Sitting in the Departures lounge at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, having gone through Immigration, Customs and Security in readiness for my departure on a night flight back to Europe, I am able now to calmly reflect on how much change has taken place at this airport. In fact, this airport and my experience(s) here, has, more than anything else, informed my belief that the change for the better in Nigeria is rather more substantial than I had originally thought.
The air-conditioning in the terminal building is working this time around, the floors are shiny from having recently been polished and waxed, the abrasive and even sometimes rude public officials of the past are nowhere to be found; all I have seen so far are smiling faces and officials with a kind, polite and considerate approach to their official tasks and duties, an attitude that I had never associated with Nigeria in the past. I have to say it again, I am impressed with what I have seen and experienced in Nigeria. This country has made me proud.
I received a text message from the KLM airline earlier this evening notifying me that my connecting flight from Amsterdam to London tomorrow morning at 10:30 hrs has been cancelled. No reason for the cancellation was given, but the option was provided for me to select from a list of alternative flights to London. One was an earlier flight that would depart Amsterdam at 06:45, just one hour after my arrival from Lagos in the early hours of the morning. My estimated arrival time at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is 05:45 hrs.
My original connecting flight to London had provided for an intervening period of about 4 hours in Amsterdam, a time frame that I was sure would guarantee that my checked-in bag made it from the aircraft arriving from Lagos, to the one departing for London on which I would have been travelling. I was uncomfortable with the idea of arriving in London on this earlier flight, with the possibility that I might be separated from my bag in the process.
The next flight out of Amsterdam after my cancelled flight is at 13:45 hrs, so having arrived at 05:45, there will be a wait in Amsterdam of about 8 hours. I'm not sure if I should be pleased about this (Schiphol, after all, is a very nice airport), or whether I should be angry that my journey back to London is going to be significantly more tedious than I had anticipated.
I opted for the later flight, the one at 13:45 hrs, and the peace of mind in the knowledge that my bag would definitely be on the same flight as me. This wait will also give me the time to review in my mind everything that I have seen and done during this visit to Nigeria and to record for posterity my impressions and assessments of these.
I do not have an internet connection at my current location so I am typing this as a Word document with the intention to copy and paste it here sometime later, perhaps when I am at Schiphol and have access to WIFI.
My flight has been called over the tannoy and I must now proceed for boarding. I might try to update further during the flight but this cannot be guaranteed as it is a night flight, and Mother Nature will likely cajole me into sleeping through much of it. If I am not able to update, then I shall do this later from Schiphol.
04:35 hrs - I did in fact fall asleep after the hearty midnight dinner served shortly after departure from Lagos and woke up to find that we are only 25 minutes from our destination. I thought I should jot something down as a memo of this uneventful flight. Join me later on at Schiphol Airport, all eight hours of it.
As I already knew that I was going to remain at Amsterdam Schiphol for a while, I headed straight for the relaxation room set aside for those with long layovers at the airport, a quiet room equipped solely with reclining relaxation seats, where it is possible to have a nap or even sleep if necessary.
It was here that I met Izell, a young African American gentleman, a pharmacist, who as it happened had also been on that flight from Lagos. We both were surprised when we learned that we had arrived in Amsterdam on the same flight and were now sitting/reclining next to each other. It was even more surprising when we learned that we had arrived in Nigeria within days of each other, he on the 9th, me on the 6th of March. He too had a five-hour wait before his flight to Chicago, and he was just as positive as I was in his impressions of of Nigeria, and of his experiences there. He had been hosted by a Nigerian family during his stay and had nothing bad to say about the country.
We spoke at length, had a lot to talk about, and he was great company. We even had a chicken meal together, paid for using the meal vouchers KLM had provided to those of us on delayed flights. But unlike my own, his flight was called and has now departed as scheduled.
My own flight was cancelled, for the second time. So for the first time ever, I have received three boarding passes for the same journey. I hope this is the last one I will receive before I finally leave, because I'm not terribly keen on spending the night in a strange hotel room, with no change of clothes, all of which are contained in my checked-in bag, which is still in the possession of the airline and contracted to be delivered to me upon arrival at my final destination.
Both my phone and my laptop are dead. I have been unable to charge the battery on either of them in the Netherlands because of the incompatibility between the plugs on my devices and Dutch EU electricity sockets. However, they have kindly provided me with free web access, as well as the free use of a computer, which, by the way, is configured in Dutch. I have to translate everything into English before I can use it.
I shall update again when I get the chance.— at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.
