Home at last!

That is the worst "labor" I've have ever experienced!  We returned late last Sunday night from Africa.  I was starting to feel like we would never make it back to the US.  It all started out with us being evicted from our hotel on Saturday afternoon (our reservations had expired) and sitting outside waiting to hear whether we were to go to another hotel or leave on an airplane to come home.  We already had plane tickets booked but didn't have our exit letter yet.

To the left is our friend, Heather, who unfortunately still remains in Africa with her baby awaiting an exit letter.

So our attorney/guide/friend, Etienne, arrived around 4pm and stalled on telling us whether or not we got the exit letter.  He handed us our passports and went to the car and pulled out our file with the exit letter!  I hugged and kissed him crying.  It was bittersweet because we of course wanted to go home, but we hated to leave our new friend and her baby.  We really enjoyed spending time and sharing pizza with them.  Since her husband had to return to the US the week before we had been helping watch her baby while she showered and washed clothes.   We said our goodbyes and went to the agency office where we helped Etienne make copies of our file.  The agency was closed since it was Saturday, so he needed our assistance.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 8:25 pm and it was now 5.  We were nervous knowing it is advisable to be at the airport 3 hours before departure.  We still had to drive to the airport which in real time takes 20 minutes but in the countries traffic could take up to three hours.  And, by the way, now we had to check our baggage at the airport which was an added stress.  We finally had everything ready and left for the airport at 5:45.  Well, we almost had everything ready....in the car Etienne had to call the US Embassy to talk them into bringing Della's immigration packet to the airport. 

The reckless taxi cab driver caused me to become very ill about 1 hour into our very hot and diesel fumed journey.  I rolled the window down (which I was always told NOT to do for the past two weeks because it's not safe), and was so afraid I would vomit on the people walking by.  Fortunately, I hadn't ate much so I only dry heaved for the next 10 minutes as we continued to drive.  We continued to the airport as the sun set.  We finally made it 2 minutes before they closed the baggage check!  Our attorney was now relieved and was not worried about us missing our flight.  It wasn't easy after that,  three more times I thought, "we aren't going to get out of here".  Finally, we made it through immigration (they said we were missing a paper, Doug had to go get Ety to straighten that out) and we ignored the man at security asking for "money" and walked to the airplane shuttle.   

For the next 28 hours Della was wonderful, she didn't cry or scream once!  I vomited continuously due to motion sickness, didn't eat, barely drank and was pretty much useless.  And that left Doug, who hardly got a wink of sleep and had to care of the Della the entire time.  We didn't care though because we were going HOME!!  (Hence no photos of the trip home).  We arrived in the US Sunday evening at 7:30 and our immigration officer happened to be from our area and was very familiar with Nutter's ice cream.  It was sooo  nice to be in America, the air smelled so fresh, everything was so clean.  My brother drove us home and he was so afraid his driving would make me more sick.  I told him it was like heaven to have him drive!