Oh My Cron Strikes

 

“Oh My Cron” Strikes

 

From mid October to end of November Cher and I were visiting South Africa. We were having a holiday with a difference.  Cher and I were having separate holidays. Cher was visiting SA primarily to see her ageing Mom in East London and I was visiting mainly to see my brother Neville and family. Neville had recently received news that he had stage 4 melanoma. Despite him having started a recent “wonder treatment” called immunotherapy it seemed a good time to visit.

At the beginning of our stay in SA, we self isolated
 very comfortably in Cintsa East, near East London

After a week isolating in a cottage in Cintsa East, close to East London we moved in with Cher’s sister Lynne for a few days which gave me a chance to visit with Cher’s Mum, Daphne. It was lovely to see Daphne seeing Cheryl for the first time. Normally on her daily WhatsApp video calls from Canada, Daphne barely acknowledges Cher. When Cheryl appeared in person, Daphne exclaimed out loud “Oh my Darling” and did her level best to get out of her wheelchair to hug her. It was a sight to behold. Daphne also gave me a big hug and definitely recognised me. Her response made our trip worth it just for that. For the next two days, Cheryl got the same response from her Mum each time she visited, before Daphne got used to the idea of seeing Cher daily in person.

After two or three days at the end of October, I flew from East London to OR Tambo Airport in Johannesburg, to spend time with my brother Neville, his wife Maureen and their daughter Lindy. Lindy was visiting from Australia to be with Neville during the initial stages of his immunotherapy treatment and help with the various appointments and so on.  She had been there for two months and planned to

leave December 9th. Lindy was almost at the end of her five-year waiting period to qualify for Permanent Residency in Australia and had a “Travel Exemption” which allowed her to get back into Australia in December.

Cher and I were to be apart for a month, one of our longest stretches ever apart. She in East London and me with Nev, Mau and Lindy. Life soon settled into a steady rhythm for both of us. Cher, was staying with Lynne and one or both of them would visit her Mom a couple of times a day. I was helping Nev to clear out quite a lot of his surplus clutter. Nev had recently handed over his business to his son Doug and I helped him clear out his office and a micro storage unit full of a lifetime of accumulated files and papers at the office and at home, including a couple of storage rooms.

For the last ten days of November, Nev, Mau, Lindy and I flew down to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape and then drove to St. Francis Bay where Nev and Mau had recently bought a retirement house sight unseen (that’s a long story). Their son Doug, wife Kim and kids live in SFB and Nev and Mau are considering retiring there to be closer to Doug’s family. We were there to check out the new house and help get it set up so Nev and Mau could return in December for the summer/Christmas break which is South African’s primary vacation time of year.

My second brother Alan, who had recently arrived from Canada, joined us in SFB to help with any jobs that needed doing. So, all in all it was quite a nice family reunion in SFB. This is where our story begins. We had finished most of the work on the house and had a couple of days to wind up in relaxed fashion before returning to Johannesburg on Sunday, November 28^th, where Cher and I would meet, visit with Nev, Mau and Lindy for a couple of days before we caught our scheduled KLM flight home on November 30th. We were looking forward to our business class flight. Cher and I had never paid for business class before and had treated ourselves for this once in a lifetime thing, thinking that we might be breathing slightly more rarefied air than the rest in economy, in the hope we might reduce the chance of picking up Covid on the plane. We were all set. That’s when things started to go wrong and all our plans were rendered obsolete.

It was good to reconnect with Cher's sister, Lynne

Day One (Friday 26^th, 2021)

Al and I were sharing a room in SFB and on Friday morning I woke up early, around 5.30am. Trying not to disturb Al, I thought I I will just quietly clear my emails and WhatsApps (WA) in bed before getting up. Cheryl, in East London, had also woken early and had sent me a WA. She had just heard from two friends in Ontario, about a potentially deadly new Corona virus strain coming out of South Africa and there was talk that travel out of South Africa might be curtailed.

Suddenly my relaxed early morning read in bed, had taken a drastic turn. This called for a cup of tea. I went downstairs to find Nev already up and about. He and I were just discussing this turn of events when Lindy arrived with a big smile to say good morning. It hit me  that the news could potentially drastically impact her too. She had been away from her family in Australia for three months and was looking forward to getting home In the next 10 days or so. Lindy looked more stricken than I felt.

