Afriqiyah Airways, poor service, poor facilities
While modern aviation has taken new dimensions to improve aviation safety and ensure the safety of passengers and luggage in all flights, other airlines such as Afriqiyah has broken every rule in civil aviation.
This is a true bitter experience of a passenger that joined the airline Afriqiyah, a couple of months ago.
"I find it very necessary to write my story for other intending passengers that want to travel with this airline to think twice before making any fatal decision," said a woman residing in Britain. In July 2008, I traveled with my son, an eleven-year-old boy, from the United Kingdom to Accra- Ghana, for a six-week-long holiday.
Even though my luggage was controlled and tagged, right under my watchful eyes, when we arrived in Accra- Ghana, our luggage was nowhere to be found. How could our luggage mysteriously disappear? Afriqiyah officials had no clues to the disappearance of our luggage.
When I called their office in Accra to find out where our luggage was, none of the airline officials gave me a positive answer. On many occasions, they don’t want to pick up the phone when I called. At a certain stage, they felt being disturbed by my constant inquiries. How could such a thing happen to a passenger?
It’s only Africa, one could hear such stories. We are a subject of mockery in the eyes of the developing world due to the way some of us do our things. It takes so many years to build up a good reputation but it takes just a second for a stupid fool to destroy all the good works that had been done.
One shocking thing I also observed was that the toilet on the flight wasn't in good order. A hostess stood by, with a bucket of water and rinses the toilet after each use before someone else enters. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.
I spent the whole six week holiday with my son in the same clothes we wore on board the flight from the UK to Ghana. Eventually, we returned to the United Kingdom without a trace of our luggage by Afriqiyah officials.
Three months after my arrival; I received a confirmation call from them that our luggage had been found. I wrote a letter to the airline demanding compensation. Till now they refused to reply to my letter or even to send a word of apology.
Is that an airline I would encourage someone to travel with? She asked. Sometimes passengers make mistakes to join cheap airlines but in the end, they lose more than traveling with the best airlines. A word to the wise is enough.
Once alcohol takes control over you, it's hard to break free
Alcohol is now known to be equally dangerous to cocaine and other dangerous drugs that affect the health of the abusers but the fight against it is much relaxed or slow.
A group of doctors in America believes that before the government loses or wins the campaign against cigarettes, cocaine, and other dangerous drugs, without considering alcohol much, it would have claimed millions of lives.
During my youth, I witnessed the effect of alcohol on some of my teachers during lessons in the classroom. When it’s eating time, we had nothing to talk about but the stinking or stench of alcohol we smelled on a particular teacher.
I could also remember my mother on many occasions counseling an alcoholic living in our neighborhood. When my mother didn’t see him any longer passing in front of our house to buy the strong, locally prepared drink, she thought he had gotten the message.
Unknowingly, the man changed his route to avoid my mother seeing him. Eventually, the man succumbed to illness and died. The postmortem revealed that he died from excessive drinking.
In America, medical statistics have it that nearly 14 million over 18 are alcoholics. Another 1.3 million suffer from alcohol dependencies. Overall, almost 8% of adults have problems with alcohol, costing the economy an estimated $100 billion a year in health care costs and loss of productivity. Fatal road accidents worldwide are also related to alcohol.
Indy Mehigan, 17, a transformed alcoholic, once terrorized the streets of Lowestoft, Suffolk, in Britain. According to her, “I was just 12 when I first swigged vodka with my giggling mates in the school toilets. A few years later, I had turned into a violent, drunken youth who thought of nothing but smashing someone’s face."
"Then a friend told me about Positive Futures, a youth project in Lowestoft that helps teenagers with addiction and other problems. With their help, I left the gang and started a college course, and I’m now retaking my GCSEs.
I’m also doing a course where I can mentor other kids. These days, when I see gangs of youths, I’m the one who crosses the street. But I also feel sorry because they are wrecking their lives.” She said. (Culled from Daily Mirror, Saturday, February 23, 2008, edition)
This is the confession of a young girl who has been in the abyss of alcohol drinking, but now is out of it and piously and consciously stepping out to help others. As a nation, people have to understand the crisis in alcohol abuse for several reasons.
Drinkers may find it legal, pleasurable, and even beneficial, but at the end of it all, when hooked, let’s us view its disastrous effect on humans and on the roads. Besides the deaths alcohol has caused, it has also contributed to many broken homes, painful divorces, separations, and juvenile crime. .,
Alcohol is not just a closet problem but a full-blown health crisis that is crippling our nation as well as families. Kick it early or don’t go for it at all.
A teenage mother-to-be
Across the continent, poverty has taken its toll on many Third World countries. In Asia, Africa, and Latin America, teenage pregnancy, lack of education, prostitution, and juvenile crime are so prevalent that they have affected the socio-economic sectors of these countries.
However, things are now changing. What used to be the problem of these poverty-stricken countries has now shifted to Europe and the United States of America.
Teenage pregnancy is now booming in the USA, Britain, the Netherlands, and France, and in fact throughout the whole of Europe.
The question is why children, who have a lot more chances and facilities for education than their counterparts in the Third World, suddenly choose to be mothers instead? Is it peer pressure? Are they from a family of a broken marriage? Or victims of alcohol and drug abuse, or simply ignorance?
It is now very common to see children and sometimes adults who can speak their own language in Europe, including Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, but can’t read or write. Is that illiteracy or semi-illiteracy?
The Dutch Youth and Family Affairs Minister recently said that “Sexual morals of the country’s youngsters have gone astray. A girl is seen as an object, and sex as a currency. The meaning of love does not play any role anymore in the lives of youngsters.”
He stressed that if the mentality among Dutch youths is to enter a garage to get a girl and the very moment you want sex, then we have lost the principle of moral relationship. Many have distorted ideas about sex. Said Andre Rouvoet.
The minister was responding to a television documentary, “Sex Sells,” aired on Dutch television, which showed 12- to 16-year-old boys and girls speaking openly about sex.
The open experience sex debate revealed that some of the youngsters had their first sexual experience at the age of 9. The average of they lost their virginity at the age of 13.
If the same problems taking place in so-called Third World countries are also occurring in Europe and the USA, then I’m afraid there are no more differences between a Third World country and an advanced country anymore.
