Finishing a tour and trying to get home!

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Point Noire, Congo to Lilongwe, Malawi.... 4 days and lots of patience!!

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A laughable attempt to get home

So this was it, the day finally arrived after 6 weeks my flight home was approaching and I made the biggest mistake of all, looking forward to it.
All was set, having managed to walk into Point Noire and find an internet cafe that worked after the internet on the boat died again.... all was arranged to fit perfectly, out of Point Noire, after an afternoon stroll round the town and on to the beach, down Avenue General De Gaulle, past the new buildings including the new “horrible” looking structure that the Presidents daughter is having built as the “premier” hotel in Point Noire, not finished and yet as with so many fancy buildings amidst all the poverty, already showing signs of falling down, down past the old railway station all the while leaving me the regret I didn't have a better camera, I did get a shot with a camera phone, better one next time....

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So to the airport, join the lines and have the agent get my passport stamped through immigration before I had even checked in... then up to the “international departure lounge” a step up from a prison once you were there, as I was to learn to a much more intimate degree over the coming many hours.
The Gabon Airlines flight was late, well it never actually turned up, we had a “White, coloured by you” charter flight, that sat on the tarmac for 2 hours after departure time before the crew arrived and switched on the lights, we eventually took off 3 hours 20 mins after our scheduled departure, not all that bad considering..... but even 30 mins earlier and life would have changed considerably for the better.
As we landed at Libreville (strange that a city whose name translates to “free town” should become our prison from then on) we watched in despair the South African Airlines flight for once on time at 20 past midnight (usually always an hour late, info from an Assistant Driller who has been flying this route for a while), taxiing out and leaving without us.

Oh well, thought shouldn't be too much of a problem, we should be able to get a hotel for the night and make a plan, but alas, that thought began a lost battle with all forces of logic and reason. Having got off the flight, 4 of us were directed to the transit lounge, at which point the AD said “hang on there isn't another flight till Saturday morning” two and a half days away! So we went en masse to ask politely what would be the plan, the answer, the great African shoulder shrug, at that point we could find no one from Gabon Airlines or from South African Airlines and Police, Immigration and Customs just gave us the shrug, not our problem,so we asked about visas, reply to that was an astounding “Non” if you do not have a visa before you travel or all the correct paperwork in place, there is no way you can get even a tourist visa for Gabon on Indian, Australian or British passports. So after an hour of explaining our predicament and trying to find someone to help us we were left with the choice by all of the remaining shoulder shruggers that, either we could spend the night downstairs, sharing the tiled floor without mattresses with the matressed sleeping quarters of the immigration and police folk ( the immigration officers cubicles become bunk beds, with the floor the bottom bunk and the desk, cleared of all the stamps and documents, the top bunk, a strange sight peering into an official cubicle to view a campsite!)
So we choose upstairs which looked like in the morning it might offer some of the civilities of food, cleaner toilets and even much signposted Wi-Fi...

I managed to contact my brother via text to get him to ring me (international roaming...I could text out but not call, be speaking to Vodafone about that one!) and give him all the details of the companies SOS number, passwords etc and the procedure of what to do and who to contact, policy is that they be alerted to any travel problems. So he started that process and at points during the night I discovered just what a godsend it was to travel with overalls to make a sort of a mattress...it lessen the imprint of the steel grid chairs on the side of body and face when trying unsuccessfully to sleep.

In the morning I had a text back, followed by a call to say my problems were solved, having kept my brother up most of the night in the UK the travel company had managed to get a flight a 7am from Libreville to Lagos with Belway Airlines, then Nigeria to Johannesburg a couple of hours later, I thought this was brilliant for all of about 30 minutes! At that point I discovered my problems were just starting, because now the company thought I was sorted (the ins and outs of which I won't go into, but shall we say my brother has some issues with how the company treat a family member trying to render assistance and how someone who is paid to be on call can be so p*ssed off they actually have to do something to earn their not inconsiderable on call allowance!), my phone ran out of credit as all of us had been using it to text family and people to warn of the delay, the rates for receiving incoming calls are still unbelievably extortionate! (been noted that I didn't give proper mention to the "resource" as she called her good self who despite having been on a plane for 11 hours to JNB managed to find an internet connection in the airport (business lounges are great when you have access!) and with the help of a phone call from a decidely delapidated and dodgy looking pay phone in the transit lounge that the AD had managed to get a prepaid card for to ring the sat phone on his rig hack into my phone account and do an internet top up.... I won't name her, cos she knows who she is and it will wind her up I don't mention her name!!

At which point as I had 2 hours to check in I went to do that to find that the airline, Belway had cancelled the flight 5-6 hours before the tickets were bought due to financial problems, so I had been ticketed on a flight that wasn't going to fly.

