Spanning the Globe

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig…

Well, the trip home from South Africa was just as exciting as the initial trip over. We left Bloemfontein at 1pm on Friday, March 16th. We made it to Johannesburg without incident and navigated through the airport with enough time between flights to pick up some last minute souvenirs. As the time neared for us to board our flight back to the US, we noticed a line forming at what appeared to be our gate. Despite the fact that the board over the gate indicated the plane would be going to Kuala Lumpur, we decided to take our chances and get in line. Good thing we did- it was the line for our flight.

Once we nestled into our seats for the long journey home, we headed down the runway for what we thought was our last glimpse of South Africa. Wrong. Our plane had a flat tire and we had to turn around and return to the terminal. After an hour of repairs and waiting for another place in the runway line, we finally took off and started our journey.

Around 3am Africa-time, we stopped in Dakar, Senegal for fuel. Everyone was a little groggy at that point, but all 300 passengers aboard the plane were woken up by the Senegal Security Taskforce which boarded the plane and studied all of the empty seats (Why? We don’t know.). Following the safety inspection, we sat in Senegal for another forty minutes while repairs were made to our plane’s toilet system. After a total of 3 hours in Senegal, we were finally on our way to DC.

We landed at Dulles at 7:05 EST on Saturday, March 17th. It took about an hour and a half to get through customs and baggage claim (David almost didn’t make it- apparently his boots seemed questionable) before we were finally able to see our families waiting for us on the other side of the security check-point. After 24 hours of travel, we were home.

Having had a few days to reflect, I must admit that I have nothing but positive things to say about our trip. Everything was planned extremely well (thanks Mary Ann!) and I feel very fortunate to have been able to see so many different aspects of life in South Africa in such a short amount of time. We were welcomed into homes, fields, businesses, and universities across the country as if we were life-long friends - Southern Hospitality holds true in South Africa, too.

As David said, we owe a lot of thanks to a lot of people. Thank you all for affording us the amazing opportunity. We enjoyed every minute of it and look forward to sharing all of our pictures and stories with you in the coming months. If you are interested in having any of us make a presentation in your area, please contact us—we’ll be happy to oblige.

Totsiens!