Cueibet Sudan trip: Day Nine - 9th Feb., 2010

Today was the day we get to go home... The thought brought chills down my spine just thinking of what it would feel like being out of a rough hostile environment for the first time in over a week.. We slept in for the first time on the trip. We ate breakfast at 8 am and then prepared to leave for the airport at 9:15 to make sure we were there at the time appointed for us by MAF (9:45AM). When the driver had not shown up by 9:30, we called our host, Martin, and he got another driver to come. The other driver had gotten caught up in an earlier job that morning and had forgotten to tell Martin. So we finally got to the airport at 10:10 AM. That worked out perfectly since we saw the MAF guys arriving at the same time...

We entered the departure hall to clear immigration along with the MAF representative. This is where it got sticky. We had arrived in Juba penniless except for some Kenya Shillings we had on us which were totally useless there.. Martin had paid for our hotel expenses ($300) with our promise to pay his wife back when we arrive in Nairobi. He also gave us 100 Sudanese Pounds because we were told we had to pay a departure tax each of 20 SP. So we knew we had 40 SP or any other unforeseen bill. Then we remembered that, although we had renewed Janet's pass, we had not registered her.. Immigration informed us of that immediately and we knew we were in trouble.. So we paid for her registration since she was ahead of us in line... Then they looked at John and my papers and informed us that we, too, had not registered and needed to do so at 84 SP each... O Boy... We tried to tell them that we had registered in Rumbek... They ask us for the stamp... We showed them the stamp on our passes and the receipts we got for payment. That was not enough to them. We needed to have the stamp in our passports, not just on the stamp.. I had walked over to my bag that had already been checked to get my receipt and was praying as I went. When I came back the immigration man had changed his mind... He forgave us and let us go. Two other things that I still can't figure out... We had not paid the 84 SP that was required for the registration. We had been told it was 48SP and had paid that in Rumbek. The immigration person in Juba had not seen the difference and had changed his mind... Second, we were not asked to pay a departure tax of 20SP each as we had been told. I don't know whether we had been miss-informed or what... We did not stick around to ask... We went through security and awaited our plane to arrive from the Upper Nile Region of Sudan...

Torit, Sudan a week ago, for the first time in my entire life I had gone into a country that my dad had never been to... It sounded a bit trite the first time the thought came to me, but it really grew as a milestone in my thinking... I have followed in my Dad's footsteps so much in my life, I had never visited a country my dad had never stepped foot until I was 53 years old.

We touched down down in Loki (as it is known to those who often travel through there) at 1PM. I had an urge to kiss the ground after getting out of the plane. I realized that the only other time I had had that desire was when I had landed in New York City as a teenager after having spent the last three years under the dark blanket of the Biafran war in Nigeria. Unlike Sudan Immigration, the Kenyan authorities were kind and professional to all. We all passed through and had a nice soda and cookies as we awaited our new pilot to arrive from another location to take us to Nairobi Wilson Airport.

As we flew toward Nairobi, the terrain below us got greener and greener... Then we began to recognize landmarks below us... Lake Baringo then Nakuru town, Lake Bakuru, Lake Elementaita, Naivasha, Lake Naivasha... Then we flew directly over Mount Longonot and headed for home.

When we got out of the plane, we felt the first chill we had in over a week. For Janet, it was the first one since early October last year. We switched on our cell phones and called home... Molly told us and Carol, John's wife and Janet's daughter was on the way to pick us up at the airport. Then we found out she was stuck in traffic.. Even that sounded good... As we waited for her, our stomachs began to rumble with hunger. We had not had lunch... We thought of going to a nearby cafe to get some food to tide us over for the long commute across town... Then we remembered our peanuts. I had almost thrown them out with the trash in Juba, but didn't and then for the last time on our safari, we quieted our hunger with good ole peanuts...