Back to the drawing board, the AD discovered that as a South African passport holder he could actually get out of the airport, so he managed to change some money and buy a pre-paid phone card, some water and a couple of croissants, we still hadn't seen anyone from either airlin, 8 hours after our stranding.

We all rang respective companies, to set the wheels of recovery in motion, except that the emergency number I was given manned 24 hours, went straight to ansaphone twice before I got an answer! The driller (Aussie) and his AD (South African) were rescued to a hotel for showers and food by an agent at around lunchtime, the agent later claimed he hadn't heard me and an Indian Chief Engineer of a drill support vessel, mention who we worked for and therefore didn't get us out, yet another in the comedy of errors.... so we waited, I managed finally to bribe a policeman into taking some Euros to go and change and buy me a mobile SIM card and a top-up voucher, for which he took 25% commission, still no-one had come from the airlines, so after many pleadings for some sort of assistance I finally decided if I wasn't getting out for food and water I was going to be arrested to get out!! It worked, I didn't get arrested but against the norm, getting pushy and assertive with the right people actually worked, I cajoled my way to the police office downstairs, where I found a very nice police woman who arranged for a door or two to be opened, through kindness and not bribery, to get me out to speak to Gabon Airlines at their offices.

Freedom, we were out, with no passports, but outside the airport building!! The Gabon Airlines attitude was, well SAA left you, you are not our problem, hence why no-one had bothered to come and see us, oh and the SAA office, they are in town and already closed for the day....bad to worse, I hadn't yet heard back from my company as to a plan, although they did have a company in Switzerland, “appointing an agent” to deal with me.

He turned up at that point, while I was trying to persaude the very helpful police woman and her very unhelpful police chief that we wanted to go to a hotel, we wouldn't run away, we would pay for tourist visas, they could keep our passports with the visas in them at the airport to make sure we came back, anything, just get me out!!

The agent said he had ticket info for me, which he would give me after I had had some food, I was to fly at 22.55, Air France Libreville to Paris and then 4 hours after arriving in Paris, fly back to Johannesburg, so my carbon footprint was going to be the size of Africa as well!! and I was destined to spend the next 24 hours at least still in the airport system! He left me at a cafe outside the airport for some food, promising to be back in 30 mins to pick up the bill as the company was supposed to take care of it, 2 hours later, check in had opened and there was still no sign...so I made a plan, managed to get my own ticket info by calling the office again, go and get my passport back, and get a free visa, stamped in and out (because I had filled out the immigration card they had to issue the visa...something that struck me as odd, so I asked why they couldn't have just done that so I could have gone to a hotel??? I got a shoulder shrug as an answer!)

So I made the flight, the Driller and AD also came back for it and mercilessly recounted how good the pizzas by the pool they had had were and how good the showers and bath were, all in the name of good humour


On the completely full flight, I faced the issue, as always of space, I don not fit in a standard aircraft seat and can never get a exit seat, they give them to short children, strange how that works!!
So we arrive back in the first world and I was so looking forward to internet access and a shower in Paris CDG, even if I have to pay, MISTAKE! Having been shuttled half way round the airport by bus (in -10C temps with just shirt and jeans....was only expecting Johannesburg and Malawi temps) because there is no way to walk through the terminals, I discovered that there is absolutely nowhere (unless you have access to business class lounges) for a shower, no transit hotel or any facilities and could I buy a wireless card for the internet.....nope, nowhere, so I spent another 4 hours doing nothing before getting back on a plane to fly back to Johannesburg, but wait!!! there was a redemption, the sunrise through the end of terminal 2E (the photo somewhere in this article....html not my strong point yet!)[

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Again the seat issue, which was resolved after a raised voice discussion with an airline employee who told me had I checked in in Paris not Libreville I could have purchased an exit row seat....a very boring, frankly offensive company line for someone who didn't exactly choose to be as tall as me.....
A very kind passenger offered to swap and as a result of a strangers kindness and not of a company “Who puts customers first” (why do so many big companies claim this then act opposite, it defies me, do they think the customer is stupid??) I did have a relatively comfortable trip down, to arrive at a “3rd world” airport, OR Tambo in Jo'Burg where there is a very nice transit hotel and the wireless internet was a breeze to sign on to....something a bit wrong there!


I was lucky enough to visit with a friend and her family while there, she was in hospital waiting for a brain op to have a tumour removed from the right side of her brain, she has thankfully made a miraculous recovery!! Up and about 8 days after spending 6 weeks with left side paralysis..... a show of the power of positive thought and determination


Sunday I finally made it home to Malawi... discovering once again how small the world is, I was on the flight with the Malawi U18 swimming team, some of whom I know, all returning from the regional championships, 4th out of 14 countries and 3rd in the medal standings, Woohoo, go Malawi!!

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