Turning Lemons into Lemmonaide
Well, it is about a month since we returned from Africa and almost two months from losing our bags on Turkish Airlines.If you didn’t read that post, we landed in Entebbe on a Tuesday morning at 3:40 AM and found out that our bags were left in Istanbul. We were told to contact the Turkish Airlines office in Kampala to find out when they would be arriving. Our plans were to leave for our first destination on Wednesday morning but our bags weren’t expected to arrive until Thursday morning. With that information we decided to stay in Kampala one extra day and I decided to drive to the airport at 4:30 in the morning so we could leave at 9 AM to head to our next stop, Mbale.
One of the scariest portions of our trip was the first drive from the airport to Kampala at 4 AM in the dark. We had a driver that we didn’t know and he had the fate of our family in his hands. He was seated on the “wrong” side of the car and it was mighty scary. After arriving at our destination I promised myself that I wouldn’t drive in the dark again on this trip. That was, until I went to get our luggage two days after we arrived and found out it wasn’t even there. I was very frustrated that we didn’t have our luggage, but in the end it all worked out, just like every other situation in my life has.
I posted while we were in Uganda that Erbil Ekgun, the country manager for Turkish Airlines, was super nice to us all along and promised to ship our bags to Mbale, about an 8 hour drive from Entebbe. He delivered on his promise and then texted us that he wanted to treat us to dinner when we were back in Kampala. This is where the lemons to lemonade comes in. When I got the text I realized that I was meant to meet Erbil and these were all signs to invite him to join us for dinner, which I did. He took us to dinner on our last night in Kampala and we discussed U-TOUCH and the work we were doing in Uganda. So, they lost our bags and I didn’t really lose it, I was just looking for the meaning in what was happening.
I returned to San Diego and I reached out to Erbil and he introduced me, via email, to the marketing department for Turkish Airlines in NYC. So last Friday I received a call from Alp in the Turkish Airlines marketing department. Now, I didn’t get any commitments from them, but I believe something positive will come from it. This just continues to make me believe that everything happens for a reason and you need to look for the message in everything that happens in your life. In other words, lemons to lemonade.
‘Til next time ………
Larry Kesslin 