Jackson in East Africa

I can’t help but notice that the bullet holes are about chest height and must have been rattled out from a rather large calibre weapon. They run down the side of the passageway like a go-faster-stripe which urges you to speed your step and sharpen your eye. How on earth have we ended up here?

I lived and worked in Dubai for a little less than two years. Under the supervision and sponsorship of my eldest sister I cut my teeth in the construction trade as a junior safety officer. The time I spent there, the Lamborghini drives, the Chelsea Club, the English Ale Evenings, the 6 star everything and the time I hobo-slept in the mall bathrooms are all stories for another time. This story, this is my favourite. I am at the airport and I am going home.

The company I worked for there had booked me on a flight that departs from Dubai to South Africa via Doha. As any normal trip I arrive on time, drop my bags off at the luggage tossers, make my way through the condescending eye of the passport controller, divorce my personal space with all the sub-continentals and sit down for a cup of coffee. Second Cup – Awesome coffee. Canadian. Oddly enough, as it turns out, Canadian coffee is pretty crummy but the franchise (as I remember it) served the most potent cuppa Joe in all of sand-land.

So the flight to Doha is delayed. It is an hour flight and it was delayed by two hours. The pilot, I assume, was hanging from the cocaine sprint and blamed the throttle gear for moving around so much. We land in Doha a little over 3 hours later than planned and our flight to SA has already departed. They shuffle us into a queue to verify our itinerary and supply us with outgoing options. “Hello Sirrr, The next available flight is tomorrow evening Sirr” said the overly friendly Filipina lady to the gent at the front. In the presence of boredom I strike up a conversation with the lady in front of me. Good looking girl, mid-twenties, blond and from Boksburg. It was great just to hear the Saffa accent. A few moments later we hit the front of the queue, with no hope in hell of getting out before tomorrow, where she goes onto explain to the help desk that she has to be home tonight for a urgent family intervention – no option. Somehow, she scores a ticket on a SAA flight that is just about to board. Doha to Home, via Dar es Salaam. I took a shot and as she was handed her ticket I put my arm over her shoulder, leant towards to the desk and said “We are travelling together”. Bonus.

We boarded the flight, sat down in what I can only explain as the ZCC coulour run, and took off to east of Africa. Boksburg wasn’t taking this all too well but I did what I could to calm her down and keep her from an imminent panic attack. Wine. Lots of wine. We landed in Dar es Salaam and took up our spot in the football field sized mass of people at the passport control queue. Now this is when things started going wrong. A well spoken and eloquently dressed lady walks up to us and asks if we are the couple traveling to SA. Why yes, yes indeed. She fast-tracks us past the mayhem and towards a little white door on the side of the arena. “This is going well” I said to her. We walked through this door and as if we had just entered a Tim Burton film the surroundings started to mutate.

The hall way was littered with broken tiles, the walls where peppered with bullet holes, the ceiling flickered and I swear I saw the  Resident Evil chick in the corner…Your all going to die down here…We walked out of the passage of doom and into what looked like the front door receiving side of things. Mrs Well Spoken introduces us to a gent at the front of the departures queue and explains that we are something and that something something and she points to the derelict departures board. I don’t know what language they speak there. He snatches Boksburg’s bag and dumps it onto the X-ray conveyor. Mine too. “Passports” he growls as we hand them over. We walk through the X-ray machine and towards the departure gates. I keep Boksburg close as I can feel the interest in her growing around me. We sit down and reassess: “Tickets”, check. “Flight details” Check. “Passports”, Cheh…Say what? She has lost her passport. I confirm this by tumbling all her possessions out of the hand bag. Indeed. I am now with a blond bombshell, in East Africa, without a passport. I have mine, but hers is missing.

The flight leaves in 2 hours. We run back to the departures X-ray conveyors to find the man that “assisted” us. After 10 minutes of explaining to the crew it was clear that nobody there knew who we were talking about or gave two shits about our debacle. They don’t speak English it seems. 90 Minutes to gates-closed. So, it time to turn to the only internationally recognised language that is spoken in every African country. The Dollar. I pulled out 20 US Dollars and handed it to the illiterate man. A light shone in from the blast holes in the roof... the cash, as some gift of divine intervention instantaneously installed the Oxford Dictionary into his mind. He looked up at us as his dry frown slowly cracked and snapped into a smile as he said in the Queen’s English: “Try the South African airlines office upstairs”.

Up the stairs, down the hall and around the corner.“Sorry Sir, she will not be able to travel and regulations state that she may not stay here in the airport without identification. She will have to exit into Dar es Salaam and wait until Monday for the South African Embassy to open”. With 60 minutes to gates-close I dished out another 20 dollars which magically allowed us to use their fax machine. Another 20 dollars for the use of the phone. She left a voice message with her parents explaining her situation. Four missed calls and still no answer. I dish out another 20 dollars which afforded us the contact details for the SAA call centre, got them to fax through a copy of her passport to the increasingly expensive proxy. 15 minutes left with an entire admin building between us at the boarding gate we made a run for it. Jackson and I parted ways a further four more times before we were able to board. The flight had one TV per cabin, an everlasting overhead reading light and the aircon set to swelter but none of that mattered. We were off the ground and heading out of the red zone.

Landing in SA we gathered our dusty luggage and heading out of the airport. As the sliding doors opened, mid sentence, she spotted her family and just bolted for them. They covered her in kisses, held her tight and just grouped there flooded in relief. I walked to my left, out the main door and headed home. That feeling – of knowing you did something good for someone else, infused with walking out into a Highveld summers day is not anything that any form of literature will be able to explain.

Awesome.