A very long journey
Saturday morning 4:30 a.m.: The alarm clock rings early today. We are going to Ho in the Volta region, in the south-east of Ghana. To save money and take as much luggage with us as possible, we have chosen a very cheap flight to Ghana via Istanbul. We want to meet at the airport at 5:30 a.m. to bring a total of 6 suitcases with donations to Ghana. But first we have to check in. We have completely exhausted our limit and are very anxious to see if everything will go smoothly. But sometimes you just need luck - and we were lucky. A nice member of ground staff turned a blind eye and checked in our luggage. He even accepted our very heavy hand luggage with a smile.
The first hurdle is overcome: thanks to a very nice member of staff, the luggage is checked in.
We were amazed when we found out that we would be flying from Istanbul to Ghana on a rather small Boeing 737. The plane was fully booked. As we are all quite tall, we were quite surprised when we tried to make ourselves comfortable in our seats. Another 7-hour flight to Accra - scheduled arrival time 19:42. We hoped to be able to leave the airport at around 8:30 p.m. and then have another 3 to 3.5 hours' drive ahead of us. We try to avoid driving in the dark due to the road conditions, but this time there is no other option as we already have our first meeting the next morning. Unfortunately, things turned out quite differently. After landing in Accra almost punctually at 7:45 pm, we were delighted that we were able to pass through passport control super quickly. And best of all, the baggage carousel was already running and we were apparently supposed to get our luggage very quickly. So we informed our driver, who was already waiting for us in the entrance area of the airport. What we didn't realize was that we would have to keep him waiting for a long time. But first things first: As we waited for our luggage, we were surprised that our fellow travelers became more restless. On the other hand, diligent airport staff took almost all the luggage off the conveyor belt and placed it in a long row next to them.
A long flight in a very small plane (and still in a good mood)
Lots of luggage, but ours is not included
As more and more suitcases arrived from Istanbul, we didn't understand the excitement. Slowly, however, it became increasingly clear to us that only very few passengers had received their luggage. Well over 100 passengers were in the same situation: their luggage was not on the plane but remained in Istanbul. The pieces of luggage that arrived were from an earlier flight. By now it was 21:00 and we needed a plan B. We definitely had no luggage and still had at least 3 hours of driving ahead of us. Somehow we had to get through the long queue in front of "Lost Luggage" to get to Ho. A "helping hand" came out of nowhere and guided us past the waiting people by opening a second queue so that we had completed all the formalities just under half an hour later. You have to be lucky in misfortune. We now hope that we will be able to pick up our luggage at the airport in Accra the following day. As it is apparently not possible to forward the luggage, we have to go back to Accra to collect it in person. More on this in our report tomorrow. Kenneth, our nice driver from our project partner, Kpedzke High School in Kpedzke, then drove us through the night without any problems so that we arrived at our hotel in Ho at around 1:30 am. As it was going to be a short night, we fell into bed dead tired after almost 21 hours of traveling.