And So I'm Back

Is this real life? Did I really just get back from Malawi?
Today is Wednesday and I got back from Malawi on Saturday evening. Yesterday I had my tonsils and adenoids taken out so bear with me.

Over the next few posts I plan on sharing with you all the amazing things our group did and saw while in the Warm Heart of Africa, Malawi....and even an unplanned overnight in Ethiopia.

In fact, let's start there. As a disclaimer, the following recount of my traveling to Malawi will most likely contain a lot of whining...but being in Malawi was way worth it.

Samantha and I met at the Cincinnati airport to start our long journey to Malawi. We were beyond excited. As we sat at the gate, and sat and sat, we realized that we would probably be missing our connection to Addis Ababa at Dulles Airport. Our flight was 45 minutes late arriving in DC and after running through the airport looking like crazy people, we arrived at the Ethiopian Airlines gate to find it completely empty. The plane was gone, and so were our seats. Cue the tears. This is the exact text I sent my dad: "Missed our flight. Trying not to make a scene. I'll call you when I pull myself together." After wandering around the airport looking for someone to help us, we must have looked pretty miserable, a gentleman from an airline I had never heard of listened to our story and very nicely escorted us to Delta, for they had made us late in the first place. Once being sent from a Delta gate to the actual ticket agents at the front of the airport, Samantha and I buckled down to get as much as we could out of Delta. After arguing for almost three hours with the people at Delta (the guy thought is was good customer service to answer personal phone calls while "helping" us), we were booked on standby for the same flights the next day that we had missed, we also had food vouchers (only $6 per meal), and a hotel room at the Hilton. At that point we had no idea where our checked luggage were. We were really sad to not be on our way to Malawi, but were thankful for the meal vouchers and a plush hotel room.
We got ourselves some food and headed to the hotel by way of shuttle. After checking in, we both passed out in our beds and took a much needed nap. We were awoken from our naps by an unexpected phone call from Delta stating that they had found our baggage and we could pick them up. Since we had nothing better to do with ourselves we were happy to head back to the airport to retrieve our luggage. Clean clothes! Samantha and I ate dinner, repacked our bags, slept well in a nice warm bed, and then headed to the airport at 7AM. We were happy to have the previous day behind us and were pumped to be finally leaving for Malawi. With standby tickets in hand I was practically jumping for joy to go to our gate. We positioned ourselves near the ticket counter at the gate and we were the first standby tickets to get seats. We weren't going to go through this again. Next thing we knew we were flying high above the Atlantic towards Rome and then after refueling, headed to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
And here's where it gets interesting: We failed to get our boarding pass for the next flight from Ethiopia to Malawi. We were told we would receive it upon arrival in Ethiopia, but we had been told wrong. Out of all the people making the connection from the flight from DC to the flight to Lilongwe, Malawi, we were the only two without tickets. The gate workers held us off the plane. All we could think was "Not again."
Once gain, we were fighting tooth and nail to get someone to help us. Samantha and I kept looking at each other because we couldn't believe what was happening to us. Here we are, two young women, in Ethiopia with no baggage, no phone, no internet, no way of contacting out parents and no idea when we were going to get to leave. After demanding access to the lounge so that we could at least e-mail Matt, who was picking us up in Malawi, to let him know that we would not be arriving today and there was a possibility we wouldn't arrive the next day either. We then headed back to the ticket office where they had booked us on the next flight to Lilongwe....that was the next day. That's right, we stayed a night in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a sketchy hotel that we had no desire to even stand in. Luckily, we were able to meet up with some young people from the UK who also missed the flight from another connection, they stayed in our hotel so it was was nice to be able to talk to them and be with other people. After getting to the hotel, the only thing we did was sleep...except when we woke up to eat our meals. Once again we headed to the airport super early to get our tickets. After getting our tickets we went to our gate and waited....and waited....and waited. Once finally boarding the plane we couldn't hold back our smiles because we were FINALLY headed to Lilongwe, Malawi: our final destination.
We got off the plane in Malawi and boarded a bus to head to the airport from the runway. As we got off the bus we looked up to see Matt and Ken waving down at us. The poor guys had been in Lilongwe waiting for us to arrive. It was 48 hours after we were originally set to arrive.
Next we had to locate our baggage we hadn't seen since we dropped them at Dulles. It took us about to an hour or two to locate Samantha's bags but we never saw mine...because mine weren't on the plane. They had tagged my bags incorrectly in either DC or Ethiopia, I may never know.  Luckily Matt was able to take my back and went to the airline office to demand my bags be sent to our lodge instead of staying another night in Lilongwe, which was draining the funds. So we left the airport and started our seven hour drive to Maji Zuwa resort in the northern region of Malawi, located right Lake Malawi. It would end up that my bags wouldn't arrive for another four days, but I didn't really mind because I was in Malawi. I had no care in the world. We had finally arrived


Stay tuned for more stories! I need a nap from just thinking about those two awful days.