We have been out of Tanzania now for the past 4 weeks, and had a rather exhausting journey (and eventful too) returning to Dodoma. We arrived back quite late on Monday 19th July, and were welcomed by other MAF families, back to Tz. Someone had prepared food for us too, so that was also really lovely. It was great to be back again, and great for the children (and adults) to see their friends again. The time off compound was good, but you know they say it's good to get back home again, and it really is.
Our return journey began on Saturday morning, when we were told that we didn't have a 'through' ticket, but that it was 2 separate tickets - which meant that BMI didn't follow the allowance of luggage that BA had given us - costing us a lot of stress, effort (at Heathrow where we had to go and collect our luggage and check it in again) and money too! After standing at the check-in desk for about 45 minutes, where the ladies were very sorry, but neither they nor their management could do anything about it for us, we then hurried on through to the gate where there was a small 40 seater plane waiting for us, the last people to be boarded.
It was a challenging start to our journey, but we carried on regardless - we had another flight to catch you know. Well, once into Heathrow, we bagged our luggage, hauled it onto 3 trolleys (oops, there were only 2 adults) and went straight down to catch the train to get to Terminal 5. We had 11 large suitcases, 3 small trolley ones, 4 backpacks (relative to size of person) and one laptop bag. Once we reacher the posts through to the platform, we began running in and out (we still had to supervise the children who have no experience of public transport) between the trolleys and the platform. There was then an announcement that the train would be coming in at the far end of the platform, followed quickly by another one to say that passengers should stay away from the edge of the platform - guess where our little travellers had been peering - over the edge. Well, we legged it down the platform (I hope you're getting the picture) and got some help from a Russian sea captain for a big company that sails between N.I. and England - who was flying over. He helped us with our mammoth job, and we all finally made it onto the train, which arrived before we had got all the luggage to the end of the platform. In these days (in which we are now living) people are very cautious of children being left alone, but the challenge was really there - how do we do this without letting go of them - at least a little? Thank God, we did catch our train, and got more help at the other end too - getting off. We went up to Terminal 5 and continued our journey - the only other points worth mentioning were leaving a small child's backpack on the trolley at the other end of the tunnel, and losing a pink dolly, either on the train or whilst waiting for the missing bag. We went back both times!
We had a good night flight, and all the children slept fitfully. Needless to say, Mummy and Daddy were pretty tired in the morning.
After 1 night stop in Dar, we climbed into our car for the return journey (6-7 hours) to Dodoma. The cash point was being difficult that morning, and we found it rather a challenge to get some cash 9 and we live in a cash society!) Anyhow, we eventually got on the road, and were about 2 hours outside Dar when we had a blow out. Now to a person who knows very little about cars, it sounded like one of the hard plastic suitcases had dropped off the roofrack and still tied on, was banging along the road behind us. What a racket! We stopped as quickly as we could and emptied the car of people and luggage so that Glenn would be able to use our little jack to change the wheel. We were very thankful that God was with us and helped Glenn to hold onto the car - he had to fight to keep her on the road - and that we were able to stop safely, just off the road. With trucks and buses passing at high speeds, it was really good to be off that road. As it was, cars and horns were used as people passed by, thinking that we were too close to the road and warning us to stay off.
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