Caboose

We turned up at the airport in Accra on Thursday, ready for our flight back to Nigeria. After having a look in duty-free and spending my last 10000 cedis on a can of coke we settled down in the departure gate lounge.

After a while there was an announcement that the flight from Lagos was delayed due to weather and that a new arrival time would be announced (which really meant that it hadn’t taken off yet). There was no mention of the effect that it would have on our flight, which would be using the same aircraft.

Eventually a Virgin Nigeria staff member appeared and I just managed to overhear her telling some other people that our flight was cancelled. She then retreated rapidly without telling us about it.

After lots of milling around (and shouting on the part of some stroppy Nigeria passengers) we got our tickets back and were told that we could have a refund or that we might be able to get a seat on the Friday evening flight. I left my number and then had to persuade security to let me into the baggage reclaim area so that I could change some money for a taxi back into town.

Yesterday we rebooked onto the Sunday morning flight, we’re hoping that the Harmattan reduces enough so that flights in and out of Lagos can resume. I got a call from Virgin Nigeria saying something about some seats on a flight at 9 o’clock but the line was very bad and we’d already rebooked.

So now we’re settled down at Sarah’s house hoping that our flight tomorrow morning won’t be cancelled.

We tried calling VSO to let them now that our travel plans had changed but nobody answered the landline and the 24 hour emergency line wasn’t working. In the end Dave had to call the personal mobile number of one of the staff and we’re still not sure if they’re actually going to let our employers know we’ll be late back.