D.I.Y

Flight f*** up & no bus to Tanzania till Saturday

...That's about it really.

After a very early bus to Kigali Tuesday morning, I arrive at Nyabugogo (crazy busy station), only to find there is no bus on Wednesays only Saturday. My own fault cos I hadn't ever inquired myself. Lesson there to always do the job yourself...Which is fine of course except when you have no choice but to rely on others as with my flight back to UK.

VSO are most insistent that you give them plenty of notice when booking flights back home. This not only ensures a good price I suppose but also gives time to change things if needed. Well they've had over 2 months to organise the booking and after twice confirming the same date and 2 weeks ago receiving the confirmation I was pretty sure all was good. Anyway, I go into the office yesterday only to find an email saying that I wasn't confirmed but on some bloody waiting list. They were also asking if I might be able to leave 3 days earlier with shitty Addis or Nairobi connections. I was less than polite in the email back and went to confront Mike, the country director. He'd earlier written to say if I was unhappy to see one of the managers rather than the officers, so I did. I don't thnk he actually knew I was in Kigali-his first words to me were, 'oh, you're here?'....'Indeed, I am'

He was sympathetic but just said that the service from the agency had been bad but there was nothing more that anyone at VSO could do. I disagreed! I explained to him that travel agencies have allocations of seats so if one agent has reached it's allocation then it's not necessarily that the plane is full and I was a bit surprised that if there had been so many problems with this agency why another hadn't been tried. I pretty much left him with that thought and asked Josiane to try another agency.

One phone call later I am back on the same flight, Kigali to Brussels to London, confirmed!I'm so glad I didn't accept the other flights or the excuses...