Our nice, relaxed Friday morning suddenly turned into a flurry of activity. We had to try and get back to Johannesburg and get on flights out of the country asap, as early as that evening if possible. Lindy called her travel agent in Australia who did a wonderful job of getting her on a flight on Qatar Airlines from Johannesburg to Sydney on Saturday morning at 8am. Cher and I decided we would try and get on the KLM flight at 11pm that night. The three of us had to book flights from Port Elizabeth and East London respectively. Money was no object. Just get on a flight and get out of Dodge City. Then we realised with horror that none of us qualified to board an international flight without valid PCR tests. Aaaagh! How were we going to do that from SFB which is a small town with no testing facilities? After a scramble Lindy and I found a testing site in Jeffrey’s Bay about 30 minutes away, which promised a 6-8 hour turnaround time. We  hotfooted it over there to get our tests done only to find a long line up of people. This was the beginning of participating in a lot of line ups over the next few days.

Lunch that day was a bit sombre. Plans for our nice family get together in the next two days had been shattered. Lindy was leaving Nev and Mau prematurely and who knew when she would be able to see them again. Getting to and fro from Australia is one thing, but Covid travel restrictions can be gamechangers as we know. This was very sad for Nev and Mau. It all felt too sudden and jarring. There was no doubt however. We had to leave now, or we could all be trapped for months.

We eventually picked up our negative (thank you Lord) test results in Jeffrey’s Bay on the way to pick up our flights to Johannesburg towards the end of the day. Despite all the chaos of the day I was looking forward to seeing Cher after a month of separation and I had managed to squeeze in a haircut in Jeffrey’s Bay while Lindy did some errands. Must put on a good show for my wife.  

Cher, having also managed a quick turnaround negative PCR test (thank you again Lord) in East London, arrived in Johannesburg around 8pm, half an hour earlier than we did. She hot footed it straight over to the KLM desk to see if she could get us onto the 11pm flight that night. Well wouldn’t you know it, but we weren’t the first ones to have that idea. The line up was already hundreds long, filled with desperate refugee looking souls like us, each one picturing being trapped in a country far from home for who knows how many months.

Lindy had arranged for Peter Croall, Nev and Mau’s brother-in-law, to pick her up from the airport, but before he did that, he needed to swing by their house. We had an important job for him to do. I had only taken about half of my luggage down to SFB in a smaller bag borrowed from Nev as we were only going to be down there for ten days . I had left all my unnecessary luggage in my big suitcase at Nev’s house. I needed Peter to pick up my suitcase, bring it to me at the airport, give me time to switch over the two pieces of luggage and return Nev’s bag for Peter to take home to Lindy. This was another chaotic exercise. With Covid, the exit from the terminal where Pete met us was a long way from the entrance to the building in which I needed to do the repacking exercise. It involved about a ten-minute fast walk. I found a quietish bank of chairs and proceeded to lay out all the contents of two bags/suitcases for all the world to see, while I tried to rearrange things logically remembering to leave all the right things in my hand luggage in case we got stopped anywhere en route. This pretty much involved laying everything out on the floor or chairs before repacking it all in the right places. Sheesh. I got some strange looks and finally rushed Nev’s now empty bag back to Peter who was being harassed by airport traffic guards who wanted him to move his car. To say I was stressed, would be to put it mildly. Now I had to find Cher who was waiting in the KLM line up. Needless to say, our fond meeting together was more frazzled than fond.

The news from KLM was not good. Air France, who own KLM, had cancelled their flight and they were only accepting EU citizens from both flights on the KLM one. The fact that we had booked on business class counted for nothing. The website noted that all flights from South Africa are cancelled forthwith. We were an EU citizen, or we were nothing. Such is life. Eventually we accepted the inevitable and caught a taxi to Nev’s home around 11pm where Lindy was frantically packing to catch her 8am flight to Dohar en route to Sydney Australia in the morning. I needed to leave home before 5am to get Lindy to her flight for check in on time. Lindy needed to get moving asap, before the Australians closed the door on her getting home. We took ourselves to bed exhausted and wired, our minds racing with all that had happened in the space of one day.  

