Aïchatou, though, suggested
we again try a travel agency to see if we could still find commercial
tickets between Niamey and Nairobi. I had my doubts if it would
be possible at this late date and even if we could find available
tickets, I was certain that it would be cost-prohibitive this
close to our needed departure date. (We had originally decided
to take the charter flight because it cost almost the same and
we would involve fewer days in transit.) But, remembering the
saying “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” we went
to one of Niger’s few travel agencies to see what we might
find. The travel agent found two flights—one on Sudan Air
that departed from Lagos, Nigeria, (which meant a 12-hour drive
by road, plus the need to get visas from the Nigerian Embassy)
and another on the next Saturday, leaving from Abidjan, Ivory
Coast. Since Saturday was the second-to-last day of our retreat
and since the Sudan Air flight seemed too troublesome, we thought
that was it. I decided we might as well look at exploring Air
France to see if we could fly to Paris and then find a flight
from Europe to Nairobi. Sadly, the Air France office is closed
on Saturdays. Hmm, what now? We decided to try the previous travel
agent to see if he could investigate Air France’s schedule
for us (they aren’t ticket agents for Air France, which
is why they didn’t offer us any info for them with our first
attempt). The agent rejected the Air France option because of
cost, but he did find another Air Kenyan flight that would leave
Abidjan on Wednesday night, make one stop in Cameroon and then
continue to Nairobi on Thursday morning, arriving hours before
our RCA retreat started. We made the reservations. Surprisingly,
they were slightly cheaper than what we had been quoted in August,
when we first did the research.
Our problems were not over by any means. In fact, we just immediately
had some new problems. The first was money. No one can take credits
cards in Niger. We needed to have $5000 in cash to pay for our
tickets by Monday (the day we would leave). Normally, this is
huge problem as we never had those kind of funds on hand. We had,
however, just on Thursday received three months worth of salary
stipends (they had been unexpectedly delayed by about one month).
However, we wouldn’t be able to access that money until
Tuesday morning (it takes three business days for a check to clear)
and if we used it to pay the tickets, we’d have no available
funds in Niger when we returned. So would the travel agency take
a check from us and hold onto it for one day before trying to
cash it? Surprisingly, they said they would. Having funds to live
on when we returned from Kenya was something we would have to
deal with later (and we did).
The second problem was lodging—where would we stay in Abidjan,
since we had to spend two nights there while awaiting our flight
to Nairobi? Monday morning I was able to find some phone numbers
for Abidjan guest houses (much less expensive then hotels and
which exist to serve a specific clientele, like missionaries)
from the Southern Baptist mission. The phone connections were
terrible and the two guest houses we were able to get through
each had only one room available—and we needed two: one
for the Johnsons and one for Ms. Kapenga. Left with no choice,
we decided to take the two separate rooms, not knowing that the
two guests houses were in the same neighborhood until after that
we had made our decision.
We arrived in Abidjan during a pouring rain, but found our two
guest houses without much trouble. We then killed two days in
Abidjan, which is really a very nice and clean city. Abidjan,
Ivory Coast, has historically been one of the “jewels”
of West African and until 2002 was one of the most stable and
peaceful places in Africa. The Ivoirien elections of that year
proved controversy and resulted in a brief north-south civil war
that ended in a truce brokered by France with French peacekeepers
dividing the country into two. Everything seemed calm at the time,
and we passed our time there without incident and boarded the
plane to Nairobi on Wednesday night.
We arrived in Nairobi at 6:30 a.m. dead tired. Only Marie had
really gotten any sleep. We enjoyed our time in Kenya and seeing
our RCA mission colleagues at our lodge, which was adjacent to
Mt Kenya, Africa’s second highest mountain. The change of
scenery was greatly appreciated, although the cooler climate compiled
with fatigue led to Aïchatou developing a bad sinus cold
and infection while we were there. We had three days in Nairobi
before our return flight left for Abidjan, but our plans of doing
some sightseeing were ruined with Aïchatou’s illness.
