5am alarm, quickie bath, haul luggage out to Basil's car. Oops, all our luggage won't fit in Basil's car! Good thing Brian (Basil's cousin) and his wife Beverly are heading back to Joburg as well. We put some of our luggage in their car and head off.
Three hours later, around 9am, we hit the Zim/SA border. We blaze through the Zim side, and drive across the bridge to the SA border patrol. Basil groans because the buses are still there. Evidently there are buses that go through the border each day early in the morning. It of course takes a lot of time to get all those people through, so it's best to not hit the border when the buses are still there. Basil deftly maneuvers around a different way and parks at the immigration building and we go inside to assess the damage. We see that there are thousands of people milling around and winding around in an endless queue. Apparently they have been there for 7 hours already, and expect it will take another 5 before they get through the line. Since we need to be in Joburg at 6pm for our flight, this is not really an option. For some reason I'm overcome with an overwhelming sense of calm that everything is going to turn out.
At some point we had switched around and Erwin and Esther were riding with Brian and Beverly, Gail and I were with Basil and Nathan. Our two guys have Zim passports, but work visas for SA since they go down there twice a week as part of their business. Nathan went with us up to the counter for the SA residents (since there was no line on that side) to see if we could get our passports stamped there in order to make it to the flight. The Afrikaner official there (who apparently proudly announces to everyone he sees that he was born on Hitler's birthday) got angry with us for coming in the wrong line and started shouting at us. His quip was, "This is Africa! That's just a casualty of international travel--sometimes you miss your flight!" Unfortunately he saw that we were with Brian and Beverly and so when they got into the line, he wouldn't even stamp their passports (they are SA citizens!!) Brian had some other connections that he was trying to work out, so we waited. Meanwhile we are milling around in the oppressive heat and dust with all the other thousands of people there. We are sweating and the dust is caking onto all of us, and we recognize that we will have no opportunity to shower or get cleaned up for the next 35 hours... or longer if we can't get through this border and we miss our flight. We try various methods over the course of the next 2.5 hours. At one point Basil, Nathan, Gail and I are waiting on one side of the building and Brian's gang manages to get someone to help them and stamp all their passports. We somehow miss out on that batch, so when we come around and they try to repeat the process, the Hitler guy comes all the way outside of the building and starts tirading us again in the parking lot. He claims that Nathan was rude to him (huh???) and unless Nathan apologizes, he refuses to even consider our request. So, regardless of the fact that it was him who was rude (not Nathan), Nathan comes and dutifully grovels to him with Gail and me as witnesses. Immediately he announces in a loud voice, "All right, then! Now you can see some true African spirit!!!" and he marches on into his cubicle, quickly stamps all our passports and we are on our way. Absolutely surreal!
After you get your passport stamped, you get back in your car and drive across the actual border where the police check all your stamps again, and in our case, search through all the luggage. One official was looking through our carry-on bags which were with us in the back seat. I had been pretty alert when he was looking through my bag with my phone, cash, passport, etc. Next he went through my other carry-on. I saw that he was unzipping the case for the nice noise silencing headphones that Jonathan had loaned me for the long airplane trip. I made the mistake at that moment of turning and saying something to Gail. When I turned back around maybe two seconds later, the guy handed me my bag all zipped up again and I stowed it back into its spot. Seven hours later in Joburg, I discovered that he had conveniently not put the headphones back into my bag. There's some good ol' African police for ya.
We have one more checkpoint to go and we are thinking we're totally in the clear, but when we get to that second checkpoint, we realize that we failed to get some particular stamp on a separate piece of paper relating to taking the car through. So..... back to the immigration building, Nathan goes running in--we have no idea how long this new iteration will take. Gail and I are holding hands in the backseat and trying to breathe. Luckily it takes about 3 minutes, Nathan is back, we zoom through the checkpoints and are out on the open road again. Very glad to be back in a cool, air-conditioned car by this point!
