring and whether or not I am over-packing. Over the years, I have become much better at this. However, I generally tend to over-pack. Now let me stop right there and explain something. Never do I actually over-pack, but for an international trip that you aren't allowed to bring much, I tend to throw in those few extra unneeded items that put my bag overweight. So there I sat late into the night, before departing for Africa and all I could think is, "who the hell goes to Africa?! What in the world am I doing??" I must have panicked and thrown my whole room into my one bag I was allowed to take. I got to the airport, slightly after I had planned. I had forgotten my camera (duh! who forgets these sort of things), so we had to turn around and go back for this necessary item. Anyhow, I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. However, the down-spiral had already started, after forgetting the camera. I went to check in with my travel buddy and former roommate and coworker, Steph, and the guy was rather inexperienced, to say the least. He looked at our flight itinerary and immediately felt our pain.

Let me discuss our flight itinerary really quick; it was MORE than painful. We had tried to save ourselves a few dollars and ended up with not only a painful itinerary, but in the end, we spent the exact amount everyone else did. We had set the tickets up so we could spend a week in Spain on our way home from Ghana. However, we had also gotten a rockin' deal on a flight from Spain to Ghana, so we decided to split the other leg of the ticket again and purchase from SLC to NYC and then NYC to Barcelona. Of course. Why would we not? This actually would have saved us quite a bit of money had it not been so close to the Fourth of July! Just in case you didn't know, flying to NYC within a couple days of the Fourth of July is very, very pricey! We ended up with a flight itinerary that looked a bit like this:  SLC --> Minnesota --> NYC --> London --> Barcelona --> Milan --> Nigeria --> Accra (final destination). Brutal, eh? Well, the worst part about having a schedule like this, is that if you miss your first flight, leaving SLC, it could potentially really mess things up for every. single. one. of your other flights. Somehow we got lucky enough though when missing our first flight, to be put on a direct flight to NYC, which allowed us just enough time to catch up with all other flights.

So after the man checking us in expressed his sincere pain for us, he decided he'd see what he could do to at least get our luggage checked all the way through to Accra; how sweet, right?! Well that normally would have been awfully sweet, but not in the situation he was in - he was pretty new, he also admitted he didn't know he was completely sure he knew exactly how to do it because of the variety of airlines and the way we had purchased our tickets. His manager wasn't close either. So as I rearranged the weight in my bag (yes, I of course was 5-7 lbs over my weight limit), he got Steph all checked in. He then proceeded to my bag and my carton of supplies I was taking with me for Dr Alder, for our projects we were working on in Ghana. The process, all in all, took him quite some time, which in turn, made us miss our flight! Awesome. So now we have bags checked going on who knows what flight and we aren't on any flight and are thinking we likely have just missed every one of our flights following. They immediately re-booked us on another Delta flight, however because of this, we were randomly selected to do additional security screening. This meant we had to leave the secure area back into the lines we had already gone through once. We almost missed our second flight leaving SLC. Our down-spiral of "bad luck" continued. Every last terminal we went to during our 48 hours of travel happened to be the VERY furthest terminal from where we currently were. This, I'm sure, is when my 15 lbs weight loss (over a 4 month period of time - thanks to Ghana, South America, and a tonsillectomy) began. I will never forget all the running I did, in a variety of airports, wearing fleece pants and a sweatshirt (yes, I freeze on airplanes, so I have to prepare).

Long story, we hit all of our flights. Barely. After missing the flight in SLC, we had a 2 hour delay in NY, because our cabin was 100+ degrees. We then had a 20 hour layover in London, where we napped in the park and spent some time with my little sister, Karen, who just happened to be in London with her school group. How convenient for us! We ran into trouble again when we hit Barcelona, where our flight was delayed by 2 hours. By the time we got to Milan, we decided to shoot towards our terminal, but just KNEW our flight wouldn't be there, as it was scheduled to leave as we landed, literally. To our surprise, it was actually there and we were grateful we had sprinted. Flights leave only once a day to Ghana and we were happy to know Dr Alder and the other students wouldn't be waiting on us for nothing. We found out that a whole slew of Ghanaian had been on a delayed flight coming from Germany, where the World Cup was going on, at the time. Since that flight had been delayed, they had no choice but to wait; more than half their passengers were coming from Germany, on the same flight.

