I am currently flying over Africa and am excitedly awaiting our descent in a couple of hours. This trip has been abnormally intense so far and I haven’t even stepped foot in Ghana yet; however, the happenings of the past few days will not be forgotten due to the following:
On my ten-hour flight from Seattle to Paris I coincidentally was sitting among the Pacific Northwest Ballet Company. They were on their way to perform with Joffrey, NYC Ballet and others in Paris. It was funny because you could pick the dancers out by who was doing pliés in the aisle as they got up to stretch; I was doing this too because post-hip surgery, 20-year-old me has the hips of a woman in her 90s and that paired with ten hours of sitting doesn’t sit well.
My third flight from Paris to Accra was insane, to say the very least. This is where it all went down (but let’s start with the good part). I sat by a nice guy from Togo (and am currently sitting by him, but I’ll get back to that later). His name is Charles and he’s pretty much the only one in my section of the plane who can speak some English, so I started asking him questions when the flight attendants informed us in French. He said he’s a policeman back in Togo and had been traveling in France for a year. We exchanged information so we’d be able to add each other on Facebook!
So now the “insane” part: the plane had been boarded and we’d been waiting to take off for a while when I noticed the back part of the plane (I was in the middle) started to get loud with conversation. I initially thought it was just some louder women having a boisterous conversation until it grew louder and you could hear the conversation until it grew louder and the emotion in their voices was recognizable. I kept looking back and each time I did there was an added police officer/security guy involved in the mix. Everyone was speaking French so I was relying on body language for information and it became obvious they were trying to force a woman to get off the plane for whatever reason. People in my section got curious and eventually stood over by the restrooms to listen and watch (including Charles). The intensity grew to screaming, kids crying, and people begging to let them stay on the plane as police were handling some of them (and shackling another). Charles explained the drama was related to people overstaying their visas by a few days and being forced off in an inhumane manner. The whole situation was powerful; I could not understand any language aside from the physical emotions as the armed and masked police men forcefully removed a woman and others involved from the plane. This was something I had never first-handedly experienced and the way in which everyone on the plane was in such support of the passengers involved was beautiful.
That whole situation caused our flight to take off an hour and a half later than planned. The rest of the flight was smooth however, and the several hours to Ghana seemed quick! Ha. Just kidding. Almost halfway through the flight the pilot announced that there was an electrical issue with the plane and we were going back to Paris. People’s spirits were already low from the sad scene earlier, so this added a lot of stress on the plane.
We eventually got back to Paris, off the plane, and into a very loose clump of people (some too far away to even hear the next steps being announced or, like me, didn’t speak French). We were told there would not be another flight until 10 a.m. the next morning and that they’d put us all in hotels for compensation. After waiting in a three-hour line to receive said compensation, Kezia and I were informed they ran out of hotels to put us in; yes, Paris ran out of hotels so we were to simply sleep in the airport. This didn’t sound appealing after the several hours of flying so we took it to scouring Paris along with Mavis, a Ghanaian girl we’d met on the flight, trying to find a hotel with at least one room available. Several hours, Uber and bus trips, and six hotel rejections later, we finally found a place to rest for a few hours before our morning flight. The highlight of this unexpected night was getting one last hot shower (and in a cute Paris suite)!!
After waiting several hours in the security line for our morning flight we made it to the gate before our flight was scheduled to take off. The plane was supposed to have been boarded when we got there, but instead we were met by angry Ghana and Togo natives complaining the airline “wasn’t sure if they had a flight for us.” We waited for another hour to find out if we would be getting to our destination that day. With enough pressure on the Air France staff from the unsatisfied people, we were able to get in the air that afternoon.
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We are now about to land in the next half-hour and I feel happy and relieved; The sun is shining through the window, lighting up these thoughts as I write them. I think I’m going to like the equator… but I’ll get back to you on that in a couple of days. Ekyere! (See you later!)
