3 nights in airport hotels (Erica and kids)
2 nights spent in airports (Matias)
2 arrivals in unplanned cities (Matias: Philadelphia, PA and Greenville, SC)
1 long letter to South African Airways Customer Care
24 days of pure vacation bliss in Seattle, sweet with family and friends and many many blackberries 2 trips down the Alpine Slide near Mt. Hood 5+ trips to the swimming pool
1.5 days at Rehoboth Beach full of sun-baked smiles, heartily laughs and reunions with best friends
3 boardwalk rides
Our trip home was like the best sandwich you’ve ever had on bad bread. The flights in and out were grueling (just imagine something going wrong on every leg of every trip), but everything in between all a vacation should be… family, friends and pure recuperation. So I’ll throw away the bread and keep the rest of the sandwich.
We started out with Elio and a fever. He got it the day before we left Maputo. When we get to the airport in Maputo, the flight leaves a half hour late. This is passable. I’m not even worried when we arrive at the transit lounge at Johannesburg airport because we are there 1 hour 15 minutes before the flight to JFK leaves. The thing that is worrying me is Elio’s fever. I have some Tylenol that I brought on the plane, so I’m trying to negotiate with this very rude lady from South African Airways and give Elio the Tylenol at the same time. He can barely wake up, so I end up just forking over the bottle to Nalia and telling her to sit down and see if she can get him to take it.
The lady at the counter is inhumane and unapologetic. “I can’t get you on the flight.” That’s it. She tries nothing else. She doesn’t try to rebook us. She just says she can’t and that’s it. We (3 of us) and 7 others are supposed to wait for an Air Mozambique agent to save us. But it's late in the transit lounge. We ask the South African agent to contact Air Mozambique. She says she doesn’t know the number. Another passenger finds the number on her iPhone and asks to use the airport phone. The SAA agent says she has no phone!
I start crying because Elio is blazing hot and I am imaging spending the night in the transit lounge…. this happens at the Johannesburg airport, and as other seasoned Africa travelers will attest, NO ONE at South Africa Airways cares. There is no food in the transit lounge, no phone, no pharmacy, and no stores. I start crying to one of the gate agents… “I need to get my child to a pharmacy.” He tells me not to cry and walks away.
Our group of weary passengers, lost, stuck in the airport ‘border’ zone- the no man’s land of the transit lounge, where without a reservation or a ticket, you are a citizen or nowhere with no rights….we decide to walk to immigration and just sit there until we can get one of the people there to help us. They have people at immigration all night, after all. We cannot leave immigration and officially go into South Africa because we would have no tickets or reservations to get back in the airport. Tara, the British girl, with the iPhone, stays upstairs, looking for anyone who will help us…Elio perks up after his overdose of Tylenol.
Finally, someone comes form Air Mozamibque at 11pm. We have been camping in front of immigration for 2 hours, me and 2 Zimbabweans, 1 Swiss guy, and the kids. She issues us vouchers for the transit hotel and tells us to come back tomorrow. It’s finally 1am when we get into our room at the transit hotel. No dinner and no diapers. Tara, our British angel with an iPhone, makes it a mission and goes down to the duty free to look for food and diapers. No diapers to be found in the Joburg airport.
I try to make Elio sleep on a towel, but his fever is back and he’s NOT nice. He’s in his African dictator mood… so he throws the towel on the floor. At this point, I don’t care if he pees in the bed or even on me… at least someone else has to clean up the former and the latter can shower herself off.
27 hours after arrival in Joburg, we are on our way to JFK. We arrive a full 4 hours early for our flight to Seattle. The kids are happy to ride on the SmarteCarte as we walk outside to the JetBlue terminal. When we get outside, as we walk under the airport underpass, Nalia exclaims, “It’s so beautiful!” “What makes you think it’s beautiful?” I ask.
“The grass is so green and soft looking and the cement is smooth.”
I remember noticing these little things-- nuances yet indelible differences-- when I came back to the U.S. after my first overseas trips. They were comforting surprises because I had forgotten they were differences at all while I'd been away, like the light switches in the U.S. or how much lighter U.S. coins felt after handling Mozambican ones for 8 months, or the sound of the phone ringing in the U.S. I liked it because it always made coming back home a little more interesting and exciting, and feel like home. It doesn’t happen much anymore, but I can experience it through the kids.
We get to the JetBlue counter and the lady tells me she has no record of our reservation. No ticket number. She tells me I have to call South African to straighten it out. I have been travelling almost 48 hours now. Elio still has a fever and has not eaten in 3 days. So what else can I do—I break down. Right there. I have no cell phone that works in the U.S., my kid is sick. And I know South African will NOT help me because I had already asked them to.
So here I find another saint in NYC. Anissa, that’s her name. I won’t forget. She walks me out to an airport phone and calls South African herself. South Africa puts her on hold. She hands the phone to me, assures me it will be ok, and I wait on hold for SAA to fix things.
Elio has been quiet, only uttering a disagreeable word once in awhile. All of a sudden, he shrieks, “I have to pee NOW.” I cannot hang up this phone. If I don’t get on a flight to Seattle, we will have to wait 9 more hours for the next JetBlue flight there. If I make Elio wait, he will pee his pants… I have already used his spares during the Joburg ordeal. We are at one of the busiest airport in the US at one of the busiest times… but this is what I do. I give the phone to Nalia, look her straight in the eyes, about 2 inches from her face and tell her, “When the music stops and a real person comes on, tell him that your mommy had to take your brother to the bathroom and she’ll be back. Tell him you’re at JFK airport and you need his help.” I run to the bathroom with Elio. Elio doesn’t even remember the U.S. He gets more happy and perky than I’ve seen in 3 days when he notices the water in the toilet. “MOMMY, there’s a LOT of water in here!” Right. No toilets in the world have more water than in the U.S. Let’s pee and add more! I run back and sure enough, Nalia is the phone with the SAA guy. She is there. We make it to the gate 25 minutes before the flight leaves, and 5 hours later, Grandma is waiting for us in Seattle. Never has a reunion been sweeter.
