Return to Jo'burg - take II

Now that I am back in my freezing native land, the week I spent in Jo’Burg is a bit of a blur. I have made the comment more than once upon returning that I cannot believe I pulled that little jaunt off. I spent part of the week working on a report of the Anti-Apartheid movement in Canada. This reminded me of school and I enjoyed doing it. I hated writing papers in my undergrad but for some reason, loved it in grad school.

Now to retrace to the last blog posting…When my luggage finally surfaced Tuesday evening, I was surprised at how happy I was to see old familiar clothing. I recall lying in bed that night, going over the contents of my luggage when it suddenly dawned on me that Jill’s cell phone was missing from my luggage. It had been the cell phone we had used during the summer of our Internship. I offered to take the phone back with me to see if would charge up - and now we’ll never know. It is the first and hopefully the last thing I will ever have stolen from my luggage….although technically it was not mine. So I guess this means I still have a clean record of having nothing stolen – or perhaps nothing worth stealing.

The rest of my time was spent working on the Madiba Materials database. I was able to meet and spend time with Peter, the NMF’s database guy, and this proved to be time well spent and I was able to get quite a bit of the Canadian content relating to Madiba archival materials entered.

This time around, I ended up spending quite a bit of time with Heather, for which I was grateful. As mentioned previously, she took me shopping, we went out for dinner, and she also had me over to her house for supper one evening. I enjoyed all her stories and am glad for the time I was able to spend with her. I also had an enjoyable evening out with Verne and Shadrack. We walked all over Melville looking for a place to eat but it being Valentines Day, it proved easier said than done to find a place that wasn’t fully booked. We ended up at an Indian restaurant. The more gin that was consumed, the more freely the stories flowed, and it helped us to realize that an hour had passed with no food being served. The longer we waited, the more we drank, and the crazier the whole scenario became. Looking around, Verne suddenly realized that it seemed nobody at the restaurant had food. I can’t remember when I laughed so much or enjoyed Valentines Day so much – probably because I forgot it was Valentines Day. Or perhaps it was Verne’s cursing and sarcastic remarks about Valentines and Valentine’s couples that I found comforting.

By Thursday of that week, the jet lag got the better of me. I was going to bed by 11pm, waking up circa 3-3:30am and not sleeping anymore than that. By noon on Thursday, I was nearly bonkers. I felt like I was going to be sick, or faint, or do something I really did not want to do in front of the NMF staff. Then I got weepy, and because I am not a crier by nature, this freaked me out. I was too tired to walk back to the guest house, too hungry to walk to the nearest shop for lunch and the tears felt so near. I simply put my head on my desk and literally died. I am sure I slept for at least 45 minutes, only to be awoken to laughter and screaming. Knowing that Celine Dion was scheduled to visit the Foundation that day, I recall groggily waking up and thinking, “Is Celine Dion here?” Which was quickly followed by “I really don’t care because I need to sleep more.” Celine Dion did come and visit Madiba, and some staff went up to witness the big photo shoot in front of the NMF. I managed to sleep through the entire thing. I awoke though to find a rose sitting on my desk. Instead of wondering who put it there, my first thought was “ Was I snoring when they brought it? Was I drooling?” The next day I found out the rose had come from Yase – the funny man himself.

That was it. Peter – the database guy- and I shared a shuttle to the airport Friday afternoon as he was flying back to Cape Town. The shuttle driver was late picking us up as he thought he was to pick us up at the guest house, and then he didn’t know where the NMF was….yadda yadda yadda. I asked to be taken to the airport an hour early so I could shop. Besides tearing to the Shell station (down the street from the NMF) to get Jill’s Tumbles (candy) Friday morning, I had no chance to shop. Strolling through the “Out of Africa” shop at the Airport, I saw all the items I and bought from all over South Africa and Swaziland in this one shop. It was like Wal-Mart – one stop shopping. In addition to buying souvenirs for family, I needed to buy something for co-workers who ended up having to do stuff for me while I was away. In that hour, I managed to buy 20-25 of the smallest items imaginable – much to the dismay of the cashier.

On the way over, I flew Washington to Jo’Burg direct – 14.5 hours. What was not indicated on my itinerary was then the return trip differed slightly. It wasn’t until I boarded the plane and saw that the flight was destined for Dakar did I realize that I was flying Jo’Burg to Senegal (8 hours) and then Senegal to Washington (9 hours). The only thing I know about Dakar is its infamous Dakar Rally. I now know that that if you fly into Senegal - and if the plane is destined for the USA, the plane must first be searched by Senegal airport security and the inside of the plane sprayed - with some sort of mystical and pleasant smelling spray - becasue of malaria. I therefore regret that my first visit to Senegal consisted of sitting for two hours on the tarmac.

This is the first time I have flown internationally though the US since 1996. I was therefore surprised that although I was in transit to Canada, I still had to go through US Customs and Immigration and re-check my checked luggage. What a pain the proverbial ass. There was over 100 of us “Non-US citizens” in line and only two Customs officers working. It took forever. After being cooped up in airplane for so long, we were all nearly nuts, but of course nobody said anything, myself included. This delay meant I missed my connecting flight to Toronto and had to spend an additional 4 hours in the Washington airport. After the fact, this was probably a good thing because if I had returned to Toronto on Saturday morning as planned, I would probably have gone to bed and therefore messed up my sleeping schedule. Not getting back to TO until Saturday afternoon meant I napped in the airport and ended up going to sleep at a normal hour Saturday night. Mind you, I slept for 14 hours.

I am once again reminded, however, that everything does happen for a reason - including encounters with slow and cranky US Customs Officers.