Lichfield Youth Fellowship Trip to Matlosane Day 1

Dubai Airport, Friday 21 October

So far so good. We’ve arrived safely in Dubai, after a seven hour flight from Birmingham International. The group is intact and in good spirits.

We met at 13 The Close this morning at 10.45. We’ve been asked to contribute a song to the service we’ll be attending on Sunday morning and I wasn’t at all sure when else we’ll have a chance to practice anything, so we spent a hilarious few minutes rehearsing ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ as a round. If I say so myself, we sounded quite tuneful. Then it was out onto the West Front for a team photo and then, after a first set of farewells, in three cars to the airport.

There, at about 11.45, we said goodbye to our drivers and headed into the terminal. Check in and security were perfectly straightforward, so we had an hour to kill in ‘duty free’ before boarding. We agreed a meeting place and time and then split up. Tom, Ed and I immediately found a fast food outlet, with no sign of the others, and we wondered if the group had just divided for the first time along gender lines: the males prioritizing eating and the females shopping?

When it was time for us to meet up again, Ros, Helen and I were at the rendez vous before any of the young people, which is probably the way it should be, But they all joined us pretty promptly and we made our way together to the departure gate, from which we boarded for the flight. There was a short delay before take off, but we were airborne by 2.45.

We’re flying with Emirates, whose in-flight entertainment and food are impressive. In seven hours, we crossed the north sea, flew over north and eastern Europe, and then Turkey, Iraq and Syria and the Persian Gulf. It was sobering to think of what has been going on at ground level, with Turkish troops fighting Kurds on Iraqi soil, and Syria showing signs of becoming next in line after Libya to rise up against its dictator.

We landed here at 1.00am local time, 10.00pm UK time. It’s a ridiculous place: a huge monument to globalised materialism, with literally hundreds of departure gates indicating onward flights to the Far East, Australasia, the Indian subcontinent and, of course, Africa. So the people-watching is even richer than you’d expect at your average international airport. The air-conditioning disguises the fact that, even in the middle of the night, the temperature outside is 35˚!

We’ve got four hours to kill here. So again, we’ve found a ‘base’ and agreed a meeting up time and the group has scattered in search of fresh water or coffee and toilets. Then it’s the same again, only more so: a second flight, this time of eight hours, south and west to Jo’burg.