Arrival

Like most worthwhile things, travel to Africa requires patience, endurance, and the management of stress and discomfort. Though I am known for my patience and easy-going attitude; I am finding it difficult to endure the alternating pain and numbness the previous 16 hours of air travel have inflicted on my posterior. I have been following the slow progress of a tiny airplane icon as it traverses a map of Northeast Africa displayed on an LCD screen embedded in the seatback in front of me. This screen is a blessing and a curse . I am acutely interested in learning which cities' lights are glowing along the Nile many thousands of feet below. I am rudely reminded, in two minute increments, of exactly how much longer I'll have to sit in this seat. For almost half an hour now there has been little to suggest signs of human life amidst the darkness visible through my window. As the airplane icon advances toward a dot on the map labeled "Kigali", tiny clusters of light begin to appear below.

 Since changing planes in Istanbul, my neighbors on this journey have been primarily African. I am intrigued by the distribution of western and traditional African dress and I listen closely to see if I can determine whether there is more than one language being spoken among them. Mercifully, the plane for this second leg of the journey has many empty seats. I have taken a window seat in order to see as much of Northeastern Africa as I am able given the late hour. In the aisle seat sits an elderly woman in an ornately patterned dress and shawl. She has pulled the shawl down over her eyes and is resting her forehead on the seatback in front of her. Though we share no common language, she and I have reached a nonverbal agreement regarding our mutual use of the empty middle seat for our extra pillows and other Turkish Airlines accoutrements. Across the aisle are seated a rather dashing-looking gentleman wearing a fedora at a jaunty angle and a young woman with an elaborate profundity of braids twining round each other like snakes emerging from a hibernaculum. For many hours all has been quiet save the normal sounds of protracted air travel in the early morning: snores, coughs, the crinkling of an empty 4oz water bottle as it is stuffed among the magazines and safety cards in the seat pocket. It is 3am and the Fasten Seatbelts sign is lit for our descent into Rwanda. Immediately, there is an energy shift. People begin making their way to the bathrooms for and aft. The embers of long dead conversation are once again blown to life. Smiles return to sleepy faces. Those coming back from the bathrooms or simply stretching their legs remain standing in the aisle. Jokes and good-natured jeers ensue. The girl sprawling across the three seats in front of me wakes, stretches extravagantly, peers sleepily through the window and grins. A gentle falsetto sketches out the verses of a song in a language I do not understand. New voices join. Passengers who existed for me as inert shadows over the last six-and-a-half hours are now dancing in the cool cabin lighting.  Different melodies compete as others begin to sing. The meaning of the words, though they are foreign to me, is plain. We are home.

 The aircraft banks somewhat sharply causing the dancers to brace themselves against the seats. The captain utters an announcement in Turkish and repeats it in English: "Cabin crew prepare for landing". I stare fixedly through my window as the sparsely lit city of Kigali, Rwanda unfolds into three dimensions. Despite the blackness of the predawn hour, it becomes clear that this is a city built into a collection of sharp ridges and plunging valleys. The revelers take their seats, barely restraining their joy. I am struck by the contrast in enthusiasm between these East Africans and my own countrymen when returning to our respective homelands. We are landing in a nation whose GDP is one fourth that of Vermont, a country riven by ethnic tension which has erupted into full-blown genocide more than once. Yet there is pride and exuberance on the faces around me. I do not remember seeing its equivalent among my fellow American citizens when landing back in the states. The plane touches down gently and we begin to taxi toward the small terminal. Elated passengers exit onto the tarmac from the front and rear of the plane. Though my destination is Uganda, I cannot help but feel disappointed that I am not going to see what they are seeing. I decide then that someday I will visit Rwanda. We sit motionless on the tarmac for about an hour and twenty minutes. Those of us traveling to our final destination of Entebbe, Uganda wait as the Turkish flight crew inspects and assigns ownership to each piece of carry-on luggage in accordance with regulations. A fair amount of confusion occurs as passengers who do not speak English or Turkish attempt to communicate with the flight crew. There is much pantomime and gesturing before the baggage is all accounted for. New passengers are now boarding the plane for the short hop from Kigali to Entebbe. My friend Brendan, with whom I'm traveling, boarded from the front of the plane back in Istanbul and has not been seen since. I suspect he's asleep. The PA system crackles "biniş komple" and then "boarding complete". I am ready for this final 45 minute leg of the journey.

