In March 2008 I traveled to Odumase, Ghana with my daughter, Melissa, and Herb Minatre, and Tom Beal. The purpose of our trip was to give Cedi and his workers a workshop in making powder glass chevrons with a technique and tools developed by Herb and to investigate the potential for pursuing a hot glass program in Ghana. We had an incredible journey in the travel experience and in the sights we took in and people we met and in the things we did. These pages chronicle our trip.

GETTING THERE

Cedi Beads Annex is next door to the Starr Villa

Starr Villa courtyard

     After six months of preparation the last three weeks of which are very hectic, we are ready to leave. We’re off to the Reno airport to meet Herb and board for LA where we’ll change to a KLM flight to Amsterdam.  We’ve got our bags packed with clothes, gear, tools, presents, first aid materials and meds. In addition, we have packed one five gallon bucket each of glass of various types for Cedi, for the chevron project, and for my personal project. We’re anticipating an interesting bout with the TSA guys over the buckets so give ourselves an extra hour at the airport. 

   Herb meets us on time and we check in and move on to TSA. We are blessed with a friendly soul who checks out our glass with no bluster or undue freak out over the unusual material. We are even able to talk with him as he does the look-see. The inspection goes smoothly and quickly and we are off to x-ray screening of our carry ons and persons prior to boarding.

   Our flight leaves on time and we are treated to a quick flight in clear skies straight south giving us wonderful views from the plane of Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, and Yosemite Valley along the way. 

   Once at LAX we find our way to the KLM gate for our flight to Amsterdam and wait for boarding. We bought some water on landing and had to surrender it at the next security checkpoint which is grating. Our 747 is at the gate and being fueled up. They start boarding the plane and we hold back until some of the rush is over when there’s a bit of a commotion up near the gate. I go investigate to find that a truck has bumped the wing and they are checking for damage.  Before long we are informed via pa system that the plane is unloading and the flight is canceled as the fuel truck has hit the planes wing and damaged the aileron beyond use. At this point Melissa gets up and sprints down to the check in counter to make second place inline for dealing with our flight arrangements. Near two hours later, she clears the counter with, amazingly, tickets for us. We are to head to Tampa and on to JFK, then to Amsterdam, with only a 12 hr delay for our arrival in Accra. KLM was insisting that they could do nothing with the computer for at least six hours was asking us to stay over in LA for four days to wait for another flight. Not happening! Our personal travel arranger Melissa has it handled.

    We are suffered to collect our luggage which was checked through to Accra and schlep it across LAX three terminals away and check in again with a new airline and to put the mystery buckets through another TSA checkpoint. This time it doesn’t go as smoothly as the Reno TSA inspection, but after a good long time and hearing from one of their guys that  s**t happens, they clear our buckets. Then we are off to the x-ray and personal check where we have to surrender yet another group of airport bought water and to go through the highest level of screening, as our tickets were bought within a couple of hours of flight and are one way…. fun stuff.

   Finally, we are into the terminal-again- and at the gate. Once boarded we find that we are on a China Airlines flight loaned to Delta and off we go.  Over Texas, we are asked on the PA system if there is a doctor in the house, as a passenger is definitely feeling unwell. This wakes me and I figure we’ll surely be going down, and sure enough, down we go to land in New Orleans for two hours to handle the medical emergency. The EMTs board and take the lady off the plane after a bit ( I wonder if they had to surrender their water? or be x-rayed? ) Then we are fueled up and take off to Tampa.  We are wondering at this point if we’ll make our connecting flight to JFK on time. On landing, we find our flight north has been delayed for a couple of hours so we are fine. In the end, it’s delayed some seven hours waiting for parts to be flown in to do a repair mandated by FAA inspection. We seem to be at the leading edge of a whole month of FAA inspection hassles which has, to date, caused thousands of flight cancellations and several million passenger delays and missed flights. We are lucky though as our flight (now a Czech Airlines bird) gets off in time for us to make our connection to Amsterdam by a 50 minute window. At this point, we will be 24 hours getting from Reno to New York, lucky us. Once on the ground at JFK we are held on the ramp for an hour due to no spot on the concourse for our plane.  When we finally get inside we make a sprint to our departure gate anyway, a good 600 yards, to find our flight has left only five minutes earlier. Once again, Melissa hits the counter and wrangles us new tickets – this time to Frankfort on Delta and on to Accra via Lufthansa. At least this time we don’t have to surrender our expensive airport water or undergo another x-ray and personal inspection. About five hours after landing, we board for a smooth flight to Frankfort where we deplane, change terminals via a train ride, are x-rayed and inspected once more, and, of course surrender our dang water yet one more time. One small consolation is that the Germans don’t want to x-ray our shoes. They do however want us to completely empty our pockets. I now have one very well x-rayed pocket flashlight.  Once at the gate we wait for our flight in a nice waiting area and board for the flight south. It’s a big plane and I’m seated in the middle so don’t see any of the ground views going south.  We get one more stop to a new place along the way, Lagos, Nigeria.  We land just before sundown and taxi in to the terminal such as it is, seeing a burned out jetliner along side of the runway. Rusted dead vans also decorate the side of the taxiway. There are small corrugated metal buildings along the way to the concrete terminal building.  Here we offload 2/3 of our plane, take on no new passengers, and back out to take to the air for a 35 minute hop to Accra. On landing, the door opens to greet us with a wall of heat and humidity.

We are finally in Ghana after only 52 hours in transit from Reno, eight airports, five flights, seven boarding passes, five x-ray inspections yet, amazingly, all our luggage made it with us!