I spend a lot of time in nice airports—and plenty of not-so-nice ones, too. But seeing these photos from war photographer Michael Christopher Brown made me reflect on my days as an aid worker in West Africa. While flying around the region, I saw plenty of abandoned planes on derelict runways. The airlines changed names…
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Brazzaville, the capital city of the Republic of Congo, has a spiffy new airport in the style of Paris or Madrid. Coming in on the RwandAir flight from Kigali, I'm shocked to see actual jet bridges where one can walk directly from the aircraft into the airport. Dozens of times I've landed in random African airports, deplaned the aircraft and been bused to the terminal, even if it's a short walk away and there are no other aircraft anywhere to be seen. As far as I can tell, the logic is, “Hey, we have these buses—we need to use them.”
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Note: This post contains videos. If you can't see them, you can view the collection over here. After flying through the day and night via Hong Kong, Johannesburg, and Nairobi (yes, I'm perpetually tired), I made it to Kigali, Rwanda—the starting point for my latest trip. This was a special adventure: a visit to several countries in Central-East Africa, and my first time to trek into the forest of Virunga National Park in Eastern Congo.
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