And so ended Day One. Oh My Cron. What would the new day hold?

Day Two (Saturday 27^th November)

Saturday we were up crack of dawn, the juices already flowing. I needed to get Lindy to the airport for 5am. I decided to park and go in with Lindy, just in case something went wrong with her flight out. 3 hours ahead of scheduled departure we found the check in counters, along with a couple of hundred dejected looking potential passengers. There were no staff at the counters or signs of life. Lindy checked the Qatar Airlines website and they had just cancelled all flights out of South Africa.

Lindy and I drove him in a gloomy state of mind. What were we going to do? How on earth were we going to get out of South Africa? Cher and I at least are retired. Lindy had a teaching job to go to and needed to get back to her family. Oh, woe was us!

It was a freezing cold and gloomy day. We sat in Nev’s living room in Benoni with the fireplace cranked up and plotted and schemed. Maybe we could drive to Kenya, about two thousand miles away and fly from there? Probably not as by the time we got there, Kenya would probably be closed too. I had noticed on the scheduled flights board at the airport earlier that all local African flights were apparently still running. I suggested we try Ethiopian Airlines. I had flown on them from Canada once before and they are a good airline despite a bit of chaos at the hub in Addis Ababa. Lynne, Cher’s sister had suggested we use her travel agent Claire DeWeijer as we were finding it impossible to get hold of KLM by phone or any other means for clarification on our prospects with them.

Claire has turned out to be an absolute gem. She went at our efforts to get a flight with Ethiopian Airlines (EA) like a bull at a gate. EA are one of the few airlines flying out of SA right now and within a few hours had secured us a booking on Monday leaving at 2.45pm, with a 2.5-hour connection to a Toronto flight via a refueling stop in Dublin. The booking was one thing, the logistics were another. Dublin is in the EU. The EU were in process of a blanket ban for all flights from SA. Canada was requiring a PCR test not just from SA, but from our final transit stop ie Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. We could get a three-hour PCR test in Addis Ababa, but our connection was only 2.5 hours. Not enough time. The next option was to book us on the next flight out, of Addis on the Wednesday evening, 48 hours later. That was not attractive, but the Ethiopians would only allow us to stay in the transit lounge for 24 hours without a visa. Okay, we would buy a visa. Sorry no, only people travelling to destinations in Africa, could buy visas at the airport. Everyone else had to buy online and this takes at least three days. Aaaaagh! What to do? Never fear Claire was near. She was furiously phoning airline personnel and piece by piece putting together a solution. Eventually, without any final clarity on any of the above, we decided our only option was to go to the airport on Monday and see if they would let us on the flight. Once we got to Addis Ababa, we would figure out what to do next. That was our plan.

Meanwhile Lindy was burning up the telephone lines to Australia trying to figure out a way forward for herself. We suggested she fly to a destination somewhere in Asia where she felt safe and could quarantine in a nice hotel for 14 days to “deAfricanise”. Then she could get back to Australia after that using her travel exemption. She would then have to quarantine for another 14 days in Australia. None of these were exciting options, but nothing else was looking promising. Claire found out that she could fly to Bangkok on Ethiopian Airlines and wait there. Lindy was concerned about staying somewhere she was not familiar with.

In the afternoon Cher and I took a drive to the PCR testing station in Benoni, where Nev’s house is. They assured us they were turning the results around in twelve hours and we could come the next morning (Sunday) in time for us to head to the airport on Monday to get checked into our flight to Ethiopia.

Meanwhile back home in Brisbane the word was getting around that Lindy had a problem and it needed solving. More on that later.

And so, ended Day Two. We went to bed. Nothing had really been resolved for Lindy and our plan was iffy at best. What would Day Three hold for us?

Day Three (Sunday, 28^th November)

On Sunday it was early up again so we could be first in line at the PCR testing station at 8am. We were glad we were, because quite a line up developed behind us before we eased in to have someone tickle our brains with their prodders. We were a little alarmed when the lady said, “our turnaround time is 24 – 48 hours, but you should be ok to have the results by tomorrow morning”. We had been banking on 12 hours and were leaving for the airport at 9.30am. Talk about cutting it fine. Aaagh!! We went home holding our breath. Would we have no rest?

