The Long Road to Lubango<\/p>\n
\u201cThe flight has been cancelled,\u201d the airline employee reported as Tim, Janet and I stepped up to the check-in desk.\u00a0 \u201cYou will need to talk to the woman dressed in orange.\u201d\u00a0 We attempted to reschedule our flight in the next couple of days, but options were limited, and the flights were full.<\/p>\n
The woman in orange did her best to help us but couldn\u2019t make any promises.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 We contemplated traveling by bus, but we were told the roads are rough and the trip is a grueling twelve hour day.\u00a0 After our long flights from the US, such a trip didn\u2019t sound appetizing.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I noticed an unusual new vibration which shook the small SUV. \u00a0\u201cHmm,\u201d I thought.\u00a0 \u201cI wonder when this car was last serviced.\u00a0 I just hope it makes it to the airport.\u201d\u00a0 Suddenly, the vehicle shook violently and came to an abrupt stop.\u00a0 I took off my seat belt to see how I could help, but the driver waved me off.\u00a0 Several animated calls later, he assured me that help was coming.\u00a0 We reloaded the luggage into a second vehicle and took off at warp speed for the airport.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 After an hour, a woman dressed in a dark suit with a bright orange scarf was able to secure a boarding pass for me.\u00a0 I grinned at the woman behind the desk and brought my hands together in a gesture of thanks.\u00a0 She nodded and smiled in return.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I suddenly realized that I had miscalculated, and it was already time for the gate to close.\u00a0 I rushed back downstairs and showed an attendant my boarding pass.\u00a0 She reassured me that I should take a seat, and that the flight had not boarded yet.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, a wall of people erupted loudly and stood in line.\u00a0 Someone shouted \u201cLubango\u201d over the din, and I weaved to the end of the line.\u00a0 \u201cIs this the line for Lubango?\u201d I asked a fellow traveler, showing him my boarding pass.\u00a0 \u201cI hope so,\u201d he laughed.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ll find out when we get there.\u201d\u00a0 Two bewildered Chinese travelers were pulled out of line.\u00a0 I showed them my passport, explaining that this was the line to Lubango, and where to look on their boarding pass for their destination.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it helped.<\/p>\n
Inside the plane, I was offered a complimentary bottle of water as my snack.\u00a0 I took it.\u00a0 My entertainment was a Sudoku book I brought along for the trip.\u00a0 I fell asleep quickly.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 I was greeted warmly by Sam Fabiano and his daughter Bella.\u00a0 We climbed into their pickup and drove through the dark streets to their home where I met Sam\u2019s wife Amanda and a visiting medical student from the Netherlands, Maxine.\u00a0 We swapped stories over a warm meal of locally grown broccoli, cassava, plantains, salad, and cupcakes baked by Bella.\u00a0 Maxine described the amazing cases she was witnessing and the many things she was learning from the medical team.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019t have proper documents and would need to return to Malawi.\u00a0 We laughed together at the relatively small inconvenience of the flight delays of the past two days.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re no stranger to travel changes,\u201d remarked Amanda.\u00a0 She\u2019s right.\u00a0 In the big picture, the long road to Lubango will just be a small, inconvenient footnote. \u00a0\u00a0I smile at the thought.\u00a0 I\u2019ve arrived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Long Road to Lubango \u201cThe flight has been cancelled,\u201d the airline employee reported as Tim, Janet and I stepped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inmedblogs.us\/barrybacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}