Day 1 - Getting There

This is a review of the week from my sofa at home again, hopefully I won't leave too much out...
Here's the link to the NMTT website if you're interested: http://www.irishtownship.com/

Friday 2nd November 2007 -

Ciarán and Moe left me to the airport after a few drinks to see me off. Check in was scheduled for 3.30am and the airport was jammed. People all around me wore their name tags with various colours and numbers of stars. Most of us were one stars though, on our first, if not last, trip to build in the townships of South Africa.

The lads waited with me for ages but had to go home in the end as they were both wrecked and so I was left to make my way with the rest of the crowd to embark on possibly the most extraordinary week of our lives.

Our flights were scheduled to depart at 6am, 6.30am and 8am. However, delays ensued and our flight (the 6.30) eventually left the ground at around 8.30am.

What a flight..!

Some 17 hours later we landed in Capetown. Our one hour stop-over in Ghana turned out to be a 3 hour wait on the plane in sweltering heat with the only available water hot enough to make tea with...

But we made it, eventually. Niall and his crew were waiting for us at the airport and he greeted us all individually by name, it was the first time I'd met Niall and I was really impressed already. He'd waited for us for almost 5 hours at the airport when he could easily have been at home doing all the last minute preparations that lay ahead of him.

At 4.10am local time I finally got to my room, met Geraldine, my roommate for the week who'd already been to bed and who was now wide awake! Then settled down to enjoy a restless sleep for a whole 3 hours. The week hadn't even begun!