Flying for Kosovo

After taking off from Dakar, my goal was to take a quick flight into Gambia.  However, as with most of my plans, there was a unforeseen situation that changed my direction.  Upon reaching Gambian airspace, I was alerted that I would not be able to continue on.  Though I tried every angle possible to get them to let me land, they would not budge.  After more than 20 minutes of arguing, I was forced to change my course.  The Gambian air traffic controllers kept trying to get me to turn back and go toward Dakar.  But, I don’t like going backwards unless I have a safety concern.  Instead, I head for Guinea-Bissau.  It’s a good thing that I had enough gas in my tank that day.

I finally arrived in Guinea-Bissau around noon and the airport looked like it was abandoned.  Though it was an international airport, I couldn’t even find one customs agent to finish my bureaucratic paperwork.  This meant that I would not be able to fly into Gambia from here, even though it’s only 100NM air miles away.

Time for a new plan.  Since I didn’t want to waist time flying back to Senegal to get a permit to land in Gambia, I decide to take land transportation into Gambia.  Less than one hour after landing in Guinea-Bissau, I was in a taxi on my way to Gambia.  I had originally thought that it would take only three hours to get there, but it ended up taking about nine hours to get to Banjul, Gambia because we had to drive around the country due and up to Senegal first.  It took four taxis because there are so many rules and orders to follow in each country.  In the end, I had to fly south from Senegal, around Gambia and down to Guinea-Bissau only to take four taxis and nine hours to get back into Gambia.  Three countries in one day.  This is our mission in Africa, friends.

Not to forget that I had to take the four taxis back to Guinea-Bissau when I was finished.  Since the three countries are so close together (Guinea-Bissau to the South and Gambia which is surrounded by Senegal), I had to cross borders several times.  Everywhere, there were police and military checkpoints.  At least 20 times I had to go through borders and check points and every time was the same process: opening the bag, checking our passports, answering tons of questions, you name it.  By the time I reached Guinea-Bissau for the night, it was time to find an internet cafe in order to make contact with my support team back home and keep them updated.  It was a 19 hour day for me and after 1:00am the next day before I reached the hotel for the night.

The next morning I was up early and working on our mission.  I hired a taxi to take me to all of my destinations (media houses, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc.) for the day.  Thanks to my taxi driver, my new friend Sainey Sanyang, I was able to get to each place fairly quickly as he knew the area fairly well.  I completed three interviews with the local newspapers and the national TV station.  Mr. Ebrima Baldeh, a journalist with the national television station, knew a lot about the Balkans and has traveled a lot.  He took his time to do a great interview.  The taxi driver even drove us both to a park twenty minutes away so that we could get better shots and footage for our interview.

Since Gambia is one of the countries that has recognized our independence, I am visiting them to thank this great country, their government and their people for their solidarity.  The Director of Protocol in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Juma L.C. Janneh and the Permanent Secretary, Mr. Habib T.B. Jarra were wonderful.  They made time for me right away and were very happy to know that the people of Kosovo have lots of respect for them for having recognized our independence.  I also asked them if they could help us with the rest of the African countries, since they all have to participate in various meetings and conferences together.

It was a busy day, but I managed to finish all of the interviews in the shortest time possible, especially since Gambia is just a small nation.  It was early enough when I finished that I thought I could get back to Guinea-Bissau in a reasonable amount of time.  So I asked the taxi driver to take me back to the Senegal border so that I could transfer taxis and get back across the Guinea-Bissau border.  Luck was not on my side.  Apparently, the border closes at 7:00pm for security reasons, so I ended up spending the night in Ziquinchor, Senegal.

Despite all of the border and checkpoint nonsense, having to take the long way around back and forth to Gambia and dodging malaria panels, I was able to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time.  I am grateful, though, that I speak French and English, I don’t know how far I would have gotten so far without that.

Observer

all Africa.com

The Point Newspaper

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