Faulty Bomb Threats

The 5:15 am wake-up call came early this morning and was supposed to be the start to a fairly easy day of travel from Cape Town, South Africa to Lusaka, Zambia. Program Director, Macmen Luhana, would collect us from the airport and by mid-afternoon we would be laying a framework for a summer building KnowledgeBeat from the inside out. That’s not exactly how the day panned out…

Annie and I were met at the Cape Town airport by a crowd of ~200 people herded into a small overhang in the garage directly across from the domestic terminal. People had been waiting there since 5 am for the airport to re-open due to a faulty bomb threat. After waiting there for around an hour everyone began pushing to the front and the airport re-opened.

We made it inside and found that our flight was in its final ticketing and check-in stage, what a joke! The flight was technically closed and boarding before travelers had even checked in. Annie and I were starting to get a little concerned about our connection in Joberg to Lusaka. It was going to be tight, be we were most likely going to be able to make the connection, or at least that’s what we thought.

When we finally got into our seats and began taxiing down the runway, the plane shut down its throttles and we pulled over for a “mechanical problem.” Come to find out the airplane door wouldn’t close properly. At this point, there was officially no hope in making our connection. Welcome to traveling in Africa.

We arrived in Jo-burg at 11:07 am, 17 minutes after our Lusaka flight had already left. The re-ticketing line was horrible because of all the Cape Town connections. After an hour in that line we were told that we could be confirmed on a 6:50 pm flight.

So here Annie and I sit at the Johannesburg Airport writing our second blog. I guess I shouldn’t have been joking around with her last night that our travels were going to be a hysterical comedy of errors…