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A first time flyer who gets money to buy a flight ticket, starts feeling like he or she is important. You will feel God has elevated you to the skies where many others have not or may never get. You are eager to snap and show the world that “what God cannot do does not exist.”

You will board the plane and notice some people seated in four rolls in the front called Business Class. Their chairs are slightly bigger than the others. They are given priority from check-in to inflight meals etc. After take-off, a curtain is drawn to close them in front and separate them from the passengers in the economy class. They are treated better than those in the economy class, where you are seated.

There is yet another class of people who feel they are bigger than even the business or first class. They do not want to share a cabin with ordinary people. Anytime they travel, they do not make any contact with ordinary people. There is a separate wing for aircrafts on charter. They charter their own planes and fly with only their spouses, or family members or friends or business partners, to destination. They will rather spend thousands of dollars to charter private jets than to enter the same plane with some ‘scumbs’ of the Earth.

But whether you are in the economy class or business class or you charter a whole jet, as the plane begins to taxi to the runway to take off, you will notice, as you view from your window, that there is a fleet of private jets parked in open ramps, distant away from the commercial airliners. The owners of these planes have their own exclusive check-in lounges that are only accessible to them and their ilk. They bought these big birds in the sky and own them like private cars and they only use the airports for parking, take off and landing.

They have their personal pilots and cabin crew members. They pay them from their pockets. They don’t rush to the airport to travel because there is no flight to miss. It is the flight that waits for them. They own the plane, the pilot and the cabin crew. Anytime or any minute they want to travel, they only notify those who will put the necessary things on standby and once they are ready, they move; anytime they like. Some even have their private and exclusive airstrips from where they take off and land. They do not go to public airports. They are often referred to as the super rich.

Now, if you ever have the privilege of entering the parking ramps of the super rich who own their private aircraft, there is yet another categorization. Though they are all regarded as super rich, their egos begin to categorize the cost of the private jet each of them owns. Are you using Boeing 747-200B, or the Airbus A380 Flying Palace, or Boeing 747-8 VIP, or Gulfstream G650ER, or Bombardier Global 7500? It’s like grading your ego according to the car you drive. You may all be car owners but the owner of a Maybach, Bentley or Rolls Royce will still look down on the owners of less expensive cars in the car park.

That’s not all. There is yet another higher level of those who travel not only in the most exotic airplanes but do not even need visas, passports or boarding passes or anything that me and you need to travel. Apart from having money, they own political power and authority that grants them entry into everywhere on planet Earth without hesitation. Even if they decide to live the rest of their lives permanently in the skies, it will be made possible with alacrity because of who they are on Earth.

Now, to escape our planet Earth, to other places where humans are non-entities, someone has developed a flying bird ‘STARSHIP’ estimated to be around $10 billion, as a vehicle large enough to support human visits to planet Mars, a distance of up to 401 million kilometers from Earth. Even the richest of humans on Earth, will have to queue up as passengers on STARSHIP, to make it to Mars; leaving their luxurious and exotic flying birds behind on Earth.

But of all these, the grim technological possibility that man will one day, become only a hologram that can teleport himself and be reconstructed in any other different location, without using any aircraft or plane, or airport or rocket, brings us closer also to the knowledge of the cheapest journey away from Earth, for both the super rich and the wretched poor. It is affordable to all.

That journey that is a social leveller. That journey that gives us succour and assures us that regardless of what life may churn out for us, we will undertake it. A journey for everyone. A journey that requires no travel documents or immigration checks. A flight that no one will miss or evade. Perhaps, the only journey that the passenger is oblivious of departure time, the same way he was unaware of his arrival time. A necessary procession to Golgotha. The costless journey.

That’s the ultimate journey our friend, brother, colleague, patriot, and happy jolly fellow, Solomon Ogar, has undertaken to Solomon Island. I can imagine the atmosphere on the Island’s shores. The bubbling waterfalls and blooming gardens, to welcome the landlord of the territory. I am not sure he can still see all the matters arising and the timelines we gave ourselves and wrote down in our earthly jotters. Maybe he can still see them.

All the silent thoughts and plans that have suddenly evaporated, but one thing I am certain of is that, he has transitioned to the ancestral realms where there are no boundaries in thought and matter is dissolved. I shed a tear for him because I will miss him. I shed a tear because we had unfinished business. But I am happy because ancestors never die again. And now, may his gentle soul, find eternal rest.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.

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