 My excitement builds. I find it interesting that we do not scribe a straight line from Kigali to Entebbe by flying over Lake Victoria but instead travel due North and hang a right only when we've reached Entebbe's lattitude. Rain begins to splatter on my window as the plane once again banks to prepare for landing. The intervening 45 minutes have, perhaps paradoxically, passed very quickly. Our touch down is every bit as gentle as the one in Kigali and after nearly 40 hours of travel I am quite ready to set my feet on Ugandan soil. I am directed by the flight crew to exit at the rear of the plane. I can already feel a plume of warm, moist air entering the plane from the open door. As my head clears the doorway I am struck by the fact that Entebbe International Airport appears to have undergone no changes whatsoever since the filming of "Raid on Entebbe" in 1977.

 It is November 26th and we are at the end of Uganda's second rainy season. The tarmac glistens with puddles and large pools of standing water from the rains that assaulted my window just prior to landing. These rains seem to have scrubbed from the air the fabled smell of Africa about which much has been said and intimated to me. Brendan deplaned from the front exit just behind the cockpit and I see him waiting for me at the base of a 1960s vintage mobile stairway. In my excitement to begin this African adventure, I manage to ignore the traffic cones and frantically waving airport employee as I head right for Brendan and right into an invisible wall of oven-hot jet exhaust. My eyebrows thus thinned, I execute a confident "I meant to do this" left hand turn and get myself properly oriented with respect to the "safety zone" which, in retrospect, is very clearly demarcated. Brendan and I share enthusiastic grins as we proceed inside the airport and to the Yellow Fever checkpoint. We are herded between a set of faux-velvet ropes where passengers are presenting their passports and records of vaccination to a slight female airport official. There is a sinister-looking nurse in green scrubs standing in the corner and awaiting anyone who has not arrived with proof of having been given the Yellow Fever immunization. A large and well-used rolling med cart stands as evidence of her willingness to make any unprepared traveler right with her country's entry requirements. The line moves quickly and the slight female airport official gives my "yellow card" vaccination record a cursory glance before gesturing for me to proceed.

 I am temporarily stymied by the choice of immigration desks but after a brief fashion my brain is finally able to process the terms "foreigners" and "visa on arrival". Brendan and I approach. Two customs officials are seated behind the same desk. One has an officious air and looks extremely squared-away. The other is about 20 kilos overweight and clearly has something much more entertaining on his mind than admitting plane-weary tourists to his country. Brendan chooses the latter. I answer my official's questions cheerily, doing a poor job of masking my excitement. When asked "what is the purpose of [my] trip?", my reply is found mildly stultifying. As I report "to take pictures of birds", a look of surprise briefly crosses the official's stony visage and is followed by a muffled laugh that did not give the impression of being with me. I could see the phrase "crazy mzungu[1]" traveling from his mind to his lips but stopping just short of being made into audible noises. He then takes me through a pas-de-deux of digital contortions on the fingerprint scanner. I am beginning to feel as though I'm being inducted into the Brotherhood of Free and Accepted Masons. Having scanned all eight fingers and both thumbs, the official stares searchingly into my face and asks me to remove my hat. He aims a tiny spherical webcam carefully at my head with the relish of a small child swiveling the turret of a plastic tank and takes my picture. He is concerned not at all that I was looking at him instead of the camera. He then announces "fifty dollars!". I fumble through my super high-speed RFID shielded tactical passport wallet and am unable to come up with the exact amount.   "I don't suppose you make change?" I ask.
 "No," he replies. Then, looking at Brendan, "Ask him for it."  At this moment, Brendan himself was engaged in the act of paying his fifty dollars to his immigration official (which official had done an excellent job of matching his counterpart step for step despite the obvious disparity in motivation). As Brendan was unable to break a twenty, I hand my official sixty US dollars and advise him to keep the change.
 "What!? Really?" he exclaims, his paraverbals clearly stating crazy mzungu once again. These negotiations completed, the official applies a very handsome entry visa to my brand new passport and we are on our way.

