Airplanes

Dear Readers,
I beseech you to forgive me. Ok, well I have no good reason for my absence so I will make it up by trying to give a faithful account of life on board in the past few weeks. It’s been interesting.
Every job has its ups and down’s, disadvantages and advantages. The advantage being I get to know almost everyone on the ship. The disadvantage is I have many hours where nothing happens. We do a lot at reception but most of those things only take a few minutes.
This week I worked night shift. Now, most people, when they hear that, feel sorry for me. It’s actually not that bad of a time. I get the quiet time, so rare on this ship, that I need. While I did get my quiet time, I also had a bit of chaos mixed in.
Our most used airways is Brussels and they only use the one plane to go back and forth between Europe and Sierra Leone. That one plane kicked up a rock into it’s engine and became temporarily unusable. This meant the poor people trying to leave the ship went back and forth from the airport twice, only succeeding the third time in getting on airplane.
What this entailed was hours of traveling to the airport, a few hours at the airport and hours coming back. To say the least, people were not happy. It was my job to get them back into their old cabins (hospitality, God bless them, did most of the work on that part) and do the paperwork necessary. I’ve never seen so many people up and about at twelve in the morning, what with drivers, hospitality, and those wanting to greet the poor souls coming back.
To end it all, everyone is safe and sound where they are supposed to be. The arrivals are here, and the departures are gone.
As for me, my most exciting time was going out to eat at a nice restaurant. My roommates and I decided we needed a roommate get together (yes I’m back in a regular cabin with three roommates) and so we went out to eat. It wasn’t so much the eating (my food tasted like street meat and I know that because I’ve had street meat) but the drive back that I found fascinating. Our taxi driver was one I’ve used before so I knew him well enough to sit up front and chat with him. He is a Muslim by the name of Polo. We talked a bit about our religions. At the time it was Ramadan (I think the month of Ramadan is finished now). Religions is one of my favorite things to talk about as well as other cultures. Here I was getting both things in one go. Yes, it was a nice time.
Suffice to say, the past few weeks, has been interesting.
Well, God bless all of you,
Heather