On to church at a very upbeat modern millennial service. It was very uplifting. The female pastor preached well, along the lines of, “Lean into God, Discard Distractions and Embrace His Will”. We left feeling encouraged.

Next up was to collect Nev and Mau from the airport. This was when we had all originally planned to be arriving back from SFB. In many ways we had been frantically pedalling hard for two and a half days and were no further forward, than if we had just stuck to our original plan. It was nice to see Nev and Mau again as we had said our goodbyes to them two days earlier.

After lunch Lindy came to us looking desperate. She had just heard that Australia had issued a blanket ban to all international travellers. Only Australian citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to re-enter the country for the next 14 days. Lindy had a travel exemption but was not yet a permanent resident. There was no mention of whether travel exemptions would be honored. She was excluded on a technicality. This was devastating news. The chances of the Australians changing their minds on this after 14 days were just about zero, we reckoned. For the first time since this misadventure began Lindy began to look seriously distressed. We prayed with her that the Prince of Peace would grant her “the Peace that passes all understanding”.

By the end of the afternoon, we still hadn’t been notified about our PCR results. I began to call to enquire. Cheryl’s was negative (Phew!), and they were emailing it as we spoke. Mine? No idea. He’ll put in an urgent request. Cheryl’s arrived and of course when we checked it, the passport number was wrong. Back on the phone to request a fix. Then mine arrived and yes it was negative (Phew again!), but they had the name incorrect. Back on the phone to request a fix. Then both fixed ones arrived and of course Cheryl’s was still incorrect. Back and forth a few more times by phone. Finally, the Help Line guy said I must call the lab direct for them to fix it. The lady there was very helpful. She looked into the problem, requested the fix and said, “wait for the correction to be emailed”. It arrived with no fix. Aaaaagh! By now my hair was falling out quicker than it could ever be replaced. Finally, I called back the nice lady at the lab. We were best friends by this point. She said she cannot get the computer to print the report properly. She will paste the report into a Word document, edit it, print it on their letterhead and stamp it with the lab stamp. Isn’t this how the forgers do it? I readily agreed to her suggestion that I go down and pick it up personally. By this stage it was 9pm. I ventured out into the eerily dark streets of Benoni in Nev’s car. People tend not to drive at night unless they have to for security reasons. I kept a leery eye out for bad guys hiding behind bushes and noticed more than one person cheerfully driving through red lights presumably to avoid being mugged at the stop. I nearly kissed the lady at the lab when she handed me an authentic looking report and headed for home, glad that Nev’s car hadn’t been “misappropriated” off the street while I was in the lab.

I got safely home (Thank you Lord), to embark on a long conversation with Clare our travel agent working on our bookings to Ethiopia. This lady was working for us at 9.30pm on a Sunday night. She is amazing. She had been trying hard all day to get hold of someone at the airline who would assure her that they would let us on the flight and help us make a plan for the required PCR test when we got Addis. Bottom line there were no assurances forthcoming. We went to bed that night, knowing that our chances of leaving the next day were no more than 50:50. Sleep was elusive.

And so ended Day 3.  

Day 4 ( Monday 29^th November)

Taking a much needed coffee break in midst of
all of our negotiations at the airport

Finally, it was our day to fly, or so we hoped. We had another round of fond farewells. By this stage Nev and I have never been huggier in our lives. It obviously gets easier with practise. Our Uber driver was a very large man, named Takalani. He made our large and heavy suitcases look like school satchels. We barely got us and our luggage into his Toyota Corolla. It turns out he was a born again, bible thumping believer. He proceeded to liven up our day and trip to the airport. I felt sure he was God’s gift to us at the beginning of the day. A sign of more good things to come. We left our ride with a bounce in our step. Things were looking up.

We had been advised to get there at least four hours early. We arrived 4 and half hours early. There were probably 30 – 40 people already ahead of us. Another line up and the waiting began. When we finally made it to the counter, I was feeling lucky and said to the lady, “We were bumped from our KLM business class seats. Is there any chance you could bump us up to business class?”. She said, “Where are you going?”. When I said, “Canada”, it was as if I’d stuck a pin in her. She folded our passports, said “Sorry I can’t help you. You must go and stand with those people over there. You are being dealt with separately” and pointed at a disconsolate motley group who looked like they had been told to stand in the corner until told they improved their attitudes.