Now Basil and Nathan, who are driving in turns, are really cruising down the road.... FAST! Trying to make up lost time. We do make really good time and since it looks like we have a bit of play for our airport arrival, we stop a couple of hours out of Joburg to get a bite to eat. It takes them WAY too long to make our food, but we think we have plenty of time, so we are not too worried. But then, to our dismay, when we get into Joburg, we hit a colossal traffic jam. I haven't been all that nervous all day, miraculously, but at this point I really start feeling anxious. It seems ridiculous to have gone through everything we did, and then miss our flight because we are sitting in traffic. Eventually we slog through and pull up to the terminal a mere 80 minutes before our flight is supposed to leave, 30 minutes before boarding. Brian and Beverly are already there waiting for us, they have a cart to load our luggage, so we grab our stuff and tear into the terminal behind Brian who is running pell mell pushing our luggage cart.
Thankfully we blaze right through check-in and security and we even have time to go to the restroom, fill our water bottles, and spend about 10 minutes browsing in a shop before boarding. This is the point at which I discover that my water bottle leaked throughout my entire carry-on bag. Everything is soaked. Luckily my phone, charger, passport, etc. have all been stuck in pockets higher up along the sides of the bag, so they take a minimal hit, but everything in the main compartment of the bag is absolutely dripping. So now we are standing in line to board the plane and as we push the bags along as the line moves forward, I'm trying to fish things out, dry them off, put them in my other carry-on. Wow! What a saga!
At long last we are on the flight and I start to relax. I'm especially excited when I realize that there are maybe three empty seats on the whole massive flight.... and one of them is next to me!! I have a window seat and the guy on the aisle (who is "sharing" the empty seat with me) turns out to be Neven Matthews, Dave Matthew's uncle!! ... Yes, that Dave Matthews! We hit it off and have many philosophical discussions over the course of the 17 hour flight. He also has musical connections in SA and helps me with some contacts for potential future performances in Africa. It's an absolute pleasure to have a nice seat mate and a relatively comfortable flight due to the empty seat between us.
Gail also has a window seat several rows ahead of me. We don't see each other on the flight very much because it's difficult to visit someone on the plane if they are not in an aisle seat. However, we arrive in Atlanta in relatively good spirits--we've both managed to give ourselves some sort of modified spit bath in the lavatories on the plane so that we aren't so sweaty and dusty. I even manage to get my hair mostly wet all over! Don't ask..... there's quite a bit of water all over the place in there to mop up before I can leave with a straight face. I have not read up on the FDA regulations pertaining to bathing in the lavatories.
In Atlanta we blast through US customs with no problem, exchanging pleasantries with the extremely polite and professional border officials. We have a private laugh remembering how one of the things the Hitler guy had said to us was that if you "tried something like that" at the US border (referring to Nathan's imaginary "rude quip"), the Americans would throw you straight in jail. :-)
I walk Gail to her gate and then make my way over to the next terminal for my Pittsburgh connection. At long last we have wifi and phone service and so I make the most of my time by making some phone calls, checking email, etc. Flight to Pittsburgh is uneventful for me, although when I arrive I discover that Gail's flight to San Antonio has had mechanical difficulties, so after deplaning in Atlanta they manage to get on another aircraft and get to TX several hours late.
I'm excited that I arrive on a school holiday and the girls are able to come out to the airport to greet me. They are there at the bottom of the escalator and come tearing over and jump into my arms. It's so, so, SO good to see them and I get an added surprise that there with my mom is my cousin Sharon, who is unexpectedly in town for a conference! I haven't seen Sharon for several years, so it's a very fun surprise!
We head back to the house and I try very hard to keep my eyes open--my goal is to try to stay awake until 10pm, to try to kick the jet lag. Alas, I only make it to about 8:30. The girls tuck me in and Sierra reads me a story--I'm in dreamland before she even gets through the first page.
Lovely to be home, but already plotting my next trip to Africa. It gets into your system, that place!
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