We got to the airport Saturday morning at 5:45 and a line of people had already formed. We were surprised that so many people had beaten us there; there were probably 100 people in line ahead of us. We stood in line for about 2 hours before we made it through the doors into the airport. We were given yellow wrist bands after our name was checked off the list. The people who had confirmed seats were given red bands. By this time there were several hundred people standing behind us. We stood in line another 2 hours before we got up to the ticket counter to drop off our luggage only to find out that our seats had not been assigned. We left that line and joined another line. We stood in that line for another hour waiting for the agent to determine which of the confirmed passengers were “no shows” so she could reassign their seats. Finally after hours of waiting we were given seat assignments and boarding passes. We were so excited to get on that plane. While we were on the way to the airport we found out that Ghana’s president was going to put a “lock down” on the cities of Accra and Kumasi. If we had not flown out we would have been confined to the hotel room. Even getting back to the airport if another plane came would be difficult. After we got our boarding passes we had to wait another 2 hours before we boarded the plane.
Except for lots of turbulence we had an uneventful flight back to the states. We arrived at Dulles airport in Washington DC around 9:00pm which would have been 1:00 in the night in Ghana. We were put on a shuttle and taken to the Customs and Homeland Security building so we could go through immigrations and customs. One of the officers that was in the baggage claim area started shouting at us that we had to practice “Social Distancing”. Please, we had to laugh; we had just spent the last 12 hours on the plane with these people; breathing the same recycled air and then we were crammed on buses with standing room only and now you are worried about “Social Distancing”!
Thanks to the reservations that our sister-in-law and niece made for us we had a car and a GPS system waiting on us when we arrived. We drove until 12:30 and then pulled off into a rest area to sleep. We were awake bright and early this morning at 4:00; because of the time difference and the jet lag so we got back on the road. We arrived in Athens this around 3:00 this afternoon.
We saw our grandchildren from a distance. We will be “self quarantined” for the next 14 days but then I guess most of you are being quarantined too. Once again, “WE ARE PROUD TO BE IN AMERICA”!
Thank you for the prayers!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
