Hello Everyone!
WARNING! This is a very long blog entry. However, it is the documented saga of two weary travelers and the hellish nightmare of a journey that should have never taken place.
Also...So that this situation doesn't happen to anyone else I ask that you please email the link to this blog to everyone you know (and even those that you don't). No one should have to go through this situation. Thank You.
I am writing today’s blog from the comfort of my studio in the good old US of A. Why do I mention my location? Because I should be writing this blog from merry old England. If you’ve been following my blog or are familiar with my teaching schedule, you’ll recall that Kim and I had scheduled some classes in the UK. It ended up not happening. Here’s the story of the nightmare that took place on our trip. And believe me, when I say nightmare I do mean nightmare, because we are still haunted by the horrific situation that we ended up in.
Wednesday September 16, 2009
Kim and I left our home in the early afternoon to drive to Nashville where our journey to the UK would begin. We traveled to Nashville with a sense of excitement and nervous anticipation. Kim isn’t a confident traveler and this trip would prove to challenge her beyond her imagination.
We checked in for our flight to Minneapolis where we would connect for a flight to London’s Heathrow airport. We checked our bags, went through security, and headed for our departure gate. As we sat in the departure lounge an announcement came over the PA system telling us that our flight was delayed due to a late arriving plane. This was the first of many problems that began our nightmare. The delay would cause us to miss our connection in Minneapolis. I quickly headed to the gate and asked the agent what we could do about this. She immediately rebooked our flight to a Delta Airlines flight. This flight would take us to Atlanta where would connect to London. The good thing was, the departure gate was just across the aisle from our current gate. We thanked her for her help and headed to our new gate assignment.
The aircraft for our Atlanta departure arrived on time and we again became excited about our adventure to the UK. Then came the announcement over the PA system “Due to weather in Atlanta Delta flight xxx will be delayed”. Kim and I looked at each other and wondered what is trying to keep us from leaving the US? We again spoke with the gate agent and she informed us that they would leave as soon as they received permission that they could land in Atlanta.
We sat in the departure lounge for over an hour when we received the news that our flight was cleared to board and depart. This was great news, but we wondered about our connection. Would we make it? According to our calculations we would get to Atlanta about 15 minutes before our flight left for the UK. It was going to be close but every great adventure has close moments like this. So we headed for Atlanta.
Funny thing about Atlanta…the airport is HUGE. Once you land there you are at the mercy of the ground control gods that have complete say over when you get to your gate. As we sit on the taxiway waiting for a gate assignment the minutes quickly ticked away. We missed our connection by 10 minutes. As we deplaned the gate agent informed us that we could get a hotel for a reasonable rate and handed us a voucher for the accommodations. She also let us know that we were booked on a flight the next afternoon to Newark New Jersey where we would connect to London.
Thursday September 17, 2009
After a decent night sleep and a good breakfast we headed over to the airport for another attempt at going to London.
At our assigned departure gate the thought came to me that we may need to check on our flight. We wandered over to the Delta airlines counter and made our inquiries. Guess what? Delta lied to us. It was true, they did have us on a flight to Newark, however, they didn’t have us confirmed to London. The Delta agent said they were having a hard time finding us a seat out of Newark. Plus, they had us double booked on a direct flight from Atlanta to London’s Heathrow at 10 o’clock that night. The Delta agent checked around and asked if we wanted to be on an earlier flight to London’s Gatwick airport. We jumped at the chance to leave and begin our UK adventure. We asked if our bags would be put on our flight with us and she said it would be no problem….This is lie number 2, at this point we would never see our bags again until we arrived home.
Our flight to London departed on time at 5:30pm, we were finally on our way. The flight was long and uneventful. This would prove to be the best part of our UK experience.
Friday September 18, 2009
We landed at London’s Gatwick airport at 6:15am. We gathered our carryon bags and headed for customs.
We made our way through the long line to meet with a customs agent. If you thought that our ordeal was already bad, brace yourself, it’s about to take a HUGE turn for the worse. Our customs agent asked what the purpose of our visit was and we informed him of our plans to teach 5 days in the UK and then sight see in London. He then asked for our papers that said we had permission to do this. We informed him that we were told that we didn’t need any documentation.
