Flying for Kosovo

After my own very emotional stop in Haiti, I took a quick flight back to Santo Domingo to pick up my dear friend and colleague Nail Spahiu (whom you may remember has been doing some filming throughout the trip for our upcoming documentary).  Since we had to fly back over Haiti airspace, Nail was filming as much as possible from the plane.  He could not believe his eyes when he looked down at the devastation in the beautiful city of Port-Au-Prince.  You get a much clearer picture of this from above. Overall, it was a great flight, except that Nail starts to get antsy after more than two hours airborne.

After landing, we had a hard time trying to find a reasonably priced hotel. With the help of a local taxi driver (who also charged us an arm and a leg for the ride), we were able to find a place. The next day, we are able to meet with two different newspapers and the state television station TVJ. Kimmo Matthews with the Jamaican Observer was wonderful and had lots of knowledge about Kosovo’s history. We were also able to speak with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which was receptive, but did mentioned that all recommendations come from their UN ambassador in New York.

From Jamaica, we tried to get a flight permit for our baby plane to fly into Cuban airspace. Their embassy in Kingston was being difficult and, because of the US registration of our plane, we learned that they would not allow us to fly over their country. We also had no luck with the Cuban Civil Aviation Authority (who already knew about our US markings), despite a week’s worth of efforts. Welcome to the bureaucracy of some of the countries of our planet!

On a positive note, Nail and I were able to experience the delightful cuisine of Kingston. With the diverse influence of Spain, Britain, Africa, India and the local indigenous population, you can imagine that the food here is rich in both history and flavor. In the evenings, we would enjoy dinner and exciting conversations with the locals, which allowed us to share the latest news of our beautiful country Kosovo.

From Jamaica, we went directly to the Bahamas, which added another three hours of flying to our journey, as we had to fly around the Cuban airspace. As you can imagine, this detour was frustrating to myself and, of course, Nail as it was over a two hour flight experience.