I promised to fill you in on all of the details of our trip home, so here goes!
After getting our long-awaited exit papers (I am framing them by the way) from the Congolese ministry of immagration, we rebooked our flights and packed... for the third time.
Air travel out of the DRC starts with a not-so-short trip to the airline's baggage office which is near the emabassy district. there they process your luggage just like you would at the airport desk and then leave it there (yepper) where they put it all on a truck and meet you out at the airport. Yeah, and we think that our airports have security issues!
I had packed the two of us into one bag which was just over 50 pounds. Not bad i thought, since the limit is two bags per passenger and those two pags must not weigh more than around 100pounds-ish. Mistake #1. the lady at the desk proceeded to chew me out in French, and while I dont' speak French, I got the jist. She made me pull out a bunch of stuff and thankfully one of the other guys had an extra bag there because I had already given my empty one away.
After I got the bags done, she asked to see Moses and quized me about his age, since his passport says he is under two! I stuck to what the passport says and refused to pay ANY MORE, no matter how big he is!
After all of this, Moses threw a fit because he was hungry and didn't want to be there anymore (join the club). when screaming at me wasnt enough, he peed his pants. I say his pants, but when a two year old pees their pants, really that means they peed there pants, there underwear, their socks and their shoes. thankfully his shirt was spared. Now we just had to wait til we went back to the guest house where my travel bag was that had his ONE spare pair of pants and underwear. of course now he was wet and didnt want to wait til we got back to the guest house so he screamed some more. Congolese eyewitnesses just looked at me with distain and the others tried to ignore us. One man told me to go get him a Fanta. Yes, thats what he needs as a reward for throwing a fit and peeing everywhere, an orange soda! He was obviously not a parent. By this time, of course, I was wet as well, because i had to pick him up several times as he tried to escape from the luggage office.
YES, this was EXACTLY how I wanted to start this epic 30 hour trip home!
From there we finally headed back to the guesthouse to wait til it was time to go to the airport. They had made us check out before we left for the luggage office so I had to change mister hungry-grumpy-pee-pee pants in the not-so-nice main restroom. So, once in his fresh clothes (and pull-up) we headed out to the airport... to wait some-more. He was better through all of the various lines we had to get through and we finally all got some food in the lounge.
SOon we boarded a bus that took us out onto the tarmack nd then looped back around to our plane... which was just outside the door where we boarded the bus! it was like one last reminder of how the Congo works.. or doesn't work, i suppose!
we had an extra seat next to us and some friends sitting with us as well! Bonus! He slept for most of the 9 hour flight until the end, when he had to put on his seatbelt for landing and spit his chocolate (i had bribed him with) all over his shirt and my shirt, and screamed bloody murder until the gate. Perfect.
We had a very long lay over in Brussels, giving us enough time to go to Starbucks :) eat a few sandwiches , shop ALL of the stores on our concourse, and re-check-in. something that our airlines make all passengers coming from Africa do before boarding.
From there it was on to Chicago. A very nice man in the seat next to us offered to relocate so we could have the extra room! He seemed very genuine, though he may have just heard rumors about our previous flight and took his chance to escape! We had a good but long trans-Atlantic journey and then arrived in Chicago where his immigration papers were processed and the whole deal was final! As I have previously noted, I had only slept a total of maybe an hour at this point so I was already a little rummy, and Moses decided that he didn't really care to be in O'hare international and wasn't quite sure he wanted to get on the next flight. After all, I had told him over 24 hours ago that we were going on a plane to see mommy and sissies, and we had already been on two planes with no mommy and sissies at the gate on the other side! Why would this last one be any different! So he cried a lot in Chicago and slept and cried some more til we boarded for Boise and he was out, in my arms the entire flight. This was great except that once or twice I fell asleep and dropped him! I KNOW! I can't believe I am even blogging about this...l yes, I dropped him! But he didn't really fall anywhere, the seat in front of us was so close I could rest my head on it, so he would just roll a little bit til he hit that seat and then I would catch him! I know, just say it, I am a horrible parent. But in my defense, I hadn't slept in over a day so.....
That was the flight home. I have to say, bringing home a child during the holidays may or may not backfire on us later when he realizes that he doesn't get presents every three to four days! seriously, between the normal new-baby gifts from friends and relatives, there was also the home-coming gifts, you know the oh-he-is-just-so-cute-i-saw-his-pic-on-facebook-and-had-to-bring-him-a-toy-truck kind of gifts. and one must count the well-we-brought-him-a-gift-and-we-dont-want-the-girls-to-feel-left-out presents. Oh yes, our house has been a steady flow of presents since we got home just weeks ago.
Weeks, can that really be true? Wow. It has been so great seeing friends and family and connecting again.
Moses Blessing is doing very well, all things considered. We are having a very busy, slightly wild time grafting him into an already busy family of four energetic girls but we are doing better everyday. I will keep you posted as best I can! Thanks for reading!