Let me explain how we came to this conclusion. In April we researched whether we needed a visa to teach these classes. We found that a visa would be needed if we were working there for an extended period of time – which we weren’t. We also spoke with the shop owner in England and asked her what was needed and she said that nothing was necessary.
Guess what? According the customs agent in England we needed some type of “sponsor certificate” to teach 3 classes (less than 1 week of work) in the UK. He began to ask us multiple questions as to what type of classes these were, who we were teaching, how much were we charging, where we were teaching, etc, etc. Here’s where the nightmare gets even more horrific. We were informed that we are being detained by the UK immigration service for further investigation. Our passports were taken away from us and we were escorted to an office for questioning.
Before questioning we had to find our bags. We were escorted to the baggage claim area where we found out that our bags weren’t on our flight with us. One bag was put on a Northwest Airlines flight to London Heathrow and the other was put on a Continental Airlines flight and they had no idea when or where it would arrive. Delta Airlines completely and totally lied to us about our bags in Atlanta…lie number three for those of you keeping count. At no time were our bags found (as they said they had been) or put on the same flight as us (as they said they had been). We filled out some paperwork with the baggage claim agents and then were escorted to the customs and immigration detention center for questioning.
In the detention center we were searched, finger printed, and photographed. Our carryon bags were searched and scrutinized. They took our drivers licenses and various other pieces of identification (including our Sam’s Club membership cards that have our business name on it) and then escorted us to a holding cell to await further questioning.
Let me take a moment and inform you and set your minds at ease. At no time, throughout this entire ordeal, were we body cavity searched, which we thought was good news. However, if we had been that wouldn’t have surprised us. We were actually expecting it at some point.
The holding cell was filled with a lot of interesting people. One guy informed us that the customs people accused him of being a terrorist because he had a couple of different passports and had visited several places in recent months or years. Another man, from St. Lucia, arrived in the UK on a questionable ticket and they felt he was doing something illegal. The third man was from Jamaica, he spent most of the day sleeping and talking on his cell phone. We have no idea why he was there.
At about noon we finally had our interview with an immigration officer. Kim was the first to be questioned. After 10 minutes she was returned to the holding cell and then I was taken in for questioning. Another 10 minutes later I was escorted back to the holding cell. After an hour and a half of waiting to see what was going to happen to us the immigration official returned to give us the verdict. It was determined that we didn’t have the proper papers to enter the UK and we were refused entry into the country. She told us that we needed a visa. She also told us that we needed a work visa. So in total we were told 3 different stories of 3 different documents that were needed to teach 42 people in the United Kingdom jewelry art. She acted as if we had hatched some type of plan to subvert the British government and extort millions of pounds from the good people of the UK. We felt like common criminals. We were booked to leave the UK on a flight the next morning. The immigration official said that our checked bags were being sent directly to our home.
We were then told that we would have to spend the night in a separate holding facility that was off of the airport property. We were put back into our holding cell to await transportation. During our 5 hour wait sitting on the hardest metal benches ever created we watched a parade of some of the most unsavory individuals come into the holding cell. On top of all of that, the self proclaimed terrorist that we met when we arrived stopped up the men’s toilet before he was escorted to his flight back to his home planet. That was real nice of him because it backed up and made a huge mess.
As the minutes and hours ticked away in the holding cell Kim and I fell deeper and deeper into depression. We never intended to do anything wrong, we felt that we had thoroughly investigated what was needed to enter the UK and teach our classes. We asked the shop owner what was needed and she said nothing was needed. We also thought about our family back home. We had no contact with them to let them know our situation. They didn’t know whether we made it to England okay and they certainly didn’t know that we were being detained and refused entry. I don’t think that I have ever been so depressed and demoralized in all of my life. The entire ordeal was one of the worse things that I have ever experienced and I would never wish this type of treatment on my worse enemy. But we hadn’t been to the overnight detention center yet….the whole experience gets worse…much worse.
