In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I am afraid of flying, absolutely petrified. My dad worked for the airlines when I was growing up and I flew all the time without incident, so this is sort of a new fear for me, which like most fears, can probably be explained away with all kinds of psychoanalysis about control issues or whatever, but I didn't have time for explanations. I had to get on that plane today. When people asked me how I felt about coming to the Congo and whether I was nervous or scared or afraid or any of the emotions that would normally run high for someone's first trip to a country as fascinating as this one, I mostly thought, "Yeah, I'm really nervous, scared and afraid of being on a plane for, like, a day."

To add insult to injury, I was traveling entirely alone. My husband, David, who I met while working at The Carter Center and is currently the project manager for the Center's election observation mission to the Congo, encouraged me not to worry. He pointed out that once I reached Paris to pick up my connecting flight, the former prime minister of Canada, Joe Clark, who is serving as the leader of the observation mission, would be traveling the rest of my route with me. I felt this was little consolation. In the unfortunate event of a panic attack, even if the flight attendants allowed me, a hyperventilating coach-class passenger, to bum-rush first class toward a former head of state, I'm not sure I would have been comfortable saying to him, "You don't know me, but..." and then collapsing at his side for reassurance that the plane was not going to crash.

Fortunately, none of those things happened. I didn't hyperventilate, poor Joe Clark wasn’t forced to defend himself against me and the plane didn't crash. Which is not to say the thought didn't cross my mind.As I sat at the gate in Atlanta anxiously waiting to board the plane, I looked up and noticed a very familiar looking woman standing right in front me, talking officiously with some airline attendants and security personnel. I called my best friend and said very conspiratorially, "I think I'm looking right at President Carter's scheduler, right in front of me, right now." My best friend, who by night is my oldest friend in the world and appreciates, or at least understands, my totally sweet idiosyncrasies, but by day is the very serious and also officious executive assistant of President Carter and cannot suffer fools gladly, said, "I told you he was. . ." She went on about President Carter's Habitat build in India this week, but I'd long since stopped listening. All I wanted to hear was that he and I were going to be on the same airplane, because where President Carter goes, so too go all the Secret Service agents a scared flier like me could ever hope for. And when I got to my seat on the plane, I noticed the man sitting next to me wearing the very recognizable and not at all discreet Secret Service earpiece, and I was immediately at ease. Not that I was under any illusion that he would keep the plane from crashing; he was just a big soothing presence in my time of need. I did try floating the psychobabble about loss of control precipitating a fear of flying to him, which he refuted swiftly and without regard for my fear of flying, saying, "I think it’s because you’re afraid you’re going to die."

Despite cantankerous words of wisdom from an otherwise genuinely friendly agent, I traveled more or less without incident. I did talk with Joe Clark as we boarded the plane for Kinshasa, and when we deplaned, he kindly waited for me on the tarmac. He and the Canadian ambassador and the rest of the delegation leadership and all, and as they were ushered through the Kinshasa airport’s VIP process, such as it was, they herded me right along with them.

The Kinshasa airport, which feels a lot more like a busy flea market than an airport, doesn’t seem to have any rhyme or reason to it. People wander about as if they know where they’re going, but it doesn’t look like there’s any discernible place to go. Had I not had the good fortune to arrive with a VIP and be greeted by an ambassador, I’m not sure where I would have ended up. Not that it seems to matter much. People get where they’re going eventually, even if their luggage doesn’t. But that’s a story worth saving for tomorrow.