BLOG DAY 4 - Almost there

We arrived at a local airport called Wilson in Nairobi at 10:00 to board a flight to Madera, a border town with Somalia. We were standing outside with other passengers. I anticipated that the plane would be small, because there were only 15 passengers waiting. Most of them were Somalis, besides the Dutch photographer who came with me.

We were sitting in a small cafeteria infront of the airport. Nobody was giving us any information about the flight. Nobody was complaining though - they didn't seem surprised by the situation. After several hours of waiting, a man finally announced our flight number and called us to check in. He collected our passports and checked the weight of our bags. We walked through security and waited at the gate which was also very small.

At this point, I realised that I was now on my way to Somalia and there was no going back. I started to imagine what I could see in my trip and I tried to make my imagination as beautiful as possible, but I couldn't do that because the last images I had were stronger than any other.

To take my mind of things, I talked to Jan-Joseph about his experience of conflict countries. Two hours passed and there was still no information about our flight. I thought that the flight was cancelled for the day, because all the local flights were leaving one after the other one with some western Europeans tourists.

Our plane arrived finally at 15:00 Nairobi time. It was a very small airplane that can only carry 15 passengers. I could see the relief on people's faces. After a rough flight, we arrived at Madera at 17:30 local time. My colleagues of HIRDA Somalia were waiting for us outside and they took us to the guesthouse.
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I felt that I was already in Somalia because the people were Somalis, the houses, the cars and everything I saw on the streets were not new to me. I just looked around to take everything in. We arrived at the guesthouse and went to our rooms.

At 19:30 we were briefed by the HIRDA Somali team and started to plan our mission. The field team had already surveyed the area and informed us of the best route to get to the refugee camps.