Thursday’s highlights: The two meals at a hotel ended up including a room where I was able to get a few hours of good sleep. Formalities at the Juba airport turned out to be much less chaotic than what others had experienced and forewarned me about. My accommodations here are quite adequate, so my stay in South Sudan is off to an encouraging start. Read on for more details.
The 13-hour flight across the Atlantic went smoothly in all respects. The small children with the family next to me traveled quite well, I was able to doze off a few times in order to get a little rest, and the entertainment console at my seat worked perfectly (unlike the ones on some of my previous international flights). We arrived on schedule in Addis Ababa Thursday morning.
As I stepped off the plane in Addis, I realized that, though I had my computer and my backpack with me, I had forgotten my pillow. Going against the flow of passengers disembarking was an impossibility for me, but one of the airplane hostesses was able to make her way back to my seat and grab it for me. I was grateful for that, as it saved me from having to wait until everyone else was off.
My first stop was at the service counter where the voucher I had been given was rendered official by the application of a rubber stamp to the surface of the paper, leaving a blue rectangle with writing behind that would communicate all the right things to the right people. I was told that I would not need a visa because my stay at the hotel was less than half a day, but that the stamped piece of paper would allow me to proceed through immigration, after which I could wait for a shuttlebus from the hotel to come and pick me up. Everything again went very smoothly, the paper and the blue rectangle doing their work to perfection, and 30 minutes later I was in the shuttle waiting area. After a ten-minute wait, a man showed up to escort me and one other passenger to the Global Hotel.
At the hotel, I learned that I would have a room while there, in addition to the two meals I had been promised previously. So after collecting the room key, I enjoyed a warm shower (probably my last one for a few weeks), then went downstairs to the dining room for my second breakfast (having already been fed an omelet and trimmings on the plane).
The hotel offered wi-fi access, but sleep seemed more important to me than checking email, so I slept for a few hours. It was so refreshing to be able to shave, shower, and sleep; I felt extremely blessed! When I awoke, I had about 20 minutes until lunch, so I did quickly check my email, responding to a couple of the most urgent ones. At noon I went to the dining room again and ordered grilled fish for lunch. It was very good, and I had about 10 minutes afterward to brush my teeth and get my things downstairs, where I waited for the shuttle to take me back to the airport for my flight to Juba.
The shuttle didn’t come quite at the time we had been told to wait for it. (Maybe the time they tell people to be ready is intentionally a bit earlier than the shuttle really comes, since many passengers may be operating on “African time.”) The extended wait allowed me to begin to get to know the other man who had traveled with me from the airport to the hotel. He was on his way to Somalia to spend a month and a half with his family—a vacation from his business of managing a coffee shop near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, where he has been for about 10 years.
Back at the airport, my carry-on bags were scanned, then I was able to proceed to immigration, where my passport was given permission to accompany me through to the gate area. I proceeded straight on to my gate, which involved a TSA-type screening—pockets empty, shoes, jackets, and belt off; computer out of its bag; liquids and gels out and visible in a ziplock bag; people through a metal detector—except people were able to take bottles of water through with them.
Once through the security check, my boarding pass (which I had received in Washington, DC) was scanned, then a round green sticker was affixed to it as an indication that I had been cleared for boarding. Then I sat down to wait the boarding call. Interesting thing is…there never was a boarding call, at least not that I heard. I simply noticed at one point that most of the people were on their feet and moving toward the exit door, so figured, “When in Ethiopia, do as the Ethiopians,” right? At the bottom of the two flights of stairs that led to the tarmac, however, the agent checking passengers’ boarding passes informed about half a dozen of us that the flight boarding at that time was not going to Juba, but to a city in Ethiopia. We were to go back up to where we had been and wait until they were ready to board the flight to Juba. So I did an about-face and got some more exercise in the form of climbing 20 steps with 30 pounds of hand luggage.
I was near the front of the waiting area this second time around, so I (barely) heard the announcement some 15 minutes later that passengers for Juba should exit to board their flight. We went down the 20 steps again, had our boarding passes checked, and then got on a shuttlebus that would take us to our plane. It turned out that our plane was not that far away actually, but the walk would have taken us under or around another one parked at the gate, so it was just as well that we went in the shuttlebus.
