Transit

The saner people in my organization spent about 18 hours total flying over here to Uganda: 10 hours from Seattle to London, and then another 8 from London to Entebbe, Uganda’s airport. However, those who know me also know that I sometimes like to make things difficult for myself. Here is a rundown of my travel experience getting to Uganda.

Portland to San Francisco, 2 hours
--Person in front of me immediately reclines their seat. They should make it protocol that you cannot recline your seat if the person behind you is over 6 feet tall, unless of course the recliner is more muscular than the reclinee.
--It ended up being OK because one does not need much space to eat their United Airlines peanuts.

San Francisco to Dubai, 15:35 hours
--Emirates from here on out. Rumors heard that the Emirates stewardesses are very pretty are affirmed.
--After a quick viewing of Angels and Demons, my personal monitor in front of me breaks, yet I decide not to move over to the empty seat next to me on the 10% capacity airplane for fear of repercussions.
--Though I had reclined my own seat (I checked to see if the guy behind me was bigger than me, he wasn‘t) , I found that laying forward at an angle and resting my head on fold down tray belonging to the seat next to me was the most comfortable way to get about 20 minutes of sleep.
--Emirates, despite their monitor problem, tops my list for their “no questions asked” policy regarding the consumption of their free alcohol.

Layover in Dubai, 11 hours
--Emirates puts its passengers up in a hotel for free if their layover is over 8 hours. Millennium Airport hotel was nice, and would have taken a picture of it if it were not for the intense humidity that kept steaming up my camera lens.
--Discovery made: Emirates can afford to give out free beer on flights only because they charge $8 per Budweiser at their hotel.
--Met an Ethiopian girl on my way back to the airport in the morning. She is beautiful, runs the only two yoga studios in all of Ethiopia, reads Niall Ferguson, laughs at my jokes and is not interested in marriage.

Dubai to Ethiopia, 4:30 hours
--Entertainment monitor number two breaks, but this time before I get to even watch a movie. I am starting to think that it is just me.
--I detect a faint odor emanating from somewhere behind me. Ah, the person directly behind me has taken his shoes off. I sure hope he is deplaning at our stopover in Ethiopia.

Ethiopia to Dubai, 3 hours
--Just as they are serving our lunch, the odor grows exponentially. I turn my air valve on maximum in hopes of trying to blow the odor away for I am beginning to lose my appetite, but it still gets stronger. As I am cutting my Kofta sausage my right elbow nudges up against something damp. It appears as though the gentleman behind me with the fungus issue has wedged his foot in between my seat and the side of the plane so far that it is intruding on the back third of my armrest.

I arrive in Entebbe, extremely hungry and entirely happy to be off the plane and in Uganda, my home for the next five plus months. Coming up: Chicken-slaughtering, stove-making, and insider accounts of Ugandan police compounds.