An adventure in flying

Brazzaville Airport (Maya Maya)

1730 hr. left SIL center in Elephant with Jon and Kim Caton. Arrived 10 minutes later at the airport and parked the car and went to get a luggage cart. One of the porters came over and got our 4 suitcases/boxes and we walked into the airport. We got in line to go into the room where baggage registration was. At the door to the room, several military looking officials checked our airline tickets and our passports and let us through with the porter behind us. Jon and Kim waited outside. We entered the room and there were 4 or 5 tables where people had their boxes opened and checked by more military dressed airport officials (they also looked at our passports and airline tickets). They were very courteous as they had us open each box and they looked around in the boxes. One of the men especially liked the Rubbermaid chests, he thought they looked very practical for traveling.

We then walked straight ahead 15 feet to the Air Afrique counters where we registered our bags and got our boarding passes. The porter wanted to get paid and Wendy offered him 300 or 400 CFA (500 CFA=$1 dollar) but he said that was not enough and we weren’t really sure how much to give him so we explained that we had to pay for our excess baggage and then we could see how much we could give him. We had a total of 20 kilos extra baggage and the woman behind the counter asked if I wanted to split that 10 kilos and 10 kilos. I thought she meant to split the 20 kilos between our 2 tickets which didn’t make much sense but I said yes split the 20 kilos 10 and 10. She then wrote up a bill which I took to another window to pay. I only paid for 10 kilos (20,000 CFA) which I didn’t think about at the time but later wondered when was I going to pay for the other 10 kilos? We never did so I don’t know how that was all done. After paying the excess baggage charges I paid the porter 5000 CFA (way too much I realize now, I should have paid around 1000 CFA. I made the same mistake arriving in Bangui. Now I know! Since I didn’t know how much the excess baggage charges were going to be I had brought a lot of money (70,000 CFA) so I now had a lot left over which I didn’t want to take with us because normally you are not allowed to take currency out to the country. I was, therefore, going to go back outside the room and give the remaining money to Jon and Kim. When I got to the door I asked the guards who had initially let us in if I could go out for a minute to give something to my friend who was standing not 8 feet away. They were very reticent about letting me exit saying once you came through the door you normally couldn’t leave. After explaining the situation, however, that I needed to give my friends their money, they let me through while holding on to my passport. I gave all the money to Jon, said a very hurried good-bye and went back to the door to get back in. The guard gave me my passport and I thought he said something about I should give him something for having allowed me the privilege of exiting but I didn’t quite understand and he didn’t press it so I left and quickly went back over to Wendy and proceeded to the next step.

At the ticket counter, they had given us cards to fill out for leaving the country which we filled out and took to the police. We were first screened at the door by an employee who looked at our passports, airline tickets, and these forms. At the same time an Air Afrique employee? came over and was putting Air Afrique stickers on our hand luggage and wanted to know what was in the bags. When I told him a computer and when he felt the weight of the bags, he got a little upset and said we should have weighed in these bags also and paid for them. That was going to be a little difficult now that I had given all but 5000 CFA to Jon and Kim. As the man scolded us we just said we didn’t know and he didn’t press it, focusing his attention on another gentleman who also had lots of hand luggage. Meanwhile, the man at the door gave us back our passports, tickets, and forms and allowed us to enter the room where the police checkpoint was. I was expecting the Air Afrique person to suddenly come back to us and demand us to go pay extra for the bags but he was still busy with the other gentleman. We went into the room and gave our passport, airline boarding pass and police form to an official who looked it all over and stamped our passports with an exit stamp, kept the police form and gave us back our passports and boarding passes. We then moved on to the end of the room and a lady checked our vaccination booklets to make sure we had our yellow fever and perhaps cholera vaccines. She then waved us through and we went upstairs towards the departure waiting area. Before passing into the waiting area we went through the metal detectors. The hand luggage belt wasn’t working so we carried the bags through to the lady who physically opened the bags and made a very thorough search even asking me what was in my thermos and having me drink some to prove it was water!

