Tuesday 26 February 2013

Swiss air

The whatsits did their sums wrong! And it's actually over double what they'd originally quoted for excess baggage. I really don't want to use every penny kindly donated by you all to pay for the excess, and as my sister said she'd hoped the money would be used directly with the children and nurses there.
But if we have to find more and this is the only way then so be it!
Facebook has been a buzz of activity today with people's ideas on this. None more so than Norman Lebrecht, who has included a piece in his blog. Amazing and thankyou for that.
Lets see what happens in the next couple if days.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jo, picked up your story on Lebrecht via Facebook. Do you have some way for strangers to make a donation to you, if you do could you post it? I'm so impressed by what you're doing and so appalled by Swiss! I'm another London based violinist by the way. Best, Abigail

Teresa Reynolds said...

So sorry to hear about this – We had a similar situation a few years ago with Emirates on a voluntary mission to South Africa to help build an extension to an AIDS orphan feeding centre – we got permission for excess baggage free of charge on both journies – out and back – to be able to take tools – power tools and simple things like hammers and saws etc – No problem going out but a HUGE problem coming home when they refused to honour the previous agreement – I had already given a lot of my clothes away to women from from the township we were woking in but we still needed to get the tools home – Emirates would not budge at all and then Security at Jo Burg Airport got heavy……. insisting we throw everything over our weight allowance into the bin NOW or be arrested for causing a disturbance at checkin – so we put most of the remaining clothes in the bin (I would rather have left them at the township) and then we had to throw away lots of old but sentimental tools – my fiancee’s late father’s woodworking tools. Heartbreaking considering we had also both given up 3 weeks annual holiday and paid for our own flights, car hire & accomodation and also raised money for the construction costs involved. There needs to be an international agreement from all Airlines relating to Air Freight & Baggage relating to voluntary & aid work. Good Luck with your trip andyour work with the children.... Teresa Reynolds