Made out of people

The Return Journey

At 6:30 am, Friday morning, Eastern Africa time, I stepped onto a shuttle from the beach town of Jambiani.

At 6:30 pm, Saturday evening, Seattle time¹, I stepped off a shuttle into the Bellevue Courtyard by Mariott. Where I promptly fell asleep.

It's now 3 am, and I'm a bit insomniac and rather jet lagged. I napped on and off during my two-day journey. I've got a day to get myself together, do some laundry, take naps, and maybe buy a first day wardrobe or something before work starts on Monday.

I seem to have developed a distressing degree of knowledge about Heathrow airport. Heathrow has bookended my trip--a dip in Heathrow broke the US from Denmark, Denmark from Spain, Spain from Africa. And a fried breakfast in a Heathrow pub was my last meal in Europe before coming back home. Terminal 4 has much better internet and phone stations than Terminal 3, which positions them in the middle of a large noisy room. (4 also has "quiet rooms" filled with snoozing travellers, which 3 lacks.)

---

I am stopping myself from bargaining for things ... a habit that was brought to a brutal skidding end in Nairobi airport. My pants no longer fit me, and my belt had died a day earlier. So I stepped into a shop, picked up a belt, and said something like, "This is a good belt, but it is not worth the $15 you are charging for it."

The saleswoman looked at me, shrugged, and said, "Ok, then don't buy it."

Huh? But -- but -- this is Africa, and I've bargained for EVERYTHING for the last month.

---

I bought a Coke in a bottle, and I wasn't asked whether it was to walk with or drink locally. (If you drink at the bar, you pay Tsh 300 [$0.30]; if you walk with the drink, you pay Tsh 800 [$0.80], and get back the change when you return the bottle.) The bottle was new and shiny, and didn't have the distinctive scratch marks from hundreds of refills. It was made with sugar cane, and tasted kind of weird. And I couldn't get a Stoney Tangawizi, an East African ginger beer bottled by Coca Cola, and surprisingly good.

On the other hand, you can get a mini-pizza in Chicago O'Hare to munch on while you wait for your flight. No lamb curries, though.

---

I heard the word "Chicago" spoken with a Chicago accent by a flight attendant on the flight from London, and I almost jumped -- the only American I'd spoken to for a while was from New Hampshire, and my ears were unused to our regional accents.

---

I seem to have a persistent impersonator on this blog, which is truly an honor; however, I still haven't seen a Shark's Tale. Not in Nairobi and not in Madrid [2]

---

Feel free to give me a call, or drop me an email -- I'll probably be a little more responsive now.

¹ Which by my count is 6:30 am Sunday morning, Eastern Africa time. But I could be wrong.

² ... and I am surprised, looking back at that comment, that I typed the words "roman a' clef." That's not usually in my vocabulary.

October 31, 2004 03:16 AM | TrackBack | in Travelogue