There were only about 20 of us who got on the plane, so a number of passengers moved to a vacant row further back in the plane in order to have more room to stretch out during the flight. The overhead bins were once again “glovebox” sized, so I had some difficulty getting my backpack into one of them, but in the end, after much pushing and squushing (rhymes with "pushing"), it did slide in, and the door closed and latched.
This plane was of the twin-prop-engine variety, and those engines seemed very loud to me. There were times when I was wishing I had brought earplugs. But apart from the noise, the flight went fine. A drink was all I was expecting on that flight, so I was surprised when we were served a meat-and-cucumber sandwich, as well. I had thought that I would arrive in Juba very hungry, but it turned out to be quite the opposite because, by mid-afternoon, I had already eaten three and a half meals—two breakfasts, a lunch, and a sandwich. Then came the descent; my ears plugged up really well due to the pressure change, and the noise level of the engines faded away. Mercifully, my ears did not reopen until the plane engines had been powered down.
I had been told to expect a very long walk from the plane to the terminal, but it turned out to be much shorter than I had imagined. First stop was at a WHO tent, where a man pointed something shaped like a pistol at my forehead to read my temperature. When the “pistol” confirmed that I did not have a fever, he allowed me to continue on to the next station, which was located in the terminal a short distance further on.
Inside the terminal, I showed my passport to an immigration official, who granted me legal entry to South Sudan, stamping my passport in confirmation of his decision. The next station was baggage claim, located immediately next to the customs station. My trunk arrived soon after I got to the baggage claim, and then came the most time-consuming portion of my entry into South Sudan. It took a full minute for the porter who had laid claim to the right to transport my trunk to get a customs official to come and question me about my bags. When he arrived, he asked no questions, nor did he open any of my bags; he simply marked “OK” with chalk on each one, and I was free to go. From the time I left the plane to the time I exited the terminal, not more than 15 minutes had passed—far, far less than the 1½ to 2 hours I had been told to expect! Again, I felt very blessed.
Richard, the SIL Associate Director of Administration and Services, met me there at the airport, and the drive to the SIL compound was a relatively short one. Once there, he showed me to my room, introduced me to Eileen Kilpatrick, who is here for a few months as a translation consultant, and who is living in a room at the other end of the same building as I’m in. She took me on a short walking tour and showed me where I could buy bread, bananas, and meals. Since neither of us had a huge appetite, we shared an order of half a chicken, accompanied by lentils and bread.
When I returned to my room after supper, I unpacked everything I had brought and began organizing it. I quickly discovered that the trunk had been opened somewhere along the way. I could tell that because some of the things in it were in a different location than where I had placed them (and there was no way for them to move around on their own, given how tightly I had packed it). Plus, I found a note from the TSA, saying that they had opened the trunk to make sure that there were no problematic contents. Apparently, the trunk passed inspection because I found everything that I remembered packing. So I am here, and my luggage arrived with me—two very good things!
My room is quite adequate for my needs. There are two single beds—I’m using one for sleeping and the other for open-air storage. There is a large closet that has four shelves and a rod for hanging clothes; there were even some hangers in it! There is a small table that serves as a desk, and there are three chairs and a stool. There is a washbowl and a mirror in the room, and I share a toilet and shower with the occupants of the room next door—currently two men from “Wow”! (I expect that’s spelled “Wao” or “Waw” here, but it’s pronounced just like our English expression, “Wow!”) The mosquito nets on the beds are of the “correct” variety, meaning that they are rectangular and have something at each of the four corners by which to suspend the net, so that the sides hang straight down at the ends and sides of the bed. Once again, I feel blessed.
At 8pm, I sat down with my computer to write my blog entries for the two days of my trip, but I immediately discovered one thing and soon learned a second. What I discovered immediately was the fact that the electrical outlets here are not the kind that I had expected, and I do not have an adapter that will work for them. So that’s something I would have to ask about on Friday. What I learned soon after that was that, in spite of feeling very awake at 8pm, and even wondering if I would be able to fall asleep at a reasonable hour, I quickly began to feel my eyelids growing heavy. I persevered until 9:00, but then decided it was time for bed. By 9:10 I was in bed, and very soon afterward I was asleep.
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