A Word on Transportation

I don't have to tell you that flying to Tanzania with Little Bit 1 and Little Bit 2 was intimidating. So much thought and effort was put into how to survive the trip there that I really didn't put enough effort into preparing for our visit. As a green mama, I have long frowned on children being plied with electronic games and the like; however, I will say that buying my 2- and 4-year old children ipod Nanos was some of the best money I've spent recently. And saving them until the fifteenth or so hour of the 26-hour flight was perfect...their battery life lasted until just before we landed in Dar. We were armed with backpacks full of every preschool diversion known to mankind, and they worked well.



The original master plan was to take our car seats on each plane, with the children securely strapped in. I've made several road trips this year to 'test drive' their ability to ride several hours at a time, and they passed with flying colors.



Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airlines does not allow any car seats in the cabin, for safety purposes. Although they do allow strollers, I noticed. Not to disparage EA in any way...their airplanes were safe and clean, and the staff was first rate. I was just disappointed that we could not have the kids in safety seats on those longer flights.



However, I quickly got over that sentiment when we arrived in Dar es Salaam; we did not use the car seats for the remainder of the trip. At first it was because we couldn't find the seat belts in the first vehicle we rode in. Then, it became a matter of not slowing down the group as we moved quickly in and out of varous vehicles throughout the trip. Some had seat belts, some did not. The kids adapted quickly to no car seats as well. Although Ru-baby, bless her heart, did ask each time we were moving, 'Where is my car seat?' but she did not melt down, thank God.



The Wild Child enjoyed riding on the floor at our feet of just about every vehicle. He took more prodding upon re-entry to get back in his seat, but he is also more vulnerable to being bribed with simple things like getting to hold his toddler-sized soccer ball in the seat.



Flying home was Mario Andretti-style until we were almost to Rome; then everything suddenly crashed into slow motion. The smell of food suddenly made me want to hurl. I prayed for God's mercy every time they wheeled the food carts down the aisles. It seemed like they served eight meals in that last ten-hour flight. And they were on the schedule of the country we had left, with breakfast served four hours after dinner with no darkness in between.



Not that it would have mattered; I let Wildman sleep across our two seats, guarding him zealously from the armrest I had raised but which the child behind us kept pushing down forcefully. There was a Somali woman beside us who was on her way home from marrying a Ugandan man and she was wonderful, enduring the occasional baby head in her thigh when Wildman pushed himself against her.



For the most part, I held Wildman's legs in my lap and tried to rest, but I've never been good at sleeping upright. Out of courtesy for the mom behind me, who had THREE children under the age of 10 with her, I did not recline my seat. The man in front of me, however, not only reclined his seat, but made a series of violent thrusts that pushed his seat a few inches further back, leaving me with well under a foot between my head and his seat. He had almost a yard between his head and the seat in front of him, even though it was reclined as well. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be a tall man in these small spaces for such a long time, but it finally became more than I could imagine, and I sought other space.



Remembering my French Club trip to Europe in high school, I turned sideways and slid the bottom half of my body between my seat and the row before me. After some wiggling, I actually found a very comfortable position, resting my ribcage on Wildman's backpack and my head beside his on the seat, with my legs curled around under me. It felt good, and my body immediately began to fall asleep peacefully, desperate for rest.



This lasted for approximately eight minutes, when the very kind and beautiful Ethiopian Airlines attendant tapped me gently and said, 'I'm sorry, sleeping on the floor is not allowed.'



I did not move. Desperate to maintain the status quo, I answered, 'Is it because of safety concerns?' as though that would baffle her beyond response.



'Yes. You have to get up.'



I slowly un-wedged myself from my haven (and when I say slow, that is because even in decent shape I weigh 30 pounds more than I did in high school) and prayed for God to help me find rest and not think the unkind thoughts I was thinking. I would have happily crawled in one of the overhead bins to achieve a horizontal position. After over an hour, I was able to lay down beside Henry by using the back of the seat in front of him as my back support. Basically, I was curled up over nothing, wedged between his seat and the seat in front of him like one of those new diamond settings. It bought me a couple of hours of rest, and that was enough to get through the remainder of the trip. That crazy God...always providing what we need.



Henry managed to poop at least four times on that trip home; the airplane lavatory changing table is really a funny place to hang out, but we did it. I tried not to hate Len for sitting with Ru-baby as she sat benignly, gazing at her ipod cartoons as he laughed through the in-flight movie starring some kid from High School Musical. But Len helped tremendously throughout the trip, and I did not hate him.



I fully expected to leave the plane with grandchildren - it was like the Hotel California; it seemed we would never leave. Those final hours were good for surveying the places we traveled and how, though. Coaster buses (think large VW Microbuses) with our friends and their drivers who loved loud Swahili techno music. An auto-rickshaw, a glorified tricycle with zip. The YL truck with Opas, the driver. And our taxi ride to the clinic with Frederic, in his snappy Toyota sedan, who was happy to drive us 40 minutes to the clinic when Ruby was sick, wait three hours for us there, and drive us back to the hotel, all for less than the 40 minute one-way ride would cost here. The kindness shown us by all of our transportation friends on the trip was enough to divert my mind away from the shiny red handle on the door of the plane as I desperately wanted to escape in those final hours of travel.