Turn Back Now!!

Close your eyes and try to imagine arriving at an airport to travel for 23 hours with two adults and two babies including 25 separate pieces of luggage. What’s that, can’t imagine? Well neither could I until today. We had to hire a separate taxi just for the luggage. It was an eight foot pile on the airport porter’s wagon! Joseph Campbell said that before any mythic journey first you must traverse a threshold into this world. Atlanta airport was that ‘ring of fire’ for us to pass through which then would propel us like a t-shirt in a washing machine into this new life.

Getting our baggage checked at Atlanta airport took almost an hour. Each piece was weighted, locked with approved TSA lock, and shipped off. We were told we could each carry two carry on bags so, there were four of us, that’s eight bags plus stroller and car seats bags included 3 laptops, external hard drives, portable dvd player, and lots of toys and snacks for the kids since we were terrified they would be bored and make us crazy. Great that we could take all this stuff to keep us happy before our air freight arrived as well as on the trip

As we began our walk through security with crying babies(by now Esther would not allow anyone to put her down. She had to be carried or tantrum would ensue) and eight bags and car seats and stroller the first TSA woman to examine our ID and tickets muttered profoundly to herself ‘too many bags…too many bags’. It was a warning too late to be acted on and only served to make the already large knot in my stomach even larger. It is of course a nightmare going through the scanners and takes a while. Luckily help magically arrives in the form of Kayla’s boss’s boss’s wife who we run into as we are repacking our stuff and putting on our shoes. She has graciously taken pity on us and offers to carry Esther to our gate. This proves to be a huge favor as I really don’t think we would have made the plane had we to do it on our own. I was so desperate at that point that I started complaining about my back to TSA people trying to get wheelchair assistance so we would have something else to carry baggage.

It takes three hours to get from taxi to gate. Once there we find the plane had started boarding. And oh, by the way, now they say we have too many carry-on’s, geez, why couldn’t they have told us that when we were checking baggage! As we found out much later in our journey the airline had only recently changed it carry-on policy to one bag per person . After a lot of arguing with the airline people and more anxious crying babies in tow we compromise with the authorities and repack everything so only two bags are then checked. Most of the toys are now under the plane. So much for these distractions. Taking the car seats on board turned out not to be such a good idea after all either, we thought the kids would feel more comfortable sleeping in them but they were out of them as soon as the captain turned off the seat belt sign and after that they were just in the way. We were already fried by now and hadn’t even left Atlanta.

The calm, smiling Scandinavian stewardesses were a sharp contrast to our frazzled, stressed appearance and they looked at us like ‘what could possibly be the problem, hey, enjoy your flight!’ The flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam, the overnight flight, Max might have slept 4 hours, I might have slept 4 hours and Esther who had a pretty good cold tossed and turned in Kayla’s arms the whole night and they got almost no sleep so at 3am our time when we landed in Amsterdam we were not a pretty picture. It takes a lot of teamwork and thought to negotiate in and out of airplanes with as much crap in tow as we had, first we all left the plane together then one person, namely me, would go back in when most folks had left and retrieve each car seat separately along with any other bags left, usually three trip.

In Amsterdam airport we had one hour to transfer to our next flight and when we got to the gate, guess what, we were told again that we had too many bags. More arguing and ‘negotiating’ took place but alas we of course lost. So its time to repack again. More stuffed checked into oblivion; who knows if we will see it again when we reach Nairobi airport. Now Max is acting out, tired and stressed he started grabbing anything he can get his hands on, smashing people in the face with his fists and pushing me to the ultimate ends of my abilities. Poor Esther had developed laryngitis from the dry air and stress of flying. Her cries are an airy whisper. She’s really cranky and not at all her characteristic self. Finally, after takeoff things began to settle down. This part of the journey was surprisingly easier than first predicted. We all actually slept. A little here, a little there. The kids seemed entertained even without all the toys although we had the DVD player for Max which took the edge off of things when things got really hairy. The main thing I remember from this part of the journey is that my in-flight multimedia center wasn’t working and a huge mound of trash was accumulating under our feet.

So we land in Nairobi and there is someone there to assist us in moving through the maze. Lord knows what time it is for our body clocks but it’s about 7pm local time. We carefully gather ALL our baggage and, yes, it all did arrive (Nairobi airport is notorious for things getting lost or stolen) safely. There are only two flights to Kisumu from Nairobi and we’ve missed both for the day so it’s off to a hotel room for 6 hours. Esther is asleep in her Pack And Play in ten minutes but Max is bouncing off the wall until 2am, Kayla and I take turns sleeping and trying to contain him which proves to be daunting.
We have also realized I have left our portable DVD player on the airplane under that huge pile of rubble, I thought I had search it well but apparently not thorough enough.

Bing! The alarm goes off, there is chaos get dress and loading up all that luggage again to go back to the airport. Max is all over the place now, can’t sit still, can’t listen, really tuff. We check in and again find we have too many carry-on’s! This plane is a small propeller commuter aircraft (two rows of seats) and will not accommodate much carry on so again I have to repack and now it’s really ridiculous. No stroller, one rolling carry-on and I am precariously carrying all the computers in an over flowing briefcase along with diaper bag and camera bag. Max is loving the walk on the runway to the airplane. Lots of little trucks going by and loud airplane noises. We squeeze on to the plane and find we can only sit one in front of the other, Max is in front of me, I can only see the back of his head. I’m relying on a man sitting opposite him to tell me when disaster is imminent so I yell at him. Other than dumping a whole thing of yogurt in his seat things went pretty well.

Watching the landscape change during the flight was wonderful. First desert like with interesting patterns in the sand then a sharp change to green and farmland as we passed over a mountain range. We land. A teeny tiny airport. Family and luggage arrive safely albeit disoriented and worn, it will take us a week to fully recover.