At 5pm we were escorted to the vehicle that would take us to our overnight accommodations. The vehicle was lined with a locked cage making us feel even more like criminals. As soon as the van began to move Kim couldn’t take the stress any longer and she burst into tears. I did my best to comfort her, but the comfort was only temporary. Once we pulled up to the detention center she again fell apart. The building was surrounded by a 20 foot metal fence topped with razor wire. The gates slowly opened so the van could move into the outer parking area. We drove to a second gate that was opened leading us to another secured parking area. They parked the van and we waited for a third gate to open. This led us to the inner parking area where we would be removed from the van and escorted inside the building for further processing.
We were set in a small room where we again were searched, our carryon bags were searched, our picture was again taken, and we were explained how the overnight detention center worked. We were also told that we couldn’t take our cell phone into our room because it had a camera on it. I asked if I could make a call from my phone in front of him so I could let our family know that we were coming home the following day. He said that wouldn’t be a problem. I called one of our sons and let him know what happened. I didn’t go into any great detail because I only had a minute or so to make the call. I told him when we would arrive in Nashville and asked if he could arrange for someone to pick us up. This was the only contact that we had with anyone outside of the situation that we were in. It was one of the loneliest moments of my life.
After 20 minutes we were given picture id’s with a locker key attached. An officer escorted Kim and I to a doctor who asked us if we had any medical conditions. Interestingly enough, the doctor said that they don’t get many people from the States in there and he asked us what happened. We told him the whole story and he was in total disbelief that this went on. As a matter of fact, everyone that we dealt with couldn’t believe that this was happening.
After we met with the doctor another officer showed us around our “deluxe accommodations”. There was a computer room, a TV room, a courtyard that we could walk around in, a fitness room, and several places of worship. The room that we were assigned was designed for families to be detained. It was nice to know that Kim and I would be allowed to stay together because this proved to strengthen us through our ordeal. We were then escorted to the dining hall for dinner. The tour to the dining hall was one that really opened our eyes to the stark reality of our situation. The courtyard was full of men from the Middle East and Africa. As we walked through every eye was upon us and they all seemed to leer at us if as to have a desire to kill the ugly Americans. To add to this Kim was one of only two women in the facility. This put me on a heightened sense of protection for the security of my wife.
We went through the dinner line as quickly as we could. The only thought that we had was to eat fast and lock ourselves in our room until the next morning. The food was horrible – baked chicken (which was the highlight of the entire meal), nasty dry rice and potatoes that tasted as if they had been cooked in fish water, corn, bread, and a beverage (we chose water). We ate quickly so we could get to our room. Kim didn’t eat everything, I though ate it all. I think that I went into some type of prisoner mode feeling that I needed to fill the space in my stomach in case there wasn’t another meal in my future.
At 7pm that evening Kim and I made our beds and laid down to get our first sleep in about 36 hours. The beds were one step above lumpy cement. Kim quickly fell asleep for about 4 hours. I, on the other hand, laid there recalling everything that had just happened to us. I was still in total shock over the whole ordeal. All we wanted to do was visit the UK, teach a couple of small classes, tour London, and have a wonderful adventure. Instead we had the worse time of our lives.
At about 11pm Kim woke up and we talked for an hour about how we were going to pick up the pieces of our lives when we got home. What nobody knows is the financial toll that this took on us. We are not rich people by any means. We run a small business that takes care of our material needs and we are very satisfied with this. The only way that we were going to the UK to teach was the experience and financial gain that we would have. Once we taught all of the classes we would have the means to tour London. We would also have the finances to come home and improve our lot in life. We sacrificed a lot of things just to be able to purchase the tickets and materials for the class. To buy the materials we sold our old, crappy car with the plan of purchasing a much better one once we returned home. All of these wonderful plans have just been wiped out. At this point we have no idea how we are going to turn all of this around.
After our little talk we both laid down again to try and get at least a little sleep before we were escorted back to the holding cell at the airport. This time I fell asleep and Kim laid there pondering the events that had just taken place.
Saturday September 19, 2009
At 3:15am a female guard entered our secured room and informed us that we needed to wake up because we were going to be out processed in an hour and taken back over to the airport. Kim and I quickly got out of bed and began to shower. I have no idea why we bothered to clean up, we had to put on the same clothes that we had been traveling in for the past 56 hours. By now they began to smell like a herd of goats. We did our best to freshen up and were then escorted to the processing center.
