a trek and a half

03 jan 09 1230

it's a new year and i'm off to swaziland. one year ago i couldn't tell you where on the globe such a country could be found, but here i am on my way to a city i can't pronounce. at least there should be less of a language barrier this time around. makes for less of a headache though i plan to continue my forays into french-speaking territory. this delta flight out of new orleans is slow-going. first leg of a 3-stop flight and already delayed. too much fog. i'm hungry, but if they're serving up peanuts and pretzels, you can count me out. who needs sick and bloated on top of sleepy and anxious? not the kind of full feeling i'm going for. now captain is defining "ground stop" for us which essentially means we're not going anywhere anytime soon. nothing is flying into or out of atlanta for now. so dakar, johannesburg, and manzini appear to be poorly formed mirages on the all too distant horizon. it's raining and my throat is dry. folks are roaming about the cabin now like we're at camp. thank goodness for a charitable seat mate with lots of fruit snacks. think i'm gonna make it...

1515

literally made it onto second flight just before they shut the door and push off for the runway. still can't believe those people served no in-flight beverage at all! nada. not one drop of water. not even one lousy pretzel or peanut! for the sake of keeping a family together, i lucked into an aisle seat in the 2-seat row in place of my middle seat in the 3-seat row. thank you, jesus! flight attendant is asking me to take my seat as i'm trying to place my bag in the overhead compartment. i know i appear to be a bastion of upper body strength, but the guy could have at least offered to help out before herding me into a seatbelt. on my second piece of gum which i guess is gonna be lunch.

1800

desperate times call for desperate measures. when snack time comes around, i gobble down the salted peanuts as fast as i can. no room for snack snobbery at 33,000 feet and thank god for cran apple juice despite the requisite high fructose corn syrup that the corn people of america will tell you is not evil. whatever. between my peanut butter and cranberries, all i need is a stick of celery for fireants on a log. i forgive drill sergeant flight attendant who is actually prompt and courteous in delivering aforementioned snack. later i realize that given the height differential, it was probably easier for me to stow my own bag. dinner is served: potato flakes undissolved and cheese like velveeta, bbq chicken mishmash all of which i devour in one fell swoop.

one day delta's in-flight entertainment system will be a spectacle of wonder, but not today. there's a function that lets you create a playlist from different cd's except they're all mislabeled. you choose rihanna's "take a bow" and get mary j's "just fine". the movies are mislabeled but i end up with nights of rodanthe, a lovely romantic comedy that's missing the plastic sappy happy ending i wanted - more of a romantic tragedy. probably not the best pick for a doctor on her way to volunteer in a foreign land. sleepy again. time for a nap...

04 jan 09 0205

layover in dakar was a bizarre experience of watching and waiting. at least it worked out that i didn’t have to give up my aisle seat. i don’t think anyone got on, but some people got off. then these uniformed men came to match each piece of carry-on luggage with a passenger. they also removed each seat and checked it for god knows what. at last we take off. by the time of this entry, i’m having a hard time holding my ink pen, so i’ll leave out the somewhat incoherent details about breakfast. was starting to feel sick on top of sleepy.

05 jan 09 0100 central/0900 south african

they served us ice cream in the middle of the night – good ice cream too – haagen daas vanilla caramel brownie. not excited about that at 0400. then there was food advertised as “sandwich”. traded starvation for stuffed beyond belief. watched half of sisterhood of traveling pants 2 before landing in johannesburg. lo and behold my bags were nowhere to be found. i must be blending in since people start talking to me in some language i don’t know (afrikaans?). had some trouble finding shuttle, but made it to the hotel alright and finally showered. hallelujah. slept really well for four hours then not at all for another four hours. ate breakfast. scrounged up some toothpaste. hotel desk clerk apparently didn’t understand what i meant when i asked if they had deodorant. “sure, there’s some in your room,” he said. not so. i thought this whole english-speaking thing would make life easier, but didn’t factor in thick, barely intelligible accents and english words with different uses. for example, “still” instead of non-carbonated, “lift” instead of elevator. they also say toilets instead of restrooms which i guess would seem like a bizarre use of english if they landed in the states. well, pretty soon shuttle will be here to bring us to the puddle jumper that flies to manzini. goals = finding food, water, shelter, and deodorant.

07 jan 09
oh and what a tiny airplane! there were probably 20 of us. we landed almost as soon as we took off. matsapha international airport is the smallest airport i’ve ever seen. we deplane on the tarmac into the terminal – no need for a jetway – pass the phalanx of customs booths (with one agent in attendance) and arrive at baggage claim in about 50 paces. it is somewhat of a baggage graveyard with idle bags strewn about on the non-rotating luggage belt and piled high in a huge walled-off cage. my hopes for luggage miracle disintegrate as i exit the sad scene. to their credit, the airport workers are much kinder than any i’ve met elsewhere. one convinces me to wait for all the luggage to unload before leaving and, quelle surprise, it does not come. they direct me to a short line where i can declare my bags missing again. when i don’t see my taxi, they let me sneak behind the counter to use the office phone. taximan was already at the airport so pick-up is speedy. first impression of swaziland: sound-of-music hills and dales. everything is the color it’s supposed to be: bright green hills, sky blue skies, white cottony clouds, really quite beautiful. we are driving on the left side of the road and i keep feeling some vehicle will surely plow into us any moment. i realize that the things i worried about most before the trip were not problems after all. i got switched to better seats on almost every flight. got more food than i could stomach. didn’t have to negotiate taxi fare since the hotel shuttle was free and taxi into mbabane was paid by voucher (flashback – i paid at least ten times a fair fare when i first landed in gabon). didn’t have to mangle my body carrying heavy luggage – since i no longer have any - or finding small change to tip someone to do it for me.

taximan drops me off at the clinic which is a modern, but welcoming edifice. it’s so clean and organized compared to lambarene (suddenly i’m comparing everything to gabon) that i’m feeling poorly dressed and haphazardly coiffed. in time, dr. joyce drops me at my new abode which is a nice two-bedroom condo with a putrid smell and fruit flies inhabiting the fridge...