Back to Arusha 2018

January 4, 2017, Thursday

I am a fairly thrifty person, but flying Emirate airlines from Seattle to Dar es Salaam to save $500 a ticket really was not worth it. At least not to me. Getting from Spokane to Seattle was very routine except we could not check our luggage any further than Dubai until we got to Seattle, which was a bit of a hassle. The two-hour wait in Seattle was acceptable, though we didn’t feel we had time to eat.

Boarding the plane was normal - until I got to my seat. Only once before have I had a worse one, on an SAS flight back from Copenhagen. This seat was set up like a box with straight, hard sides, and since John had lovingly paid more for me to have an exit row seat, I had no foot rest or place to stuff anything. There is no “Economy Plus” option on  Emirates, so space is tight in economy. Still, I looked forward to exotic meals. However, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being Wonderful, the over cooked, tasteless food we were served barely deserves a 2.

My seat mates on this flight were a couple perhaps my age, from Bellingham, WA. They were going to Uganda to work in an orphanage. Since I have very defined opinions of many African “orphanages,” I asked no questions and made no comments. They seemed like very nice, reasonable people, so maybe their orphanage is a real one and not just a front for raising money. I hope so.

After 14.5 hours of flight, arriving in Dubai was a relief. The air terminal is palatial and opulent. It was an enormous space with huge pillars and swirly ceiling decorations all done in a creamy white and gold, and limitless baggage claim belts.In comparison, any airport I have gone through in the U.S. looks 4th world. In Seattle, we had been able to change our check-on suitcases to go on to Dar es Salaam, so all we had to pick up in Dubai was John’s overnight case, which had been declared too heavy to carry on.* One of the added perks to being confined to a wheelchair in airports is that one gets expedited service going through immigration and boarding procedures, and since John accompanies me, he also gets guided through and to all necessary points. Without our chair pusher, we definitely would have spent an hour or so trying to get through lines and finding the baggage claim area. However, we were through and out, waiting for a shuttle bus to our overnight hotel in just a bit more than half an hour. An interesting note: the words next to the wheelchair symbol were “People of Determination.” Also, the toilets and prayer rooms were always linked together in the direction signs of where to go for various services.

The Emirates have very strict and limited carry-on luggage rules, which they very aggressively enforce.

The young man who pushed my wheelchair was from India and told us that all workers are “guests” from other countries because the fewer than one million Dubai citizens have their entire lives paid for—living stipend, housing, utilities, education, medical, etc.—by the government. So, all the workers in transportation, hospitality, commerce, construction or anywhere other than perhaps nice government or business offices, come from all over the world. My wheelchair pusher the next morning was from Indonesia and the clerks and restaurant workers at our hotel were from all over the world, Asia to Africa.

As we have noticed in our previous international flights, all Indian women of a certain age claim they need wheelchair assistance. So, we are used to seeing older Indian women walk briskly up to a counter to claim they need a wheelchair and then nearly run to where the handicapped pick up services are. For our flight from Seattle to Dubai, there were 29 Indian women wheeled on to the plane. I usually try to walk down the jetway, so I always follow behind the chairs and watch the Indians push and shove to get to their seats and settle in. I have yet to see a truly motion limited one.