Landing in Lagos

I landed in Lagos at about 6 pm. As the plane approached the airport it passed by innumerable muddy lanes flanked by infinite brown rooftops. I couldn't make out any tall buildings. It seemed like we were going past a sea of corrugated sheets. As the plane landed a thought crossed my mind, where have I come?   The image of the never ending brown sea underneath is something that has always caught my attention during takeoffs and landings. As I got out of the plane, the first thing that caught my eye was the dark blue carpet. I had never seen such a thick carpet at any airport and I would get to know later that it was from one of the sister companies of the group.  I took my first steps on Naijaland, I was a bit nervous. I had the address of the Office but the plan was to reach Lagos at mid-noon. I could only hope that someone had come to the Airport to pick me up.

I reached the immigration desk in the midst of the crowd from the plane.  It was taking a lot of time to clear the passengers through the formalities. And then suddenly someone was calling out for “Mr. Battu Venkata” I have never been called that so I probably recognized the call on the 3^rd or 4^th attempt. I made my way ahead and met Mr. Sheyi who was still calling out my name.  He took me towards the desk and the formalities were quickly completed.  Then Mr.Sheyi asked me to pick my bags and meet him at the exit.

Now I had two big burly bags and one had to pay to use trolled. I was flummoxed, not just by that fact but because I had Indian Rupees and I couldn't see a Foreign Exchange booth. Luckily there was an Indian lady waiting for the baggage beside me and I decided that she would be person to give me the solution. She quickly flushed out a Naira 200 note for me to use and waved away the 50 rupee note that I had quickly calculated to be just compensation.

And so I got out of the airport intact and got into the car that had been borrowed to pick me up. In the car, I got my phone and the IOU money in Naira for expenses. I wanted to see the city, but it was already dark and I was tired. We had to go to the office to pick up the person who had lent the car. Same scenario at the office, it was dark and everyone had left. I got dropped off at the place where we would spend a couple of days before shifting to our apartment. What struck me as odd as I entered the compound were the high walls with barbed wire and the strong gate at the entrance. I could finally meet my batch mates here and after exchanging notes spent the night in the house of the nice couple upstairs. This area was Pelewura near Apapa Port, Lagos. I slept that night in a bit of excitement. I was finally in Nigeria and had no clue what the future would hold.

D-Day

I was all set, packed up for the journey 'Saath Samundar Paar' with heavy luggage which would have been heavier if I had not convinced my Mom that there would be edible things available in Nigeria.

There were 2 other batch mates going along with me as we had planned to take the flight from Mumbai together. I had planned to take the last flight of the day from Bangalore to Mumbai, so I would have 4 hours to transfer to the international airport to join them and then go through the airport formalities.

 We(family)  left a good 2.5 hrs before the flight assuming that I would reach the airport an hour before flight time. We had traveled for just about 20 minutes when it started pouring, first a slight drizzle that continued to grow and became a waterfall on the windscreen. Along with rain in Bangalore, the traffic comes free. So, anxiously hoping for light traffic ahead we hit the airport road finally with just about an hour left. Long story short , I stepped at the gate with 15 minutes left for the last flight from Bangalore to take off.

I was not allowed  enter the airport because the plane was already taxing and even though there were 4 more passengers who joined me later asking the flight to be stopped for 10 more minutes and calls made by the airline representative requesting permission to hold the flight for some more time, nothing worked.

And so I found myself someone who had not missed a bus or a train in my life, missing a flight. And missing this flight meant that I wouldn't make it to Mumbai in time for the international flight. A whole lot of emotions ran through my head at this point, anger that I  had some how brought this situation into play, disappointment with the airline which left its passengers to hang out in the rain. I even imagined that this was a sign of fore-boding but after shaking away all these thoughts I still had to catch the flight from Mumbai in 6 hrs.

The communication board told me that the next flight to Mumbai would be an hour after the international flight had left. Out came my laptop and the dongle that I for some reason had carried to the airport.
I had tried various permutations and combinations of getting to Lagos and since it was not possible to get in time to Mumbai started searching for options to get to Dubai so that I could join my friends there. And there it was the early morning flight to Dubai from Bangalore. Now the problem was that the tickets had been booked by an agent and it was now midnight.  The airport offices are closed too and there was no counter for the airlines at the airport.

The connection to the internet helped in getting the customer helpline and after a long verification process when it was just about to take another 5-10 minutes to finish the ordeal , my phone decided it had enough of overtime and promptly shut itself down. I borrowed a phone from my dad and began the whole process again and finally after waiting for 45 mins for the consumer helpline to wake up people in Mumbai and make the necessary changes, my flight ticket was transferred to Bangalore. I had already informed my friends that I would be boarding my flight from Bangalore instead of coming to Mumbai.  It was 2:30 am and I bid goodbye to my family for the 2nd time in 4 hours and then turned towards the gate to be denied entry for the 2nd time as the ticket in my hand was for the Mumbai flight and the passenger records for Dubai had not been updated with my name.

Another call to the helpline and I was asked to contact the Air-India cabin to help me in getting me into the airport. Finally I could breathe a sigh of relief when I was seated in the plane. When the plane took off I hoped to reach in time for the morning flight to Dubai as my 2nd flight had also been changed to afternoon, cause the arrival time of the Bangalore flight wouldn't allow me to catch the morning flight. I din't sleep much having spent most of the flight with the in flight entertainment system. As soon as we landed I found the gate for the Lagos flight and walked as fast as I could to reach there and reached the gate with 20 mins left for the flight. I asked if there were empty seats on this flight and was told yes. Next I asked if I could be transferred to the current flight. The officer was ready but after consulting the supervisor said that they could have sent the baggage later and allowed me board the flight but since the destination was Lagos they would take any chance with the baggage and so I had to go along with it. And thus began a 7 hour boring wait for my flight.
And finally after more than 24 hours of leaving from my home I landed in Lagos.