From Michele Lagoy:
Here are some photos from my sister, Rene Pellecchia. She came over on a FoT flight in December of 1989. Note the dates on the passport stamps. She doesn’t remember the woman who organized the flight and traveled with the group of about a dozen. The flight was on Air Afrique in and out of JFK in NY. They had a stop in Abidjan where they had to get their luggage off the tarmac for the connecting flight. The price was around $700-$800. Please note Virginia Swezy is in the last photo with my sister holding the little boy in Virginia’s Togolese family.
It meant a lot to have my sister visit me then and we enjoyed reminiscing about this.
Merci
From: Mark Lemberger
When FOT Flight Two reassembled in Lome airport for the return they brought with them a large amount of stuff. One guy had a five foot wooden statue, I asked if he was gonna buy a ticket for it since it wasn’t going in a bin. As I ran among the group to translate, a Kabye gendarme in the classic khaki and kepi stopped me cold, looked me in the eye and said, “Pourquoi partir? Vous etes Togolese.” I was home for a while before I recalled this particular incident. I still wonder at it. After a while a guy (airport director?) asked me and Brian Rawlinson, my able assistant, if we were the Peace Corps/Friends of Togo group. When we said yes, he said he would arrange to put a large roll on container at our disposal and make sure it got to Customs at JFK. No charge and thanks for your service. We hear a lot of how things can get screwed up in Africa but when things go well they go very well indeed.
From Jim Morrill
FOT was based in NC during those early years. The flights were put together with the help of an Air France agent here in Charlotte. He arranged for the r/t flights to Togo via Abidjan. I forgot exactly when they started but I took a group over in 1984. It apparently was newsworthy because Togolese TV did a sit-down interview with me at the Lome airport. My memory is that the flights lasted a few years and then stopped. It was a great way for former PCVs and friends and families of current PCVs to get over there.