We joined three other families all trying to get back to Canada, one of which was a family of five, who had once lived in Canada for a few years but had returned to South Africa and been living there since 2003. He had been offered a CEO position at a major retailer in Australia. A position to die for, but if he wasn’t there by January 1^st, the offer was off the table. They were looking for somewhere they could stay for two weeks to “deAfricanise” before trying to enter Australia on what he claims is a “travel exemption”. Everybody has a story but oh my goodness, did we feel for this family.

Eventually the Flight Manager arrived. He had been desperately trying to make a plan for us forlorn Canadians. Canada was making it very difficult by being so hard nosed about us needing an extra PCR test from outside of South Africa before we could board a direct flight to Canada. Bottom line he said they could not put us on the flight that day but would do so the next day. We would have to be in transit for about 27 hours, but they would arrange a hotel for us and a visa all at their cost to give us time to turn around the Addis PCR test that we all needed. We just about hugged the guy. He looked us in the eye and promised us that we would be put on the Tuesday flight from Johannesburg and that “Head Office” would change the flights and bump other Tuesday passengers if need be. We didn’t feel any remorse. It’s a dog-eat-dog world. We were a little anxious when he admitted that he wouldn’t be on duty on Tuesday but gave us his name and the telephone number of the guy who would be on duty. We left for home, again. We felt we were making progress, but until we were in the air, there was always a niggle of uncertainty.

Back home to Nev and Mau and more fond greetings. This was starting to feel like we’d been there done that. Nev had been for an MRI and Catscan to monitor progress on his stage 4 melanoma treatment.

Meanwhile Lindy had had an interesting development in her story. Lindy’s son Brad attends a top-notch private all boys school in Brisbane, where he has made his mark playing cricket and academically. Lindy also teaches art there, so as a family they are well known. Between Brad’s friends and other Mums at the school, there is potential for some practical help to get her home as soon as possible. More on this later.  

Clare kept checking all afternoon and until late in the evening as to whether, our tickets online had changed…nothing!

Day 5 (Tuesday 30^th November)

We decided on this day that we would be the first people in the Ethiopian Airlines (EA) line up, so we planned to be there by 9am for a 10.30am desk opening. Once again more fond farewells with Nev, Mau and Lindy before we headed back to the airport for a now familiar line up opportunity. This time we were first in line and the waiting began.

About half an hour before the flight desk opened, a staff member arrived to boot up the computers. I twisted her arm to check if we were booked on the flight. She confirmed we were not on the flight. By this time our other two Canadian families had arrived, and we had solidly blocked the Business Class and Economy Lines with our trolleys with our respective first place positions. We were determined that they must deal with us before we were prepared to go anywhere.

Eventually the Floor Manager for the day arrived. He seemed not to know anything about our situation. He was most unhelpful and got quite angry with us. Eventually he said, “well ok, then go and get yourselves new boarding passes at the Sales Desk and pay for your Visas and Hotel rooms in Ethiopia. We insisted he come with us to make sure everyone was on the same page. He did that rather begrudgingly. I was the first one of our group of three families to be served. It felt like the lady serving me was reinventing the wheel. It must have taken her at least 45 minutes to issue me our Boarding Passes and take the money for the hotel and visas. The other two guys from our group were getting desperate. We could see over in the line up that the plane was filling up with others like us, all desperate to get to where we were going.

Finally, boarding pass in hand I arrived back to get our luggage checked in. The line up was around the corner, and I felt desperate at having to wait in that all over again. I went to the Floor Manager and said considering we had been waiting there since 9am that morning and we had been first in line, would he mind putting us to the front of the line to check our baggage. He point-blank refused. I nearly blew a fuse but was trying hard to keep cool. Eventually after pushing him hard, he sent us to the shorter Baggage Drop line up where finally we left triumphantly with all the necessary having been done and our luggage checked all the way through to Toronto. Thank you, Lord. It had been tough going, and we had been close to reaching our limits on that day.  A couple of small points were still open ended.  They wouldn’t issue us a Boarding Pass for the Addis to Toronto leg until we had a negative PCR test in Addis in hand. We were also told our hotel vouchers would be handed to us at the boarding gate. Ominously, as we boarded the plane, “they had run out of hotel vouchers”. Oh no. We did have our receipt, but that was not a good sign.

