In which Amy visits and I later discover that I am a complete idiot

Note that the title merely represents two very separate story lines for this post. Amy’s visit was not the cause of my realization. First, the Amy thread…

The Saturday before Easter, one of my favorite professors at MIT came to Ghana and stayed with me for a few days. Amy Smith teaches D-lab, and was the person who first introduced me to Ghana. Amy is a mechanical engineer and specializes in appropriate technology. She spends a lot of her time traveling around to third world countries trying to figure out how simple machines can improve the lives of the impoverished. Pretty neat, no? She has (rightly) gotten a lot of great press recently, and I have included some links at the bottom of this post that lead to articles about her, her work, and also to the D-Lab general website.

It was so great to catch up with Amy and spend some time with her. This was the first time I had ever really hung out with a professor outside of the MIT environment. Although I can only hope to achieve the things she has in her life, it was cool to interact with her on a more level playing field, as I knew that I would not be graded on my hosting abilities.

We did all sorts of things during her visit. We met with some Peace Corps folks to discuss a possible PC-Dlab partnership, got to see some interesting parts of the city, and went to a Sloane School/Ghana alumni meeting thing at the African Regent, a very swank hotel near the airport. Little did I know that the airport would be the scene of one of the most stressful/hugely embarrassing moments of my life.

This leads nicely into the second thread of this post. On Wednesday, I had planned to take an Emirates flight through Dubai to meet my family in Tuscany for a little spring break. With ticket in hand, I entered the airport three and a half hours in advance, bristling with excitement.

It’s worth noting here that I have only ever, in recent memory at least, traveled with an e-ticket. Therefore, the piece of paper stapled to the top of my emirates ticket envelope I assumed to be my ticket. This is not an excuse for my idiocy, rather, a possible reason for it.

I got as far as the ticket counter, where the ticket agent printed my boarding pass, before he stopped me to look at my ticket again. Turns out, that stapled sheet was just an itinerary. Early on, I must have lost the actual ticket, which I think I mistook for a receipt. The following few hours were filled with tears and anxiety, as you may well imagine. Not to mention that I felt like a completely incapable and dumb American. How could I try to get on my plane without a ticket? The fine and lovely people at Yoshiken Travel basically carted me around and managed to find me a Lufthansa flight through Frankfurt to Rome for the same night. They even arranged to cancel my Emirates ticket so I could get my money back.

The flights themselves were ok. I sat next to a lovely older Ghanaian woman (are there any other kind?) on the way to Frankfurt who, after sharing my story with her, gave me her allowed alcoholic beverages for the evening. Needless to say, I passed out shortly thereafter. My connection in Frankfurt was only about an hour, and I figured that German efficiency would mean that I would arrive at my next flight with time to spare. Not exactly the case. I found myself running through terminals, pushing through customs lines as politely as possible (“pardon me….i’m so sorry, my flight is boarding” etc.), and finally being that jerk that gets on the plane once all the other punctual passengers have already been seated. I sat down and fell back asleep.

Despite the incredible stress involved, a few positive things came out of this experience. First, I now know that when traveling in Africa, paper tickets are required. This may seem clear enough to your average seasoned traveler, but I guess I’m still learning. Doesn’t everyone need a terrible international flying story? I no have mine. Also, I was able to get to the fam even earlier than I had originally planned, so I got to spend a whole extra day with them. Finally, I connected through Nigeria and Germany, two countries I’ve never visited before. After the debacle I had gone through, I’m counting them, for sure.