African Transportation

Traveling is a total part of the adventure in Africa. Our flight out on Wednesday was at 3pm, but the Airport is on Lungi, across a body of water from Freetown. There are 4 ways to cross the water. The locals use the ferry, which takes an hour and a half...but you need to get to the landing which is far away from the clinic, and on the other side you have to get up to the airport. It's a big hassle. The other options are the Pelican Water Taxi ($40) which is a small speed boat that takes about 45 minutes, the Hovercraft ($50) which only takes about 15 minutes and is nice and big and safe feeling, or the helicopter (the only method I have left to try), which is a quick 7 minutes of terror, or so I've heard, since it regularly looses power and nearly crashes ($70).

So, our flight left on wednesday at 3, but since the only flight out of Sierra Leone that day was to another african country, the only transport across was the ferry. Rather than a whole day of travel to get across, we decided to cross on tuesday night with people who were headed for a London flight, and stay at the Lungi Airport hotel. We headed down to the Pelican Water Taxi, which we thought was scheduled to leave at 6:30. Only after the whole group of Africans watched us unload all of our luggage did they ask... "are you travelling?" Um, no... we just wanted to bring 2 big suitcases down to the dock and then carry them back home. So, they then said the water taxi left 2 hours earlier and there would be no more for the next few days.

Plan B... we rushed over to see if the helicopter or hovercraft was going... and we arrived after the hovercraft had already started going. But they waited, hauled us all onto the hovercraft over the big pontoons, and off we went. It's pretty cool...hovering over the water with a giant fan to propel us forward. This thing could fit probably 70+ people, but there were only 4 paying customers. No wonder they stopped for us...we doubled their payload!

The next day we got to the airport, where they didn't even look in my bag, and there aren't even x-ray machines. Good thing I'm not a terrorist. It was open seating on the plane, which was fine since it wasn't full. My mom and I were the only non-africans aboard the flight, and the fear on any flight within africa is that the standards for safety aren't exactly the same as else where in the world. When the pilot was ready to taxi, we went from zero to sixty in 10 seconds and once we were in the air the pilot got up to altitude as fast as possible. The turns were fast (sometimes you could feel the g-force like on a roller coaster), and when we descended and landed it was all done in a matter of minutes.

We had a stopover in The Gambia...which is actually a Nasa emergency landing center...although you would never know it if it wasn't for google. When we were on the ground a group of boys who were continuing on to Senegal got up and said they needed to use the bathroom. Everyone knows you cannot use the bathroom while the plane is on the ground. They didn't care...they HAD to go. Finally the flight attendant said that we'd all have to deplane if they went to the bathroom, and they rushed off to use the bathroom in the airport. So we had to load up all of our stuff and get ready to get off the plane... finally she said we could all stay on board, but this is the kind of thing that just would never happen in the states. I mean, really...just hold it for 20 minutes until we get back in the air, rather than making the whole plane wait for you to go to the bathroom.

Anyways, we were absolutely lucky to have Tom and Alex McLane pick us up at the airport...making for a great and easy escape from the african transportations that we had travailed.