Finally... boarding pass out of Johannesburg
in hand. All our problems were over. 
Or so we thought!!

Our flight to Addis Ababa went well. We were definitely making progress. However, we knew that there was still lots of potential for things to go wrong. On disembarking we got chatting to another Canadian woman who works for the UN in Rome. She told us that the UN was evacuating Addis Ababa as rebel forces were surrounding the city. She suggested we don’t delay our departure from Addis unless we had to. On that uneasy note we arrived at the airport building for the arrival process.

We landed at Addis airport around 8.30pm and things were a bit chaotic as Cheryl went off to claim a hotel voucher, while I went to keep a spot in a massive line up to get through immigration which seemed to stretch forever. Our other two sets of Canadians we had been travelling with were both in Business Class and they were ushered through within minutes. We were a bit envious as we mourned the loss of our KLM business class tickets which we should have been travelling on. Oh, the woes of belonging to the common cattle class. The immigration line up stretched endlessly ahead. Towards the end, after an hour and half or so, at 10pm suddenly all of the immigration officers stood up and to a man stepped away from their desks and took off. For those of us still in line a great cry went up. The word came back, “Don’t worry, its just a shift change”. Well after about 20 minutes fresh immigration officers began to arrive at their posts. At that point the remaining folk in the line up surrendered all semblance of patience and with a great surge people started to jump the queues. By the time we got to speak to an immigration officer, around 11pm, we were pretty far gone. His English may have been Ok, but we couldn’t understand it as his accent was pretty thick and combined with a plexiglass barrier and his mask the level of communication was minimal. He asked for our Boarding Passes. We explained that until we had a PCR test result, we had been told in SA that we couldn’t get a Boarding Pass. He replied in a louder voice that until we had a Boarding Pass we couldn’t go through. The tone of the conversation went downhill pretty quickly from there. Eventually he shoved our passports into our hands and shouted, “No boarding pass, no go”. By this stage two or three other immigration officers, alerted by the altercation were lending their opinions. Things were pretty heated. Eventually a kind airline lady asked us what the problem was. We explained that we had been told in Johannesburg that we could not get a Boarding pass until we had a negative PCR test. She calmly said, “follow me” and handed us over to a tall gentleman, who clearly decided we were in need of some TLC and more or less told us to “breathe deeply, count to ten and explain the problem”. After we poured out our woes, he said, “No problem”. He then proceeded to issue us a boarding pass, allocate us good seats for our flight the next day and upgrade our hotel package to the five star hotel which our friends had checked into. He had dealt with our issue in about ten minutes. We nearly kissed the guy.

1am supper in Addis 
Ababa after a long day. 

From then on, immigration was a breeze and we were treated like royalty and were ushered everywhere with the greatest of care and concern. By this stage it was midnight and we needed to catch the shuttle to our hotel, but before that we had to stop over to have our PCR test en route. This was an experience in itself. We had two hotel staff doing all the necessary translating and carrying of bags etc while we went through yet another brain tickling exercise. The Skylight Hotel was close to the airport and magnificent in every way. We hadn’t eaten for a long time and found our way to a dining room downstairs where we ate supper at 1am before finally dragging ourselves to our rooms for a shower and bed.

It had been a long day and probably our hardest yet. But we were now halfway home. 0ur next leg was at 11pm the next day. We could sleep in and enjoy a restful stay in our luxurious surroundings.

Day 6 (Wednesday December 1^st)

We had a lovely hotel room with all the mod cons.
Note the see through shower and washroom

Despite it having been a very short night we woke early. Our six weeks in South Africa with early bird relatives had instilled early rising habits. The view out of our seventh story window was interesting. There was a mix of mid sized office and residential blocks. The streets were already busy with cars and pedestrians were purposefully going about their business. 

Ethiopian Airlines, largest airline
in Africa, celebrating their 
75th anniversary this year.  

.

The Skylight Hotel 
was very grand. 

