Sylvia's Journal

Everything worked out perfectly, in the end, on this, my departure day. Axel found himself with an abscess under one of his molars and accompanied me to my dental (cleaning) appointment to have it diagnosed. It couldn’t be handled at the small dentist office but an appointment was available immediately at the big dental specialty services center a few towns over.

Everything perfectly timed to allow for an afternoon of packing and a timely departure for the airport. I dropped Axel off at the dental center and was able to go to a nearby bookstore café to get some last minute gifts for friends in Kabul and a coffee. Shopping with crutches is a challenge. I bought a few small and light books that I could squeeze under my arm, just barely. The coffee had to be brought to my table.

Axel, relieved from weeks of piercing headaches, now explained, and a throbbing tooth, drove me to the airport and carried my gear until I was handed over to a ‘mobility assistant,’ but not until we had a beer and some oysters at a travelers’ restaurant.

I am on a roll, quite literally, having completed the first part of the journey, to Paris. Travelling with ‘wheelchair assistance’ is rather nice although you do have to give up some control over time and direction. Still, I could get used to this kind of travel. In Boston I zipped through the long lines at the security checkpoint; throngs of people stepping aside to let me and my Ethiopian mobility attendant through, the masses parting as if I were Moses entering the Red Sea. Security is painless as everything was done for me. Although everything seems to go much slower, I was the first in the plane (but the last one out in Paris).

The Ethiopians (and Eritreans) not only have a hold on the Boston parking situation I discovered, they also seem to have cornered the ‘mobility’ market at the airport. Eritreans and Ethiopians may not be brothers and sisters when at home, but here in the States they are in the same business and seem rather brotherly and sisterly to one another, at least from my seated vantage point.

In Paris I was curious, and admittedly a little anxious, how this wheelchair business would work. For one, you wait, until everyone but the unaccompanied youngsters, the elderly and the crippled remain. Then there is some confusion about which wheelchair is for whom, in spite of the electronica that have everything registered.

A young French mobility assistant took me on a very long and complicated route that included a train and several elevators, all the while sorting out issues related to house keys and school children on her mobile. And then she parked me in the lounge where I will be for several more hours until another mobility assistant will pick me up again to get to the Dubai plane.

Once thing I have noticed is that being one-legged contributes to weight loss, despite the lack of mobility. The Air France lounge is stocked with the kinds of goodies I love: chocolate, petit-pain-au-chocolat, croissants, great cheeses, gazpacho, salads, cornichons and more. But with crutches I can’t carry anything to my table. I suppose I could ask but everyone seems too busy and self-absorbed that I let go of the idea of eating between meals. It won’t hurt me. On my way back I have about 10 hours to kill in the lounge and, presumably, I will be fully two-legged by then (and gain weight again).