Of All The Airports in All the World

My last day in Ghana required a lot of co-ordination and provided no time at all to actually think about the end of nearly two years in West Africa. The Pitts had arrived the previous evening in advance of a meeting for representatives of local disabled peoples’ organisations. After breakfast with the end of season mangoes (I shall really miss the fruit – the avocados and pineapples), Kiran kindly drove all the household items to Dan’s house. I went to the meeting and said farewells there before returning to the house. There was space in my cases for everything but I could barely lift the bigger one. I did a little cleaning and then headed to the office. I was given a very touching send off by the agric. staff as well as two batik shirts and a mass of beads. As one of the VSO cars was in town, I was given the rare luxury of a lift to the airport. Most volunteers are left to make their own way.

I had been booked to fly with Royal Air Maroc. VSO were not prepared to pay almost double the price for the BA ticket. The RAM flight was scheduled to leave Accra at 3am roughly four hours after the last flight and four before the next. I would have a ten hour stop over in Casablanca and reach London at 9 pm. This was not an attractive prospect but alternative carriers had entirely European legs and a fraction of the luggage allowance. Gradually the terminal emptied as the other flights left. At our midnight check-in we were told the flight would not leave until midday Friday and we were dispatched to a hotel in East Legon. We were brought back later in morning and told it would now be 2 pm. I spent my last few cedis on a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. On the same flight was a lady from the same school as two VSO volunteers who left in the spring, another who had done a brief volunteering stint on the Kwahu Plateau not too far from Koforidua and another who knew Danielle and Jill, the other volunteers on the Cadbury project. RAM provided lunch and the flight left at after 3 pm. We were joined by passengers who had connected from Abidjan and waited even longer than us. In Casablanca, the connecting flights had long gone and we were taken to the Atlas Airport Hotel for dinner, bed and breakfast. On Saturday morning we returned to the airport and all the dealyed passengers were crammed into the lunch time flight to Heathrow.

Although the overall journey took more than 48 hours, the actual flight times were more civilized than the scheduled ones. The night in Casablanca provided some acclimatization on the way back to Europe.