Getting to Togo

After two days and five airplane meals.. I'm finally in Togo! It feels so surreal that I'm finally here-- I look outside the window and there's Africa, in the flesh (so to speak).

My plan was to write about the travel experience while I was actually, you know, travelling, but as it turned out, there was no free wifi that I could take advantage of in any of the terminals that I had to wait in. In Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, there weren't even any plugs (and let me tell you, I looked very thrououghly, to the point where people must've started wondering why this girl kept passing every ten minutes and why she was looking under peoples' chairs). Thus, the update is coming to you from the ship's internet cafe, a full day after travel. I've had a nice meal, and I've showered, which means I'm no longer gross with airplane sheen.

(*BTW, the keyboards here are slightly different than the U.S. keyboards-- I haven't quite figured out which country they're from, but in any case, my usually impeccable grammar will be taking a hit. Which probably isn't that important to you, but... I love nice grammar. It is important.)

I left from JFK on Monday night (April 12th) on British Airways, and arrived at Heathrow Airport in London at 6 in the morning. I had a connecting flight to Paris that was leaving in less than an hour, so I literally had to run through the airport to catch my flight. This was my first time in London, and the entire time I was running I was thinking, "Man, what a shame it is that I'm only twenty minutes away from some of the most important cultural monuments of Western civilization and I only get to see this country through the glass of the airport windows". (To be honest, I was also thinking "Man, I wish I could stop running.")

So I caught my flight to Paris, arrived at CDG airport for a 3 hour layover-- the most boring layover in the history of layovers. Before I left JFK, I thought I would be over the weight limit with my luggage, so I shoved my books into my backpack since they were the heaviest items I was carrying. When I had to check in my bags for Paris, I decided to check in my books in my luggage since I had gotten away with being 10 pounds over from before. Big mistake. I had NOTHING to do for three hours-- like I said before, no plugs for my computer, no paper to write on, no crossword. I would've just bought something from the airport shops, but I bought a cup of coffee for 3,50 euros, and it turned out to be well over 6 dollars on my Visa card. Then I got mad that I just paid six dollars for a teeny tiny cup of coffee, and I (and of course, very logically) decided to boycott the euro for the rest of my trip.

(I just realized that there's a "£" key on this keyboard so I'm going to guess that this keyboard is from the UK).

After the most boring layover in the history of layovers, I boarded my Air France flight to Togo. Pretty uneventful flight-- I slept most of the way because I was so exhausted from not sleeping before. They did give me a wedge of Camembert cheese on my dinner tray, which made me smile. I do love Camembert.

It was amazing to see Africa for the first time through the airplane window. Definitely different than back home; not many buildings near the airport, just patches of grass/dirt and lots of small shrubbery. When we finally got off the plane, we took stairs to get down from the plane door. The hot hot HOT air hit me as soon as I left the plane-- I knew it was going to be hot, but I didn't know this hot. All the humidity in the air makes you feel like you're walking around in a wet blanket in 90 degree weather. In any case, they made all the passengers board a bus, and then they took us to the airport, which was literally 10 seconds away by bus, so I didn't really understand what the point of the bus was-- we could've walked there faster. The airport was really interesting to see, just because it's unlike any other airport that I've been in before. I mean, technically it had everything that a "modern" airport has-- conveyor belts, immigration booths, big signs, grumpy airport people, all that good stuff. But it's much much smaller, and very.. dark. By "dark", I mean quite literally, there didn't seem to be enough electricity to power the lights. And very crowded with people who want to help you with your baggage, which at first I thought was nice, but then I realized that they expect money in return (especially since we're foreign), so I had to keep fake smiling and saying "Non merci," and making funny hand gestures every two seconds to everyone who asked.

It took FOREVER to get through immigration: as I was seated in the back, I was one of the last ones out of the plane, and thus, one of the last ones to get in the immigration line. Passport verification took well over an hour, during which time I sweat more than I have in a very very long time. (Maybe this is over share, but I normally don't sweat that much at home, and as I shower frequently, I have no real need for deodorant. As I stood in line, I remember thinking: Africa is the time to use that deodorant.) After I passed through customs though, everything went pretty quickly-- collected my baggage and walked out to meet my Africa Mercy contact. I met Joel, an optometrist from northern Ireland who would drive us to the ship, and then two others who had been on the plane with me but I hadn't met until then-- an older couple from England who had been with Mercy Ships many times before, and to Africa many many more times than that. They're going off the ship with a small team to conduct screenings/surgeries in northern Togo. Funny enough, the husband is an OMFS, which is what I'd like to be (if I make the grades in dental school, that is). What a great sign that I'm meant to be on the ship, eh?

The drive to the ship was CRAZY. Absolute mayhem. One of the roads was blocked, so we had to take a complete roundabout to get to where the ship was docked, which was actually nice for me because I got to see "downtown" Lomé while in a nice air conditioned truck. And, during the trip, I learned that I never want to drive in Togo. Not for my lack of driving skills, but because people treat street signs and traffic lights as purely optional. People also walk right into the street on busy roads, and since their skin color is dark, you can't see them until you're about 3 feet away and about to hit them. If not driving is the only way I can prevent myself from killing an African, I will gladly not drive. No thank you.

Since this is taking longer than I expected, I'll save the rest for later-- I'll post later about my arrival on ship and my first couple days here. It's only been my first day so far and it's been overwhelming, to say the least, but a lot of fun and everyone is super nice-- I guess I look lost when I walk about the ship, because I've heard at least twenty "Are you lost?"s this morning.