Marie Hélène and I flew to Praia Friday evening and were over-excited with the prospect of soon after driving to Calheta, so as to distribute the presents to the children, organize a birthday party for 24 children and adolescents and handing out some money to the children's parents, which would ensure the school fees.
That over-excitement was unexpectedly gone the moment we realised one of our pieces of luggage was missing (actually one of mine) when we reached Nelson Mandela airport in Praia and that no assistant seemed to be willing to even take the written complaint, which was of extreme importance, as once it would be filed into the system I would know for sure if that missing bag had been left at Lisbon airport or had been wrongly taken by someone upon arrival.
I was inclined to believe in the latest, as a bag quite similar to mine stood there among a few other non-collected pieces of luggage. What followed afterwards was slightly beyond my understanding capability, to say the least, because the complaint was only accepted and filed at around 4H30 A.M., almost 5 hours after the arrival (... and according to the assistant I should even consider myself lucky).
Marie Hélène and the driver sent by the Agency we had booked our flight and accommodation with were also visibly tired of having waited for me, though I had to go through a rather more complicated ordeal than theirs.
We reached the local pension and prior to getting some rest before having to drive back to the Airport again decided to select the things that needed to be taken to Calheta and those which were supposed to stay in Praia, so as to be later handed to the Children's Emergency Centre.
After having barely slept we drove back to the Airport to find out if there were any news on the lost luggage (which not only had all of my clothing for the four day trip but also presents for twenty children).
The piece of luggage had effectively left Lisbon airport, which meant that eventually somebody might have wrongly taken it and getting it back would almost entirely depend on the person who had taken it and whether he/she had used the airport as a stopping over circumstance and had further flown somewhere else or whether he/she was still on the island bringing it back, once it was noticed it wasn't his or hers.
Not to further let myself be affected by this situation and lose more time we headed to the city market to start substituting some of the "missing" presents for the children, many of which were dresses for the birthday party, as we were much more concerned about them than my "personal belongings".
Our intention was to have driven to Calheta fairly early in the morning, which didn't happen given the circumstances, but fortunately by 11H00 A.M. the expected call came ... a gentleman had rang the Airport lost and found services and would soon be handing the wrongly taken bag. I must confess I nearly cried out of joy, as I knew how important it was for us and especially for those children.
We soon headed back to the Airport to collect it and then towards the pension where we also collected the bags that we were supposed to take to the village. We were lucky enough to have had the previous night driver accompany us throughout all of this because apart from working for the agency he himself had a bus of his own and offered to drive us around and later into the village for a rather special price.
As we drove along the small villages on the way to Calheta I noticed I had never in all these years seen the island so green, this being partly due to the fact that it had rained heavily during the previous two weeks and the dry land had absorbed the pouring water turned into a blessing.
We stopped several times, as I couldn't resist taking some photos. How different did it all look ...
By the time we reached Calheta it was around 3H00 P.M. and we were relieved ....
(to be continued)
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