Made It!

I arrived safely in Addis Sunday night.  Hurray!  No terrorists on this plane!  My layovers in Amsterdam and Nairobi were very short and I was worried that my luggage wouldn’t make it all the way to Ethiopia.  My fears were confirmed when not one, not two, but all three of my checked bags did not arrive in Addis.  We arrived around 11:30pm, Sunday night, and I got home around 1:30am.  The woman I sat next to on my Nairobi flight and her friends had all of their checked luggage missing, too.  I let them go before me because 1) no one was waiting for me [or so I thought] and 2) my baggage stickers were gone.

When I was in Nairobi, they were boarding the Addis flight before I had even gotten off my plane from Amsterdam.  As several of us approached our departing gate, they told us they had already boarded the flight.  We thought this meant we couldn’t go to Ethiopia that night, but they then said we could board.  Bizarre, but ok.  As the woman was taking care of my boarding pass, I asked if our luggage would be making it onto this flight since they said they had already boarded.  She said that no one had informed them to wait which means all the luggage was going to be loaded before we left.  By the way, we still had 25 minutes until the official departure time, so I’m not sure what the big deal was.

In all of the chaos, she handed me my boarding pass (just the little one-third of it with the bar code) and I boarded the plane.  She was apparently supposed to give me a yellow laminated pass in order to get on the plane, but they waved me on without one.  When I was on this flight I realized that she had torn off my Nairobi boarding pass (all three passes had been stapled together in Detroit).  I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, I was probably just overwhelmed with the thought of not making my flight and missing the first day of school, but that boarding pass was the one on the back of which the Delta attendants had put my baggage stickers.  Going into Addis, I knew I was without baggage stickers to claim my bags - should anything happen.

I had gate-checked my carry-on bag for free in Detroit, so I had that little slip of paper on me and what was left of my boarding passes.  Luckily, they were able to find the codes for my checked baggage!  My gate-checked carry-on was left in Amsterdam and my checked baggage was left in Nairobi.  This means that the two big suitcases should have arrived today, and my carry-on will make it here on Tuesday night.  I decided it’s not worth it to make two trips to the airport, so I’m just going to go Wednesday after school and pick up all my goods.

Gail was also awesome and she surprised me at the airport for a ride home.  I felt really bad that she had to wait for me to do the paperwork in order to get my bags, but it was great to see her again!

The one good thing I can see from all this is that I won’t have to pay a customs tax on a laptop.  Exciting, right?  I brought two laptops into the country - one in my personal bag and one in a checked suitcase.  In Ethiopia, a ridiculous tax is charged on a second computer that you bring into the country.  Since the one laptop made it out of the airport with me Sunday night (customs didn’t even check me), I will be leaving the airport with only one laptop again on Wednesday.  Yay for sneaking by the system!

I’m excited to unpack my stuff Wednesday night.  I’ll probably head over to the Amare’s to give Gail her bacteria (to make cheese) and other goods they purchased.  I’m also excited to give May some Oreos that I brought back for her.  I hope they are a good enough birthday present!  For the record: we don’t have Oreos in Ethiopia.