The Long Road to Lubango
“The flight has been cancelled,” the airline employee reported as Tim, Janet and I stepped up to the check-in desk. “You will need to talk to the woman dressed in orange.” We attempted to reschedule our flight in the next couple of days, but options were limited, and the flights were full.
The woman in orange did her best to help us but couldn’t make any promises. With the help of a teenage girl from Miami who translated for us, I was told to come back the following day and go as a standby passenger, no guarantees, while Tim and Janet decided to ditch the idea altogether. Their time in country was very limited, so they would stay in Luanda and create their meetings remotely rather than risk another failed attempted flight. Each of us had already had multiple changes and cancellations in flight plans. We dragged out luggage back out to the curb and headed back to the hotel to regroup. We contemplated traveling by bus, but we were told the roads are rough and the trip is a grueling twelve hour day. After our long flights from the US, such a trip didn’t sound appetizing.
The following day, I said goodbye to my new friends from SIM and loaded into the transportation service vehicle which our hosts from Lubango had arranged to take me to the airport. I noticed an unusual new vibration which shook the small SUV. “Hmm,” I thought. “I wonder when this car was last serviced. I just hope it makes it to the airport.” Suddenly, the vehicle shook violently and came to an abrupt stop. I took off my seat belt to see how I could help, but the driver waved me off. Several animated calls later, he assured me that help was coming. We reloaded the luggage into a second vehicle and took off at warp speed for the airport.
Inside, I was handed off to a man wearing green, who through a series of phone calls and conversations and negotiations while I sat by. After an hour, a woman dressed in a dark suit with a bright orange scarf was able to secure a boarding pass for me. I grinned at the woman behind the desk and brought my hands together in a gesture of thanks. She nodded and smiled in return.
Beyond security, I took a seat in the least crowded corner of the waiting area and worked on budgets and tax items for our nonprofit back at home. I suddenly realized that I had miscalculated, and it was already time for the gate to close. I rushed back downstairs and showed an attendant my boarding pass. She reassured me that I should take a seat, and that the flight had not boarded yet.
Suddenly, a wall of people erupted loudly and stood in line. Someone shouted “Lubango” over the din, and I weaved to the end of the line. “Is this the line for Lubango?” I asked a fellow traveler, showing him my boarding pass. “I hope so,” he laughed. “We’ll find out when we get there.” Two bewildered Chinese travelers were pulled out of line. I showed them my passport, explaining that this was the line to Lubango, and where to look on their boarding pass for their destination. I don’t think it helped.
Inside the plane, I was offered a complimentary bottle of water as my snack. I took it. My entertainment was a Sudoku book I brought along for the trip. I fell asleep quickly.
I exited customs and immigration, got my luggage, including an added piece from Tim and Janet to be delivered to friends when I arrived, and went out to see who was there to transport me. I was greeted warmly by Sam Fabiano and his daughter Bella. We climbed into their pickup and drove through the dark streets to their home where I met Sam’s wife Amanda and a visiting medical student from the Netherlands, Maxine. We swapped stories over a warm meal of locally grown broccoli, cassava, plantains, salad, and cupcakes baked by Bella. Maxine described the amazing cases she was witnessing and the many things she was learning from the medical team. I spoke of our work in Ethiopia and of why this trip was personally important in developing additional skills to train family physicians in Africa. I told them a story from Malawi, of transporting a woman having a heart attack who needed a pacemaker to Johannesburg, South Africa, of the failure to procure a spot on a commercial jet, resuscitating her on the airstrip, returning to our mission hospital in Blantyre, getting her on a private jet the next day, flying over civil war torn Mozambique, arriving safely in Johannesburg only to be told that the patient didn’t have proper documents and would need to return to Malawi. We laughed together at the relatively small inconvenience of the flight delays of the past two days. “You’re no stranger to travel changes,” remarked Amanda. She’s right. In the big picture, the long road to Lubango will just be a small, inconvenient footnote. I smile at the thought. I’ve arrived.