My group of 24 Ghanaian exchange students arrives at Dulles airport at 12:30 and we begin the Herculean task of checking them in - sorting passports and making sure boarding passes match up to unusual names like Abubakari Bakari and repacking many bags that tip the scales over the 50 pound limit. We move at a snail's pace through security in the crowded airport but luckily AFS volunteers help get our 2 blind students, twin brothers James and Isaac, through the whole process of body scans and getting their bulging backpacks through x-ray.
We settle in at our gate, making quite an impact on the waiting area around Gate B74 and I answer Lots of questions from passengers about the kids and their program. About 4 pm Delta announces that our 7:20 pm flight was rescheduled to 9 pm and this immediately raises the question whether we can make our 10:20 pm connection at JFK. After worried consultation with Rahul, the Delta Gate desk guy, he assures me that JFK will hold our flight to Accra, Ghana as long as our flight leaves promptly at 9 pm. An hour or 2 later Delta cancels the 9 pm flight. Now what?
I stand at the gate desk for over 3 hours as Rahul struggles to rebook our party of 25 to Accra. Many phone calls to AFS, etc and advice from the long line of travelers in line behind me who eye my long monopolization of Rahul with a mixture of suspicision and sympathy and many scowls. Rahul has to duck behind the partition wall many times with a phone at each ear.
By 10 pm we are booked on a complicated schedule on MONDAY, breaking our group into 2, flying through Amsterdam, etc. the kids are in shock that we have to return to the hotel for 2 more days ( how will their families know who were traveling from remote areas to meet them Saturday?) and the AFS staff rush to get rooms reserved back at the hotel. Rachel from AFS arrivesto help me and she herds the kids back to baggage claim to retrieve all those heavy bags we has earlier worked so hard to check! I stay at the gate to collect the slowly issued new tickets. We have been at the airport 10 hours.
Swirling around me are all the disgruntled passengers who also have cancelled flights when I suddenly get a call from Rachel at baggage claim- Raymond,one of the students, has lost his passport in my gate area! Panic! I begin scouring the area, asking people to move their luggage and soon travelers are helping me look for the lost Ghanian passport. A woman suddenly remembers that the cleaning woman swept up the area where the kids had previously sprawled.
I approach this unsmiling Haitian cleaning woman and she indignantly tells me that of course she would not throw away a passport! I beg her to let me go through her trash bags and she finally agrees. With a change of heart, she pitches in to help me dig through the trash of old yogurt cups, plates of food etc. and suddenly a light bulb goes off in my head - what if the passport was in something? I call Rachel. Raymond tells her it was in a white envelope. Cleaning lady and I search with new adrenaline. Suddenly a woman traveler runs over waving a white envelope over her head, "I found the passport!"
The whole gate area erupts in cheers and applause! I hug the lady who found the envelope and the cleaning lady approaches me for her own hug. I head to baggage claim with all the well wishes from the travelers around Gate B74 and arrive to big hugs and applause from the kids and sheepish Raymond. Back to the hotel and dinner in the hotel restaurant at close to midnight.
The only last mishap of the evening is when 3 of the girls go to their assigned hotel room and find a white man sleeping in it!