We were again searched, our bags were searched, and we were placed in a room to wait for a ride to the airport. I don’t think that I have ever been frisked this much in my entire life. After 20 minutes or so we were placed back into a secure van and driven to the airport where we and our bags were again searched. Once we cleared security, again, we were driven back to the holding facility at the airport immigration center. After we and our bags were searched again, we were placed into the holding cell. We would sit there for two and a half hours. By this point we were tired and beat. We looked like a couple of worn out dishrags. Our morale was at an all-time low. And our butts had a permanent waffle imprint of the metal benches that we were sitting on.
At 8am we were escorted to our flight. The guards informed us that we wouldn’t get our passports back until we were out of British airspace. Like we were going to somehow take over the plane and have them take us back to the UK. This last escorted trip felt the worse. We were being paraded in front of the people that we would spend the next 9 hours with trapped inside of an airplane bound for the US. They all looked at us as if we were part of some international crime syndicate that had plans to hijack the plane. Talk about feeling like a criminal.
We met the flight attendant at the aircraft door and she showed us to our seats near the back of a completely booked flight. Our guard handed her two envelopes that contained our passports and tickets. Sitting in our seats waiting to leave we felt a little relieved. We prayed together for a safe trip back home and Kim jokingly took a couple of pictures out of our airplane window to show that we had actually been in the UK. They closed the aircraft door and we began our journey to Atlanta.
By this point, Kim and I had been in an aircraft for a long, long time. We both were exhausted and sleep deprived. We had a terrible ordeal spending the night in ‘little Beirut’. Our nerves were completely shot. Our bodies were quivering uncontrollably. During the flight one of the flight attendants asked Kim why we were detained and Kim unloaded the entire tale to her. By the time the story was over, the flight attendant felt bad for us. She told Kim that whatever we needed just ask – if we needed more to eat…or anything, just ask and she would take care of it. It was the first nice thing that happened to us in the past 48 hours.
We landed in Atlanta at 1pm and we were never so happy to be back in the US. The flight attendant handed us our envelopes containing our passports and told us not to open them. We walked, unescorted, to the immigration office. As the officer looked at the envelopes he said that we needed to be classified orange….I have no idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. He then changed that and said “wait a minute, you guys are American citizens, let me hurry up and get you guys on your way”. Finally, FREEDOM! He asked us why we had been denied entry and we explained to him the entire terrible situation. He explained, “we have a reciprocal agreement between the UK and us, they should have never done this to you”. I wish it had been him at the UK customs center instead of the moron that we dealt with. We were then sent on our way back home.
We got on our last flight to Nashville. During the flight home the delivery service called and left us a message that our bags, which we hadn’t seen since we left on Wednesday, were being taken to our home. Another piece of wonderful news.
We landed in Nashville and were met by our son and his wife. It was wonderful to finally see a familiar face. Kim again broke down in tears as she hugged our son and daughter in law (I’m actually getting a little choked up just writing about it). We got into their car and began telling them the entire tale. After the two hour trip we finally made it home. And things got even better. The rest of our children met us at our home. They had decorated our living room with balloons and a welcome home banner. We hugged them all and finally felt relieved to be back. Kim told them everything that took place not sparing any detail and they felt just as horrified as we did.
After a couple of ‘adult beverages’, Kim and I went to bed to try and catch up on all of the sleep that we had lost. It was the hardest that I have ever slept in my entire life. I was unconscious for 10 hours. When we woke up Sunday morning our bodies were still quivering. I hope that in the coming days that this horrible feeling stops.
So that is our tale. As I write this my thoughts are our future plans. We have no car, lost a couple thousand dollars that will devastate our financial future for the coming months, and we are emotionally crushed. Will we try to do this again? Probably not. I think that this experience has taught me that teaching wire art will be something that we will only do here in the States. It would have been wonderful to take my methods to the UK and I feel terrible for all of those that signed up for the class. All we can do now is try to fix everything that has been broken.
‘til next week.
Jim McIntosh
P.S. – does anyone know of a reliable vehicle for sale at a cheap price? Lol.
Hugs and prayers to both of you. I'm so sorry you guys had to go through this. 
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