It occurred to me that we were in a place which has lots of history, dating back to biblical times. We had twelve hours, or more to kill in an exotic place and we should go exploring. Cher was less enthusiastic. What about the rebels at the city gates and so on? All of the locals seemed to be going about their business in a very relaxed fashion. We couldn’t hear gunfire or rocket fire. Perhaps reports of rebels at the gates were overstated? My sister Rose had sent me the contact info of a Canadian Christian couple who live in Addis Ababa, should we need help of any kind. We decided to call them and see what they could tell us and if they felt it was safe for us to venture out. We got hold of Teresa, who sounded quite relaxed. She said, they feel completely safe, take kids to school, go shopping and eat out. With that assurance we decided to inquire at the desk if they could recommend a half day city tour.

Rob couldn't wait to get out to explore Addis
Ababa. Unfortunately it was not to be. 

When we got to the desk one of the very helpful receptionists was gung-ho to get us launched and eager to showcase his city. He was just getting going to set up a tour when one of the other receptionists overheard what we were planning and came over to kibosh the whole thing. It turns out that even though no one had actually explained it to us, we were technically in transit and supposed to be kept in isolation at our hotel. That rather dashed our exploratory hopes for the day. We inquired if they had a pool we could use, only to be told the standard hotel response these days, “Closed due to Covid, for maintenance”. We made our way to breakfast disappointed but met our other Canadian friends there and enjoyed a time of getting to know them better in an environment where we weren’t wrestling with airlines.

We spent most of the day in our room, catching up on emails, TV news and sleep. Lunch and supper were in our room.  By around 8pm we made our way via shuttle over to the airport to catch the final leg of our flight home. The Addis international airport is a very impressive looking building. We commented on this to our shuttle driver, who agreed, but said, “But the problem is, it’s built by the Chinese”. It seems he considered the quality of the work was not that great.

We had lots of time to wander around the airport and get our exercise for the day. We were surprised by having to go through three rounds of security before actually boarding the plane. Maybe there really were rebels at the city gates!

We realised late in the day (African Style), that 
 that we weren't supposed to leave our hotel room
as we were in quarantine. Room service was good.   

At 10pm we started boarding for our 15-hour flight home via Dublin for refuelling. The plane was conspicuously more African in passenger composition than other airlines we have travelled on. The service was good, although the food was a bit lacking in variety, as we basically were given the same meals three times between Johannesburg and Toronto. Our flight also had a large group of young people, mainly young guys, who were part of a UN program for people being sponsored to come to Canada. The young guy next to me spoke zero English and had clearly never flown on a plane before, so I helped him with the basics, but conversation was impossible. He eventually lifted his feet up onto his seat with knees in the air, covered himself from head to toe with his blanket and slept most of the way.

And so ended Day 6 of our Oh My Cron saga. Day 7 would still hold some interesting surprises and some very good news.

Day 7 (Thursday, December 2, 2021)

Our flight was 15 hours long but tolerable. We maybe managed a couple of hours sleep each. The arrival at Toronto airport was very slickly organised and we were very quickly filtered off to be specially interviewed and set up to be sent to a quarantine hotel.

In true Canadian fashion, the Public Health Official was very chatty and filled us in on all the latest updates and news as regards the Omicron variant. She told us that the previous day, Egypt had been added to the list of countries on the Red List and that a plane had been sent back to Egypt without being allowed to disembark in Toronto.

We were very carefully sent down a track to a processing and testing centre where they were obviously setting up for large numbers of people, as they anticipate having to test all people as they enter the country not just those who are unvaccinated and from Red List countries.

Without much more ado we were shipped off to the nearby Hilton hotel which was set up as a quarantine location. We were taken around to a rear entrance of the hotel. The reception area was set up like a science fiction movie set. We were greeted off of our bus, which was only allowed to carry two people at a time, by people fully covered and masked and escorted to a desk where we were once again interviewed and briefed thoroughly. The walls, floor and roof of this reception area were completely covered in white plastic. We have even been registered with the Red Cross who have been asked to look after any practical needs we might have such as clothes, snacks etc. All of this is being covered compliments of the government purse. I suspect the unspoken condition is that we vote for our current prime minister next time the opportunity arises.

We were comfortably ensconced in a nice suite at the Hilton. Meals were being delivered like clockwork with more food than we could  manage. We were regularly visited by two nurses to check our temperatures and ask how we are feeling.