At the same time, we were having our bags checked the first guard we had met who let us into the registering room and who had allowed me to exit came up to us and asked if he could speak with us for a minute. He was very polite and sat down to wait while we had our bags checked. At the same place was two customs officials who asked me if I had any money. I took out my wallet and showed them I only had 5000 CFA and told him we were going to Bangui which uses the same currency so he allowed me to keep the money. If we had been going on to Paris or America I think we would have had to surrender all cash. All the formalities taken care of, we were about to enter the departure lounge but had not yet talked to the original guard who was sitting there waiting. When he first came up to us I had the feeling he wanted to talk about us giving him some money for having allowed me to exit. He was not at all demanding and I believe we probably could have gone into the boarding lounge without him following us. I felt I should hear what he had to say though since he had been nice enough to let me exit and so told him we could talk now and he suggested we enter into the lounge. As we were some of the first people to check-in, the lounge was practically empty except for a few Congolese and one young American woman. The lounge was made up entirely of large plush couches (quite comfortable) and we moved over to some and sat down. The man sat down beside me and put his arm up on the back of the couch and leaned towards me and began to explain that he had a friend who had tablets of uranium. We could not figure out why he was telling us this, whether he wanted us to buy it or carry it to the United States or what. I told him I knew nothing about that type of scientific thing. He kept beating around the bush but we finally decided he wanted us to maybe help him find buyers for these tablets which he said could be used for a variety of things not including making nuclear bombs! I again explained that I wasn’t a scientist and that I didn’t know any, most of my friends being pastors and other missionaries. We also explained to him that we would not be going back to America for 2 years so we really couldn’t help him. He nodded and said it was a shame but that he understood, he stood up, shook our hands and wished us a pleasant flight. We still don’t understand exactly what he wanted us to do but considering it had to do with a hazardous material like uranium, we had a bad feeling that it might be illegal (the reason he had been rather quiet in approaching us and getting us alone away from the other officials) or perhaps even an attempt to trap us doing something illegal. After he left though we were finally through with all the formalities and were able to relax in the lounge. Dealing with officials combined with having to use French and not knowing what is going to happen next is a little stressful for me so it was nice to finally be able to relax. Total time from getting to the airport to finally relaxing in the lounge was probably 30 or 45 minutes so it really wasn’t as bad as it may have sounded. I find that if you are polite and courteous with the officials, answer all their questions honestly without trying to shade the truth, don’t argue and feign ignorance when you’re not sure what’s going on (a lot of times I don’t even have to feign it, it’s real ignorance) everything goes very smoothly. As I read the Bible in the lounge, God reminded me that I shouldn’t be afraid when dealing with officials. ‘Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established…For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you.’ Romans 13:1-3

We then settled down to wait, we had received a call that morning from Air Afrique telling us to be at the airport by 6:00 PM for registering. We got there about 5:45 and were some of the first to arrive. As I said we were almost the first ones to make it to the departure lounge and it continued to fill up for the next hour or two. At the ticket counter we had been told the plane was going to be late and that we would be leaving 2 hours late, but at the time I thought I had just heard wrong. It turned out the plane was 2 hours late and we did not take off until midnight. The airline offered their apologies by giving each person a free large drink of their choice. In all, we waited almost 5 hours but I did not really mind going early considering how nice it was to go through the formalities with no hassle or crowds. The only thing uncomfortable was the temperature in the lounge which rose considerably as the room filled up with people. The air conditioners in the ceiling so close yet not working!

At about 11:00 the plane landed at the airport and we watched as the passengers got off and the baggage was unloaded. It seemed to go slow and even after the unloading was done it didn’t seem like they were loading on our bags which were all arranged neatly on the tarmac. When we began moving towards the airplane we found out why. All the people were going over to the bags and locating theirs, I thought for a moment that we were going to have to load our own bags but what it was is that everybody identified their luggage to a worker who would tear off a part of the baggage tag and put it into an envelope. I suppose this was a way to ensure everyone’s bags got on the plane and to keep off bags that shouldn’t be on the plane. Happily, all our bags were together which made the identification process very easy.

The flight then took off about 30 minutes after getting on the plane (about mid-night) and lasted for 75 minutes. A nice dinner was served while in flight. The service was very nice but some of the stewardesses seemed a little rude to the customers. As one man was directed to his seat, he asked if he would be able to smoke and the stewardess told him no he was in the no smoking area, she scolded him that he should have asked for a seat in smoking at the ticket counter and he stated that he did but the stewardess said that was impossible. He again said he had and she again denied that possibility that there had been a mistake made on their part. The man took it rather philosophically without demanding another seat in smoking section and the stewardess did not seem interested in trying to accommodate him. It was an interesting example in the differences in culture, the customer is definitely not always right!

We landed in Bangui at 1:15 in the morning. Only about a third of the passengers got off, the rest going on to Niger or to Paris. Going through health and police went quickly and smoothly, the man stamping our passports wishing us a pleasant stay. We then went to the luggage belt and almost immediately the bags began coming out and our 4 bags were some of the first off! There were porters there and they took our bags over to the customs area. They told us to give them our passports to give to the customs officials and to put some money in the passports to make it go quicker but we told them we didn’t have money to put in the passports and after trying several times to explain that it would make things go easier, they finally gave up and we proceeded to lift our bags up on the inspection table open them and have them inspected. The customs agents were fairly thorough but not excessively, and no mention was made of money. The only questions they had were about our laptop computer which I told them was used having been purchase last January and would be used only for personal use which satisfied them. The porters then helped carry the bags outside the airport and demanded their way too much payment which as I mentioned earlier I naively gave them. But I was just happy to be out of the airport and see friends waiting for us (Hans Grundbacher, who had done WALC with us along with his wife and children) so it did not bother me too much.

Looking back it was a good experience as have been all of our traveling experiences here in Africa (or Europe for that matter). That is to say we have not been asked for bribes from officials and never really hassled about our papers or luggage. In light of the lack of those types of problems what is a couple hours of delay here or there in an airport! We are slowly getting used to dealing with porters and have now learned it is best to agree upon a price before accepting their service and that the price should be around 200 or so CFA per piece of luggage. We will put that into practice on our trip back to Brazzaville