In Which Anything Dr Em Can Do, Zoë Can Do Better
on Zoe Page (Sierra Leone), 19/Sep/2010 09:04, 34 days ago
I get the shuttle to the Terminal building, which is only round the corner, but in my defence it’s 5.30am, raining and my luggage weighs almost as much as I do. The minibus is small and not everyone fits in, but this is England, so an orderly queue forms, and I am near the front. Check in is smooth. The check in girl was born at Stepping Hill (these things just come up on conversation, y’know?). My bags are checked straight through (and, remarkably, well under the allowance) and then I fast lane through (thanks Ciara!) to airside.In“Green Oranges on Lion Mountain”, VSO Dr Emily spends a good chapter talking about leaving Heathrow with a bag of Maltesers, en route to her medical placement in Sierra Leone. I try to follow suit but somehow I’ve ended up with a bit more. Like some Thorntons chocs because they are on offer inLytham and when I got them, that was all I was intending taking. But then we go shopping and see all the Christmas stuff, and since I won’t be here in December, if I want a (second) Cadburys Wish Star, I have to get it now. And then they have new Chocolate Oranges too, so one of those goes in. And I can’t leave behind hotel freebies, so I have one of the chocolates, and some biscuits too. And THEN when I go to buy books in WH Smith, if you spend £10 you get a massive bar of Galaxy free, and I’m on the buy-one-get-one-half-price books, to use my book token, so somehow get 2 books and aslab of Cookie Crumble for 48p. You’d think that were enough, but Boots is open and I have Advantage Card points to use, so I get my breakfast from there and end up at the gate with a bag full of chocolate but a personal record for least cash ever spent in an airport. Then again, it’s my 9th flight this year, so maybe finally, FINALLY, I’ve got over my slight obsession with airport shopping. The fact I’ll have 4 hours to kill shopping / eating in Heathrow of course has nothing to do with it...In Heathrow I want food– it’s 10am, but I’ve been up 5 hours already. Problem is, everywhere is still on breakfasts, so rather than wait an hour for that goat’s cheese sandwich I had my eye on, I give in and have a waffle instead. Then I shop expertly and sensibly (i.e. buy a ton of magazines, plus a Waitrose sandwich for later) and am just charging my laptop when Shona calls to say she is in Giraffe (the place I just ate), along with Kat, Alex and Tash. I go to meet them. 3 doctors, a nurse and a manager sit in a restaurant. It’s like the beginning of some weird joke. Then we potter around, buy water andmore water, and go to the gate to find Beth who is, as she quite rightly describes, the one lying on the floor doing yoga.We board (and get more bottles of water as we go through) and discover the stop mentioned on the ticket is a refuelling in Malaga– the plane can’t make it all the way given the amount of weight on board. This is a mixture of all our bags, and the woman next to me who thinks half of my seat belongs to her and has the heft to match. Ho hum. In Malaga hay una problema pequena - as they check the aircraft (never a good idea)they discover it has been leaking water, and since they cannot get water in Freetown (?!) they need to fix it, and also bring lots of bottled water on board just in case. So we sit for a few hours and wait, all the while hungry (they announced as we took off that it would be a drinks service on thefirst leg, and meal on the second). Eventually we take off again, and get fed almost at once (“we cooked it while we were waiting” explains the air steward with the accent of undeterminable origin). There are two options, one of which is veggie anyway, but I get my special meal which is something else, sending BMI way up in my eyes since it’s not some namby pamby healthy version of the rest, it’s the same as everyone else’s but with a different entree. That means I get pasta with broccoli, but also get the roll, cheese and biscuits, cheesecake and chocolate bar. No silly fruit saladhere!We land way late and stagger off to be hit by a wave of heat, even though it’s gone 10pm and is pitch black. First stop is immigration where I get through without a second glance, though some of the others are rather openly and, in quite a friendly manner, asked for money. Handily it’s not a lie to say we have none yet. After a yellow fever certificate check (which involves checking you have one with you, not that it’s necessarily in your name) we got through to the madness that is baggage claim. The conveyor belt is a fraction the length it should be for a flight of this size and whenever you try to get near, ‘helpful’ people come up and offer to get your bags and/or sell you helicopter and boat tickets. All our luggage comes through, apparently intact, and having collected some Canadian volunteers who were also on the flight we go through customs which involves a few minutes of arguing over whether we’re a group and have a leader or not, and then walking straight past the guy who we were supposed to show our stuff to, and out the door.There’s a friendly guy holding a VSO sign who beams when he sees us, and marches us off round the corner to wait. Here we get given plain white envelopes containing cash, SIM cards and top-ups, we have our bags counted and recounted, get bottles of water as it’s sweltering, and then we get tickets for the boat. We go in various busses down to the dock on what has to be one of the most ‘interesting’ short trips ever (think the bumpiest of grounds, no lights and a path so convoluted it makes a brain look pretty smooth). We end up in a cafe which has fetching woven lampshades I immediately covet, energy saving bulbs, and no one actually trying to serve us food which is rather nice. We sit here and wait for an indeterminable time before told the boat is here. We get fitted with life jackets (no, really) and then go on a couple of boats with the luggage on a third. The ramp down is virtually vertical, soaking wet and slippy. Just the thing after a day’s travelling and while carrying a helmet, a backpack and a bag of books...I’m next to an Irish guy (I want to say Sean?) who works for a company that offers money transfer by mobile phone. He’s been here a year and tells me all sorts of useful things, including that Kenema is a lovely place. The trip takes maybe half an hour, and the harbour is really pretty but everytime it looks like we’re getting close, the boat swerves a bit further up the coast. We dock, and once again have the assistance of 3 men to disembark. There are several bits of wood to walk over, all floating, all painted with ‘Mind the gap’ in English. Bless.Another VSO contingent is waiting to meet us here, along with Carole who it’s lovely to finally meet. The bags arrive and after a bit of coordination (taking half an hour) the 12 of us, plus escorts / drivers get into various cars. People who are staying permanently in Freetown go to their new homes, the rest of us drive to a hotel which is LITERALLY 3 minutes away fromthe dock. So it’s me, Cheryl, Mark and Margaret, Tash and Alex (plus their surfboards!). The couples share, while Cheryl and I get our own rooms. The relief at walking in to find a nice large bed, air con, a fan and an en suite cannot be put into words. With instructions on what to do in the morning, we get left to unpack and hit the sack. It’s 2am local time, 3am British time, and I’ve been up for 23 hours. I don’t even have time to determine if my pillows are the ‘fairly unyielding local type’ before I’m out.