When we left off last week Alan and his mom were leaving Uganda early to beat the winter storm headed fast towards Atlanta and Mississippi.
Emmanuel came running around the corner to ask what was going on. I told him we had an emergency and needed to get back to the airport as quickly as possible. He said he could make it happen. The lady from Delta Airlines came on, understood the situation and asked what I would like to do. I told her we needed to get to Mississippi at all costs. Even if she had to put us in the luggage rack and reroute us through Hong Kong, I wanted to be on the front end of that storm before I got stuck somewhere I didn’t wanna be for about a week.
I have one friend who travels for a living, so he was giving me advice on how to move this fast, and I have another good friend who is an airline hostess for American Airlines, and she was also giving me tips on how to get through this quickly. Delta managed to find flights for us if we could get to Entebbe fast enough (it took us seven hours of unpaved roads) that would route us through Kenya, from there to Amsterdam to Atlanta to Mississippi, 20 hours of hell. That all sounded good to me except for one catch, they wanted us to spend the night in Atlanta the night before the storm. The flight out the next morning would’ve been at eight o’clock in the morning, probably too late and we’d have been stuck. Mimi booked a hotel for us in Atlanta so we would have a place to sleep for a couple of hours when we got in from Amsterdam.
My buddy said he didn’t want to upset the apple cart, but there was a flight leaving out of Atlanta an hour and a half after we landed from Amsterdam. That’s cutting it pretty close, but it is possible. I called Delta back to see if they could get me on that flight leaving out of Atlanta late that night but also leave my name on the next morning’s flight in case we didn’t make it. They said they could do that, so we had a no lose situation, we just had to get moving fast. My friend who works for American Airlines said by all means get a wheelchair for mom when we get to Atlanta and try to see if she can look old or sick which she tried. She can’t look old even when she tries. When we made it back to Entebbe, we went to the original hotel we started at where the group from our safari company was there to meet us and wish us farewell.
We got there at nine o’clock at night and had a 3:40 a.m. flight out so we had three hours to dilly-dally before catching a ride to the airport at midnight. They gave us a room to get packed and cleaned up and we had a little time to spend with Emmanuel before we left. Saying goodbye to him wasn’t easy as we had all become pretty good friends by this time and he was everything to the trip we had just experienced. We all promised to keep in touch by writing letters to each other when we could. Emmanuel dropped us off at the airport and we were on our way. All the flights went well; we made it to Atlanta and the man with the wheelchair was waiting there for us and told me to hang onto him tight.
When we got to customs, he unsnapped the barrier rope and busted us right through to the front of the line, much to a lot of Dutch tourists’ chagrin (we were on our home turf now). The customs agent looked at us and waved us through, and we were on our way to the gate to make it home late that night to good old Jackson. Things at the Atlanta airport were deteriorating fast as people were going into a panic and flights were getting canceled. We jumped on our flight before anybody could change our mind. We took that quick one-hour flight to Jackson; I was never so glad to see our hometown and Mimi on the other end there to pick us up. Mimi had covered the yard with frost cloth, got some of the guys at the nursery to help her bring lots of firewood up to the back door and had plenty of water and rechargeable things in case electricity went off when the ice storm came. The next morning the ice began to fall, the electricity went off for a short while, and my generator kicked in.
As we have done for other ice storms, we slid our mattress into the room with the fireplace and kept that fire going for five days and nights. We had so much to talk about and it was such a perfect time to recover from that long crazy flight back from Africa. Mom’s place was in good shape at Saint Catherine’s. They hardly ever lose their electricity there. The next morning, I got up and went grocery shopping for her to make sure she had some vittles to munch on until the roads were clear.
That was one amazing journey we were on and I’m still flipping through the pictures keeping the best ones and deleting those that don’t make the grade.
During our downtime, I was able to put together a slide show of the best pictures. Mom, Mimi and I put together some duck gumbo and some good bread and invited 18 of our family members over for a picture show of our trip. Max and Madeline showed up with a beautiful king cake since it was that time of the year. I thanked her for the cake and started welcoming more people as they came through the door. Finally, she said “you really need to look at the king cake” so Mimi and I opened the box and on the top of it was a picture of a sonogram of their three-month-old baby girl! Madeline’s dad was there to celebrate with us and that made it really fun for the rest of the night. Since so many of our family members were there it was the perfect night to announce their pregnancy. It looks like they are going to have a baby in August. Mimi said she wants to be called Mimi by the new baby, and I think I’ll go with Papa. Now we are so excited we can’t even think straight.
I have a good friend who contacted me once or twice while I was in Africa. She asked me to send a few pictures along the way, so I did as I picked out some of the good ones each night and sent her a few from each day’s activity. Upon arriving home, she had a wonderful gift ready for me. She had taken some of my very best pictures and made them into frameable cards and the envelopes to go with them. They were so beautifully done I will cherish them forever. I guess we are birds of a feather because she knew exactly what would make me happy. Mom will get half of them, and I will get half as we are both letter writers. What I’ve been thinking about lately is where Mimi and I will go next.
Spring has sprung so early we just have not been able to figure that one out yet, but I have a feeling we will figure something big out for a September trip. Until next week it is time to get your beds prepared, clean up any weeds and cut back all the perennials and hopefully you’ve already cut your roses back. It’s time to start shopping the garden centers to see which way everybody’s going this year. We hope you’ll come by and see our place as it is looking amazing from the flowers we grow in our greenhouses to the product that’s come in from Mimi‘s market trip that she took while I was gallivanting. Enjoy this weather.