Day 8  & 9 Postscript (Friday & Saturday 3rd and 4th December) 

Our travel mates from Johannesburg recieved their negative PCR tests and were on their way home by midday on the Friday. When our negative results came in at noon, we fully expected to be released too. We packed our bags and awaited the call, but heard nothing for the rest of the day. We started to agitate with the Red Cross who were the liason between us and the Public Health authorities. The Red Cross were very pleasant but all they could do was pass on messages to which there was no response. By the end of the day, we had heard nothing and resigned ourselves to another night at the hotel. 

We had met a Zimbabwean lady, Tendai, en route to Calgary on the shuttle from the airport on the Thursday. She was in the room alongside of ours. At 9pm that evening she started to weep and wail very loudly, crying out, " I can't stay, I can't stay here. I've done everything right. Why are they keeping me here?". We were not allowed out of our room, so called Security who in turn called a nurse to come and help. It turned out that  Tendai, had also received her negative PCR test result at 10am that morning and had been told that Security would come and release her to catch the shuttle to the airport for her flight to Calgary. Security never turned up and while she was waiting the government changed the rules and that night she was notified that we were not allowed to catch any public transportation and so she could not fly home and would have to stay in the hotel room for 14 days. At this point she cracked and was very distraught. Eventually her husband was able to have her declared as a "Vulnerable Person" and she was picked up at 3am to catch the next flight to Calgary. We were relieved for her, as we could not imagine having to be locked up the way we were, on our own, for a full 14 days. 

By the next morning we were really irritated that we had had no response to our negative PCR test, or our numerous inquiries via Red Cross. We started to seriously agitate, to anyone who would listen, including Public Health Nurses, food deliverers and the room cleaners, and of course the Red Cross. One of the nurses admitted to us that she was covering nine floors of hotel rooms and many of the people had complaints like ours. By noon of that day we decided that we had met all of the criteria for discharge and we would release ourselves and risk the $5000 fine we had been threatened with if we left of our own accord. We called the Red Cross at noon and said we were leaving the building by 3pm if we had not been released by then. Within half an hour we received a call saying we were next in line to be processed and an hour later we were officially released. Squeaky wheel phenomenon I guess. 

We arrived home a couple of hours later and were very glad to see our warm cozy house and all our familiar things. We have never been more grateful to be home. 

We have since heard that remaining occupants of our hotel and others like it have set up a WhatsApp group, they are agitating daily via the press. We feel sorry for anyone still stuck in that system and wish them well in their efforts. 

While we were flying two good things have happened and are a fitting ending to this Sad Oh My Cron Saga. Neville had been for an MRI and Catscan earlier this week to see how effective the immunotherapy treatment is doing on his stage 4 melanoma. He met with the oncologist on Thursday to review the results. The oncologist is very encouraged, noting that tumors which were clearly visible before in big chunks of his body have completely disappeared. We called Nev and he is very relieved and in celebration mode. He still has nine months of treatment to go, so this is reason to be much encouraged.

The second good bit of news is that Lindy’s MP has been working on her case. Australia is arranging a repatriation flight within a week and Lindy has been promised a place on it and that she will be granted a Compassionate Visa. Lindy has been a wonderful gift to the family as she has dropped everything back home in Australia to come and help Nev and Mau during the early stages of Nev’s treatment. Now she is keen and needs to get back to her family and we are grateful the Lord has opened up a way for her to get home.

And now we are home too. We were very concerned that we could have been trapped in South Africa for months as happened in earlier Covid waves for so many people. It has been a hectic and stressful week. We know of at least 15 of our family members who have had to cancel plans they have made to travel internationally because South Africa was the first country to report that they had identified the new variant. It is galling to see that other countries are reporting cases now that precede South Africa’s announcement and yet those countries are not being subjected to these extreme travel restrictions. Southern Africa has paid a massive price for their integrity in reporting the new variant. I am sure that in future all countries will be reluctant to report discovery of new variants if they will be punished for doing so, as South Africa has been.

This adventure began with Lindy, Cher and I trying to arrange to get home. God has been faithful and despite the stresses and strains of the week, He has made a way for all three of us to find our way home.

God is good all the time. All the time God is good. Thank you, Father, for your faithfulness.