Stuck in a country I wasn't even supposed to get to...

I finally made it on the 10.50 a.m. flight out of Nairobi. We were going to have a short layover in Burundi (Bujumbura) and then, 25 minutes later, arrive in Kigali. Only that… Kenya Airlines (remember, “The Pride of Africa”) thought otherwise. Once we landed in Burundi we were informed that there’s a glitch with the paperwork – that they were supposed to have a technician onboard to sign some release papers, and they didn’t have that person there (!) – which meant we couldn’t clear the Burundi airspace. So, after they force-fed us some courtesy peanuts, they asked us to step down from the plane. We had been grounded. Literally.

We ended up spending the next … 10 hours in this tiny airport, receiving “updates” from this diligent official every half an hour or so. He kept telling us that they are on the phone with Nairobi. Some five hours later it had become clear that the reason was a bit different: apparently Kenya Airline personnel had not been paid on-time, so they decided to go on an impromptu strike, in another country…

OK, so there we were, a few dozen people from two planes (some of us were Kigali-bound, some Nairobi-bound). Of course soon we were just bound to each other. Tired, jet-lagged, hungry (they would give us something to eat only some eight hours later…). We were told we might have to go by bus to Rwanda, but then this option was also scrapped.

LATE at night they came up with a brilliant solution: we would all board the next plane to Kigali, that was supposed to arrive from Nairobi… So we flew out after 10 p.m. and finally landed in Rwanda shortly before midnight. I had, at that point, traveled for about 60 hours… The planned overlapping with Julie, the girl I was going to replace at Dian Fossey Fund, had failed miserably. She was due to fly back to the U.S. early the following morning…

To add to the excitement, I was informed upon arrival that the next day I would have to help cover a huge international event, starting at 8 a.m. in the fancy Serena Hotel. I pretty much collapsed under the mosquito net soon after midnight, in the city of les milles collines…