I am here in the capital city of Yerevan and is it cold here. There will be more on that later. When I met my Save the Children driver upon my exit from Immigration at the airport here, I could see on his face that I was not ready to encounter the sub-freezing weather outside the terminal clothed in my light cordouroy coat. Ah, but I came armed with my heaviest down coat, Thinsolite gloves and woolen pull-over-the-ears hat.
I neglected to finish writing about my return trip from the Save the Children USA offices in Mali and Guinea last December. I was pleased with the outcome of the assessment of whether our Country Office there, collectively called Sahel, should go to paperless data collection in some of their programs. I am looking forward to hear the reports of how they will implement the use of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA’s).
During the second week of my trip, the team traveled to the neighboring country of Guinea, specifically the city of Kankan. I really enjoyed working with the group there. The Save the Children office was superb but, I will not describe the general hygiene in the city at large, specifically the toilet facilities. Several times my meals were offered warm which I politely refused. This is why I always bring small packaged snacks with me especially during trips to field locations to test our PDA forms.
Well, sure enough, I picked up a virus. This is actually the first time that it was viral and not a bacterial opportunist in my alimentary system. I was actually feeling fine until I departed from the plane at Charles de Gaulle airport outside of Paris on my return from Mali. I was hurrying to another terminal for my connect flight. Suddenly, while standing on a moving walk way, my last meal was urging to exit from the upper reaches – right there on the walkway. This is how you know it is viral, since if it is bacterial, it will want to void itself from lower down. I want to you spare any other descriptors, but at the time I was struggling not to make myself a spectacle right there in the airport. I recovered slightly after a safety net trip to a handicapped toilet facility to achieve some privacy just in case I involuntarily became a human fountain. I still had a couple of hours until my flight back to Seattle. I needed to determine my flight gate before I vainly traveled to another terminal.
Somehow, I found myself on the relatively deserted upper floor above the main terminal. The large expanse of this floor was empty except for a column surround by a low tableau which allowed me to sit my briefcase on and at the same time to lean against. Instead of an opaque wall In front of me, there was what must have a 40 foot glass wall extending down to the ticketing/security area below. Behind this glass was an equally high departing flight reader board. My flight was still too far in the future to be displayed, but here I found refuge. I attempted to return to this location on my visit to this same airport yesterday enroute to Armenia, but I was stopped by a security guard.
My nausea had now subsided, but I was struck by an overwhelming desire to sleep. In fact this after effect of the virus extended for the next three days. Afterwards, I was fine with no ill effects, which was confirmed by my personal doctor. But here, I struggled to remain awake. I wrapped my fanny pack harness into a Gordian styled knot with my briefcase. I set my PDA alarm to the highest decibel level just prior to the time I would have to reach my gate. But would unfold was far more interesting to my bodies need for rest. During the next couple of hours, other sojourners of airport catacombs would find themselves approaching me. I would first hear their footsteps which would arouse my from an uncomfortable doze. Looking up I would find a person obviously lost. Well, I found myself on my feet and asking them for their boarding pass. Then we would jointly scan the huge reader board from our vantage point to determine their gate. I spoke with a young Vietnamese man (my assumption, since he arrived from Ho Chi Minh City). There was also the young Iranian lady, and several others with that look of panic on their faces. Of course they each warily approached me for want of directions and solace from another traveler. Still, I must of presented a suspicious visage. I was anticipating a visit from security based on my image showing up in some distant control room via the ubiquitous cameras overhead.
I got onto my flight and promptly fell asleep. Imagine me, the person who loves flying and takeoffs asleep as we lifted off of the European continent! Once, I stirred from my slumber. The lady sitting a couple of seats from me suggested that I could probably get something to eat in the galley since I had missed the meal. She subtly leaned away from me as I told her I that I was just returning from a Third World country and that I had picked up some intestinal virus. This was too much information that I hoped would not result in a quarantine for me when I arrived in the U.S.
No comments:
Post a Comment