CHECK THAT ITINERARY
I will always live to remember the first of December 2008. This was the day I was to travel back to my own country from New Delhi, India.
The ninth international children’s festival for performing art was an occasion to cherish. My colleague Benjamin and I, together with eight children, had travelled to take part in this colourful ceremony that attracted ‘all creatures great and small’ from ‘far and wide’. We arrived in India on a beautiful bright morning. Our welcoming party consisted of two men who had beautiful wreaths around our necks.
“Welcome to India”, they told us as they made a careful bow each time they approached a new recipient of their warm gesture.
I was particularly excited that we had finally arrived after months of planning and painstaking savings for the trip. The ninth International Children’s Festival for Performing Arts was an occasion to cherish. My colleague Benson and I had carefully selected the eight participants, a group of teenagers aged between 12 and 17 years. The days of preparing for the festival had been quite involving because each child needed to know their lines and they just had to put up the best act. There were many countries taking part in the festival; Bulgaria, Germany, the Faroe Island, Pakistan and many others, too numerous to mention. It was a ceremony that people continued to be talked about months after it was over because of the flair and pomp with which it was presented.
Our children presented a play entitled, ‘A Skeleton in the closet’. The play was about a woman who had once cheated on her husband. She was impregnated by her boyfriend and because she had kept her ‘skeleton in her closet’ her husband, Charles had assumed that the son who was born was his child. The play was a tragedy because the son Nico ended up killing Charles who had decided to punish him for his misconduct; drugs and alcohol abuse. Shortly before drawing out the gun, his mother let out her ‘skeleton from the closet’, leaving Charles speechless and Nico, high on heroine found good reason to pull the trigger.
It was a breath taking scene that left the crowd thinking late into the night about the vices that different societies are challenged with. This was the night we should have left for the airport, in order for us to catch the flight the next morning at one a.m. Benson was very confident that our flight was on the morning after.
“Are you sure?” I had asked him not wanting to be left behind with eight children. After the Mumbai bombings that had taken place that time, we all wanted to leave. Our relatives back home were worried sick on our behalf. Our excitement of staying in India had been drastically deflated. Benson was slow at doing many things and I took it had been very careful at taking note of the details of the itinerary.
The next day we went shopping taking it for granted that we would drive to the airport later that evening, little did we know that our plane was two hours away that time. I must confess that the sight-seeing and shopping were not regrettable but the terrorist threats here and there.
When we arrived at the airport later that evening, all the children were looking forward to boarding the plane and just taking off. However, this was the worst night of their exciting journey to India.
“How many are you?” asked the receptionist at the desk.
“Ten”, I answered shrugging my shoulders because up until this moment I had no idea that we ha forgone the privilege of simply boarding and taking off. We were soon to turn into ‘beggars’.
“You missed you aeroplane yesterday”, the lady told me, shaking her head in the famous Indian style.
I saw my immediate surround swing passed my eyes as I slowly turned to face Benson squarely. I pursed my lips and lifted a fist in his face.
“What did you tell me two days ago?” I asked him as I drew him away from the children who were by now getting agitated. Everyone was checking in without any trouble, why weren’t they? Benson was speechless when he heard that we had missed our flight the previous morning. When I realised that I was not going to achieve anything by questioning him. I went to see the airline manager, who after two hours was able to squeeze on the flight.
Everyone was clearly tired that day; no one said a word to the other. I knew that the most difficult task lay ahead of us; explaining to parents why we had kept their children for one more day.
