Nous et notre sac a fait.

Nous et notre sac a fait.

As they say in French, we and our bags made it.

Our last week in Minnesota flew by with wonderful leave taking dinners, walks, and conversations with family and friends.  Our children put together a DVD of summer 2011, and a cute little book to help us remember – remember what?? Family, friends, Minnesota – as if we could ever forget!

Besides the good byes, we were packing the 4 wonderful duffels our church lent us.  We were able to take 2-50lb bags each.  We still had room in our bags but keeping to 50lbs was tricky and we left leaving some stuff at home – hopefully the right stuff.  We were using our bathroom scale to weigh the bags but had such fluctuations that on Thursday we ended up driving to the airport and weighing our bags, coming home and taking 20 lbs out and then on Friday we ended up with 48, 48, 49 and 51 – whew we made it!

We also had a wonderful send off at 4 am Friday, Sept 16^th.  Dear Molly volunteered to spend the night and get up and take us to the airport.  She had emailed earlier and wanted to know exactly what time we were leaving – like why would she care?? But she wanted to know!  Well it was because our entire family, with one dog and the Popes were there to send us off.  Good thing I don’t wear mascara or I would have started the trip with black streaks on my face.  We were really touched.

We flew from Mpls to Atlanta to JFK to Casablanca to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and then Niamey.  We learned how to pronounce Niamey from our grandson Josh – picture a knee, then a mouth open wide saying ahhh and then a calendar showing the month of May and you have correctly said Niamey!!  We were able to check our bags all the way through which really helped our bags and our stress levels.  All flights were smooth and easy. 

The flight from JFK to Casablanca was the most interesting.  Every kind of person and dress that you can imagine and many African children!  Elgin was playing games on the ipad and made friends with two small African boys who did not speak English but loved playing on the ipad with him.  There were also two beautifully dressed African women who were on the plane that I got to “know” – who were from Niamey and had been to NY to visit the son of one of them!  We also met a man, Sos (Sauce), who was from Benin, lived in Tex. and was going to Ouagadougou.  He became our interpreter.  Pretty cool.

The “hardest” was Casablanca – arriving at 6:30 am with a 14 hour layover.  But God provided a few angels along the way – one was Sos who helped us manage Customs.  There was a group of us, the two ladies from Niamey, Sos, a professor from Carolina, and a man with two small children,  and the two of us who were trying to find the place to get hotel vouchers.  We roamed the whole airport.  I know we took one set of stairs three times.  The escalators were broken.  We finally did get a voucher for a hotel where we were given a room (prone sleeping and a shower) and two meals.  So that helped immensely.

On the flight to Niamey they showed no movies.  It didn’t really matter, they showed SpongeBob, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse cartoons.  It didn’t really matter, because there were no headphones.  It really didn’t matter, because there was no place to plug in headphones. 

Our kids gave us envelopes to open in route – i.e.  - Atlanta, JKF, over the Atlantic, in Niamey – filled with pictures and notes and wonderful messages.  How blessed we are. 

We arrived at 3am and went through the dreaded Niamey customs.  Actually it all went quite easily and then miracles of all miracles – all four bags arrived and were among the first off the plane.  They had “hired” a helper inside the airport for us who had a sign with our name and a cart for the bags and we breezed through! 

Stan who works at the SIL center and is from North Carolina picked us up and brought us to our “home” for the next 6 mo.  You could smell the paint – they had worked really hard to get everything painted for us.  New curtains, bedspread to match, etc.  Really very nice.  We did do some unpacking – needed PJs – and then we crashed until noon on Sunday.