 After visiting the restroom (which was astonishingly clean in stark contrast with the general air of disrepair that afflicts the rest of the airport), Brendan and I advance to baggage claim. I am greatly relieved to see my bag being disgorged onto the conveyor belt as it contains all of my worldly possessions save my camera gear which has never been more than 36 inches from me these last 24 hours. Brendan, on the other hand, is beginning to lose hope that his second bag will ever emerge. His tone ever-friendly and confident, he consults a baggage handler who advises that the last bag has already made its way onto the conveyor. We are then remanded to the care of Entebbe Airport's Lost Baggage desk which is staffed by woman who is dividing her attention between a radio blaring dancehall music and an overly jovial janitor. As we approach, I remember that the missing bag, though technically Brendan's, just so happens to be the one that I represented as my own to help Brendan get around paying Turkish Airlines for an additional checked bag [2]. This causes some confusion as the woman, upon inspecting my baggage receipt, is now wondering why she is speaking with Brendan instead of me. After clarifying that it is my bag which is lost, I somewhat reluctantly surrender my passport and watch carefully as the woman makes several photocopies. I am then required to complete a form which includes my home address, telephone number, and email address. All of this begins to play on my anxiety and I silently spin a mental narrative- the conclusion of which has me, withered and gray, composing a memoir of decades spent in a Ugandan prison. After applying my signature to several copies of this form, I am given a sort of chit as documentation of the discussion and we are summarily dismissed. I decide to give my worries about a baggage fraud conviction no further attention for the time being. Our final task before leaving the airport is to supply ourselves with Ugandan currency.

 Six days prior, I had bravely waded through my bank's kafkaesque customer service system in order to implore an actual human to ensure that my debit card would work properly in Uganda. The moment of truth arrives as Brendan and I visit the airport's ATM. I insert my card, momentarily fearing that I will never see it again, and am greatly relieved when the display announces "Greetings Michael A. Cancellieri". I am mildly perturbed to be typing the amount 1,000,000 into the tiny keypad but a quick consultation of my phone's calculator reveals that this kingly sum is the equivalent of only 285 US Dollars. I will later come to realize with astonishment and some small measure of shame that this relatively modest amount of money will be entirely sufficient to sustain my upkeep and activities for the next ten days. I am struck by the beauty of these twenty 50,000 shilling notes which are adorned with images of mountain gorillas and celebratory representations of Uganda's independence.

 In my admiration for the artistry of these notes, I forget that I am standing in a third-world airport displaying a very large sum of cash. "Don't flash that around in here," Brendan quietly advises. I fold the bills into my passport wallet which again finds its home deep inside my right pant leg. Brendan and I then walk through the doors and into the cool humidity of a Uganda dawn. There are many people waiting for arriving friends and family members. An equal number of men stand near the doorway offering transportation to the exiting passengers. As my eyes adjust to the darkness I see a young woman walking quickly toward Brendan and me. She approaches smiling broadly and embraces Brendan. I am thus introduced to our driver, Ruth. She strikes me as bubbly and energetic but there is also an air of street-savvy about her. Brendan and I wheel our luggage to Ruth's car, an interesting looking Toyota with the curious name "Spacio". It looks like a Corolla that has been overinflated to assume a sort of truncated minivan shape- and as it turns out, that's exactly what it is. The three of us engage in a brief game of sleep-deprived Tetris while stowing our luggage before getting in the car and heading into the rising sun and toward Kampala. The adventure has begun.

Continue to the next post!

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[1]:  Mzungu is a word from the Bantu language group which literally means "wanderer". Colloquially, it is often translated as "ghost". In any case, it is the term that people in East Africa use to refer to white people. It is not, in and of itself, a pejorative and is most often used in a friendly manner.

[2]: This, of course, is merely a rhetorical device used to enrich the story. I would never consider representing another passenger's bag as my own as this would be wrong and potentially illegal.