Help from Strangers

As I have mentioned already, my flight from Heathrow went well, leaving and arriving on schedule. I even managed a decent amount of sleep once I settled down about half midnight.. My companion in the next seat was a really friendly guy who although born in Namibia, now lives in Guernsey with his wife and three children. He was travelling to Namibia to attend a wedding.

Having landed, we departed the plane and headed across the airport as transit passengers, so it should be simple. The great thing was my companion knew exactly where to go so it should have been really easy, but when we got to the first control point there was no-one at the desks and the queues were huge. We had less than 90 minutes to get to our flight and time was ebbing away. Eventually we got through but then there a long walk to get to security to go through to our gate.

Then it got worse, because now people were really worried they were going to miss their connecting flights. So was I, and it was at this point we got separated but it would not have made any difference even if we hadn't.

It was a free for all and I could tell you a whole lot more but in the end I missed my flight the flight, as did around eleven others. This was somewhat inconvenient and meant the journey became extremely stressful as it looked like I might not even get to Namibia that day.

I won't bore you with what happened next - you've probably glazed over already - but after a lot of walking, having to enter South Africa then re-enter the airport to check-in with new boarding, we finally got a seat on a plane that would get me to join the group just in time for an evening meal. Phew!

Whilst walking miles around the airport it was so nice of one of the passengers to help me with my luggage, which I was fine with for normal activities at an airport but not for what happened here. My Samaritan was Dara from the Netherlands and she was amazing when carried my 10kg backpack for me. She insisted.

Isn't it nice to know that strangers can be there for you when needed. The world isn't so bad after all.Read more