March 22th, 2012
The Adventures of Roscoes and Their Luggage.
We left our home in Fort Mill at 10:15am on March 20th, and drove to the Atlanta airport, four hours away. We boarded the plane for our 10 hour direct flight to Accra from Atlanta at 10:30pm.
The plane was full of babies, none of which were happy. We were seated next to a very loud wedding party, who had no interest in sleeping, or letting anyone else sleep. It was going to be a long flight.
Two and a half hours in to our 10 hour flight, the pilot tells us we’ve lost satellite and cannot land in Accra, we’ve got to turn around. Not fun. Also not fun, the fact that I just took a sleeping pill that is starting to kick in.
At about 3:30am on the 21st, we are back in Atlanta. I’m quite groggy and cranky (my husband would say that is the understatement of the year). The kids and T (our friend and teammate) are basically sleep walking.
Every single passenger is beyond annoyed and extremely tired, ourselves included. However, we were exceptionally sleep deprived, since we had slept only an hour or so the night before we left, as we were busy with last minute packing and cleaning.
Our sleepy, grumpy, group waited in line. One by one we received an overnight toiletries bag, meal vouchers, and hotel vouchers. We were told our luggage (a total of 13 pieces) would be transferred to the new plane. We were to report back here for check in between 12pm and 2pm, departure was at 4pm.
We went outside to board a shuttle to take us to the hotel. It was like a stampede. There were about 200 passengers, and only about 12 people allowed on each shuttle, of which there was two. We missed the first one. The second one, we nearly missed until I pulled out the Mommy card, shouting “Let the people with kids go first!” Graciously, they did.
We all fell in to bed about 5am, waking six hours later. Those six hours were like heaven. We were woke in better moods, and ready to face the day.
The Lord blessed us with better seats on the new flight with an earlier boarding zone. No wedding party was seated near us, and only two babies who were happy most of the time. (We won’t talk about the exploding diaper that stunk up the place for a good 15 minutes.)
Our flight took off almost on time, just an hour later, and arrived almost on time, just two and a half hours after we were supposed to. We finally arrived in Accra at 7:30am on the 22nd, 18 hours later than our original schedule.
Thank the Lord, all our luggage made it! In all we had 16 checked pieces (13 bags and 3 carry on bags checked at the gate) and 8 carry on pieces. Customs was a breeze, and we were out of the airport in record time.
I am pretty sure Pastor Frank’s jaw dropped when he saw our bags. I told him how much we would have, but he didn’t realize how large they would be, and that my total didn’t include our carry on luggage. (ops!)
He had brought just his SUV. There was no way all of us and our luggage would fit into that car. Our luggage barely fit.
We took a taxi, and followed our luggage to the bus station. There, our 8 plastic foot lockers were loaded onto a bus. The rest of the luggage and us crammed into the SUV. We would meet up with our footlockers in Kumasi. (I’ve never prayed so much over luggage!)
The ride to Kumasi was bumpy but uneventful. We passed our luggage bus a few times, and it passed us a few times…..or was it our luggage bus? Several of the same bus left at the same time, and Frank had saved the info about our bus on his phone, but now could not find it or remember it.
The Lord answers prayers and we ended up meeting up with our bus—the right bus---just as we arrived into Kumasi. Our footlockers were then loaded into a taxi. A rather small taxi. The trunk lid did not close and we prayed the whole way that nothing would fall out!
At 2:30pm we finally arrived home in Kumasi. It took 51 hours and 45 minutes.
We went to bed at 7:30 that night, and all of us slept until morning.
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