Out Of Africa

No pictures this week. Just thoughts. CC is in Africa, and he took the camera. Our organization hosts a mid-year, mini-conference for administrators. Several years CC has not gone. One year we were having our baby boy. One year our school was undergoing accreditation. But this year he was free to go. .

I offered to drive him to the airport, and he took me up on it. His flight to Istanbul left at 11AM. He backed that up 2 hours, as it was an international flight, and planned to leave at 9AM. For the first time in his overseas life, he completely forgot about adding 1 additional hour for driving to the airport. So, while he finished up last conversations with the office staff at school, I got down his small suitcase and placed his clothes in. I got Big Ben dressed. All was well. Then he realized, "I should have left at 8!!!" We didn't panic. Afterall, his first flight was domestic and we still had an hour to get to the airport and an hour to check in. We quickly loaded up.

And then we discovered the major highway to the airport was closed. They re-routed us through a tiny neighborhood, bumper to bumper. A distance that would normally have taken us 10 minutes, took us 1 1/2 hours. As we crept along, I told him it was times like this that made me feel like we were on an "m" trip! There was absolutely nothing we could do. I called CC's secretary and she called the airport to tell them he would miss the flight and about the closed highway and ask if he could catch the next hourly flight. They advised to just keep driving and even if he arrived within 10 minutes of his flight, they'd put him on it. I did think, and say to CC, (9 years after 9/11) that miscalculating the time and closed highways can all be part of God's Sovereignty. All I knew to do was just to chatter and divert his attention to other topics. At one point, he admitted to me that the real miracle would not be whether he got on his plane or not, but whether he could keep his cool in all this.

I am happy to say the miracle occurred. He did miss his flight, but he did not lose his cool. We arrived about 15 minutes after his flight left. He went to the sales office, prepared to buy a ticket for the next flight, which would put him in Istanbul 1 hour before his Africa flight. It would cut it close, but it could be done. The lady made a phone call, said it was all taken care of, and sent him back to check in. No fee. No extra charge. Just a smile and a reminder to "Please run!" when you land in Istanbul.

At that point, CC said to me, "You know these Turks are amazing. They don't plan ahead. I mean it would have been nice to know a day ahead they were closing the major highway to the airport. But they are simply amazing in a crisis. They know how to rise to the occasion."

And then I got a text from Istanbul that he was boarding his flight, they'd fed him lunch, and that his Africa flight was 55 minutes late, so he'd had plenty of time. Aside from Big Ben sobbing at the airport as his Papa left, we'd gotten through the crisis with none of us melting down.