Travelling with children to and from remote places, nothing is easy and the road is filled with challenging stumbling blocks. Welcome to the yearly adventure…
It’s a solid two days of traveling for us and our five bags to get back home. Oh the bags, bags, bags, bags. There’s the thoughtful process before purchases asking questions like, “will this thing bring joy to my daily life in Ethiopia?” or “will this fit in with my capsule wardrobe?” These questions help to eliminate the accumulation of stuff. The stuff I want to buy because it’s pretty or because we don’t have that there.
The stumbling travelling adventure begins. We we wake up at 3:30 am to transport these five loaded bags onto a truck to go to the small airport in this town where we spend two months of the year. The bags are checked in and I think, “I won’t have to deal with these for a few more hours until we transfer again but we’re golden right now because Leg One of Four is happening.”
When we walk out of the airport and onto the tarmac to the prop plane, it’s oddly quiet. Everyone’s bags are being loaded though. We put our smaller bags in the overhead bins and underneath the seats in front of us like we’re told. The safety demonstration is done by the lovely French Canadian women who dutifully speeds through the French portion. (By the way, why are we still shown how to put on a seatbelt?) But the engines are not started and we are not on our way. There is a lot of fog on this early September morning. Apparently it’s quite common this time of year. So while this First Leg is only meant to be an hour long flight, we sit in the plane for the hour and then we are de-planed (as if we got on by planing ourselves).
And the ultimate stumbling block, with all the upcoming connections that must be made, I decide we should have a re-do of this entire experience (rather than risk scrambling all along the way). I ask for those five bags to be taken off of the plane and we re-book for three days later when the weather calls for sun. I send a message to my brother, who calls my cousin, who calls her dad, who has a truck to come and get us. We load the five bags on to the truck and deposit ourselves once again at my mom’s apartment for these bonus days.
What unfinished business do I have left in Canada, universe? I didn’t get my glasses tightened. That must be it. (All you glasses-wearing people know what I mean.) Or maybe I’m meant to finish this blog post 😉
Now the bags just sit. I am very reluctant to open anything. What do I feel like doing? Right now I’m going to eat a peach. ‘Cause that’s what it feels like the universe told me to do. Excuse me while I try to enjoy it.