She stayed pretty much in the Mennonite Guest House (a former
British officer’s club during Kenya’s colonial period)
recovering and I did a little bit of shopping for us and for Marie
in a nearby shopping complex. The guest house did have access
to CNN, so we were able to watch the election returns before our
flight left for Abidjan.
Once we came to Abidjan for our return, we had to spend another
night there before we could take our final flight to Niamey. On
Thursday afternoon, we found a taxi from our guest house and off
we went. However, as we got close to the airport, something seemed
wrong. Cars ahead of us were slowing down and then turning around.
Blocking the only road to the airport were young Ivoirien “patriots.”
Ivory Coast’s two-year peace between the north and the south
had somehow just been broken, causing protests in the capital
and anger against anything French. As our car approached the airport
turn-off, two young male “patriots” approached our
car and started talking at us. I couldn’t understand anything
they said and replied to them in English. One of them must have
understood because he said something about money for the children.
I had 500 francs (about $1) in my shirt pocket, pulled it out
and handed it to one of the men. He seemed happy and waved us
on toward the airport.
You would think that our problems would be over, once we reached
the airport. That was not the case. After waiting in line at the
terminal for an hour, we learned that our Air Burkina flight to
Niamey had been cancelled because of mechanical problems. Now
what would we do? Thankfully, the airline arranged for all of
us stranded passengers to be put up in a hotel and the flight
was rescheduled for Friday morning. The real question, though,
in our minds was: “Would we be able to return to the airport
because of the “patriots?” When we left that night
on a small bus, it appeared that soldiers had largely cleared
the roadblock and we passed without incident. We spent the night
in a downtown hotel and at 7:30 a.m. the next morning, we reboarded
the bus for the airport. The streets were quiet and the road to
the airport was clear. Despite a few more delays, we did leave
Abidjan that morning and returned to Niger that afternoon. However,
on that same Friday, the French air force destroyed all of the
Ivory Coast Air Force’s planes after Ivory Coast’s
Air Force killed nine French peacekeepers while bombing northern
Ivoirien rebels. On Saturday, Abidjan was in chaos with crowds
targeting and attacking anything French-looking. On Sunday, most
Western nations (the United States and France included) and the
U.N. made a decision to evacuate their people from Ivory Coast.
We were only 24 hours away from being caught up in the melee,
through no fault of our own. All because we live in Niger and
had so few choices for traveling outside of the country.
So, our trip to Kenya and all the events surrounding it are by
far the biggest thing that happened to us for quite a while. However,
these kinds of stories aren’t the kind we like to experience.
Too much stress and too many near-disasters for our tastes. Intra-Africa
travel is never much fun and is almost never simple. The RCA African
mission gathering is only once every two years and that’s
probably about right.
In other news, Marie-Florence successfully attempted to crawl
this morning for the first time. She had been trying to crawl
with her head down and it just wasn’t working for her. We
cut her hair yesterday and we think it must have made her head
lighter and more aerodynamic.
Prayer requests
- Give thanks that we were able to make our trip to Nairobi
and to safely come back.
- Pray for Aïchatou as she prepares for her clinical exams.
- Pray for the EERN General Assembly that meets on November
26 and 27 to select new leaders. Pray that God will guide the
election process and call faithful men (and maybe women) to
be leaders and servants of the church.
- Pray for Niger’s elections, which will be held in two
rounds, with the first being Tuesday, November 16, 2004. Pray
that parties and candidates that respect Niger’s current
secular status (and not wish for a stronger Islamic identity)
will win. (See the brief article here.)
- Pray for our daily work as we often need some additional motivation.
In Christ,
Tom, Aïchatou, and Marie-Florence.
P.S. To see statistics from The Economist Pocket World in
Figures (2004) relating to Niger’s place in the world,
click here.
The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p.
44 |
