Rainbolt Travel Diary

The plane flight from Amsterdam to Lagos featured one of the electronic maps that traced the plane's flight. I sat in my seat and did not pay much attention to it as we flew over France; nothing about the path over Spain interested me. Crossing the Mediterranean I started to watch more closely. Soon I was leaning over Emily looking out the window. The Sahara Desert, how amazing would that be to see stretching below the plane? I saw only clouds. Finally, as the plane descended into Lagos we broke the cloud cover and I was glued to the window. Green, not forest green, but jungle green, steamy and dense below filled the window. The green was broken be slender ribbons of water and on the horizon I could see the red dirt of the city. Small fires and columns of black smoke spotted the city.

Jacob thought the bare ground around the runway looked like Oklahoma. I did too until I saw the rusting 747 Cargo plane next to the runway. We anxiously waited for the door to open at the gate. I think we were all nervous about what was on the other side of that door.

The terminal was very clean and modern, and it was fun to read the advertisements as we walked towards the baggage claim area. We joined the big line at immigration and then I got really nervous, and just before I melted into a complete puddle of nerves a woman signaled us to follow her. She was the “expeditator” from the embassy. Gina asked later how the expeditiator knew it was us. I think that as the only nervous white people in the airport we probably stood out quite easily.

Gathering 10 huge bags took a bit of time but soon our caravan of luggage carts was headed out of the terminal. We stepped outside into the heat and a mass throng of people. There might have been a road in front of the terminal, I’m not really sure. I just kept my eyes glued on the lady from the embassy and Gina and the kids in front of me. We walked to a barricaded section to the left of the terminal where Tom and Terry Burns were waiting for us. A big sigh of relief and soon were headed off to Behind 1004 Federal Estates.