Ironically, no, not too much to carry!

We had what was supposed to be a quick layover in Nigeria to pick up a few passengers, but it ended up turning from 15 minutes to about 2 hours. We finally arrived in Accra late at night, on what I believe was the end of 48-60 hours of travel. The most unfortunate part of our travels came full circle upon landing in Accra. We got off the plane just to realize that NO ONE on the flight got luggage. Yes, you heard right. No luggage. Period. That not only started a riot, but also made Steph and I slightly upset we had missed our first flight to allow the new guy the time to figure out how to check our luggage all the way through.

As we left the airport, I thought about how lucky I was that I had packed 2 tshirts, a pair of cargo pants, and 2 extra pair of underwear in my backpack. Whooo! Lucky me! Well, that sort of luck only lasts about 2 days in the heat of a country sitting at the equator. Unfortunate when you still have no sign of luggage upon day 2 or 3. I was able to stretch it out to day 4, with what I had. After that, I couldn't stand myself, which means only the other handful of those that didn't have luggage upon arrival, could semi-stand me. We all stunk, I'm sure. We were all dirty and needed to do something about our situation. By this time we had left Accra for Kumasi. Dr Alder made multiple phone calls a day; our luggage was simply lost. We had heard by word of mouth that the Heathrow, in London (where all of us had flown through), had a massive glitch that had shifted luggage every which-way and had caused more than 2,000 bags to be "lost". They gave each of us $50, probably hoping to shut us up. To make an already long story slightly shorter, it took a lot of hassle, but bags slowly started filtering in. About 2 weeks into the trip, my bag finally arrived. It was one of the last to filter in.

Steph and I got creative in our packing and thought to partially pack together, in case one of our bags did get lost. She, unfortunately, still hadn't received her bag. So the two of us put my bag to good use until we left Ghana. Our last couple of days in Ghana, Steph and I spent in Accra. When we arrived from Kumasi, we decided to check out the airport, see if there was any word of her bag. We went to lost and found, where they perused the lost luggage and told us it was not there. The moment the man turned his back, Steph jumped the counter and whoa and behold...she found her bag! Who knows how long it had been sitting there, but we were happy to have clean clothes and yummy food while we were in Spain. However, it would have been much nicer to have had our bags from the very get-go! As for the bins both of us had checked for our public health projects in Ghana, they never surfaced.

So the picture you ask? What is the story behind the picture? When you travel to a country, such as Ghana, where your only option of buying clothes and underwear is out of a basket on the top of a woman's head, you think twice about how much you really need something. I was fine buying shirts like that. Underwear though? No thank you. I would rather be safe than sorry. My only other option was to borrow. Disgusting, I KNOW! Between the two options, I decided to go with my friend Emily, who I trusted not to have anything. She had brought a pair of underwear for every day we were there, which meant she brought a lot of old underwear so she could throw it away along the way. I think I was the recipient of some junior high-era underwear! They were high cut and sat very high on my waist. This was very unfortunate. I rolled them the best I could when I had to wear them; I was just grateful to have some clean underwear though! Megan was also generous, donating her capris to my cause. Please note that Megan is 6 feet tall, so her capris were pants on me. Too funny! Between the outfit and my big, frizzy hair (thank you humidity), I felt like a freak of nature! Now I think about it and see this picture and don't feel embarrassed at all...I just laugh, really hard, at the misfortune! Not to mention the misfortune that followed us - Steph's luggage was lost on the way back to the USA. It showed up on her doorstep about 2 weeks later.

As a friend put it best in one of our emails back and forth:  "Rock on Afro woman, with Grandma underwear!" I love it. It was quite suiting for the moment. I don't think I have felt much more unattractive than I did during my first two weeks or so in Ghana. It was worth every bit of it though!