Return Trip Interlude 1

Posted in Other by Dom on October 16th, 2008

So Nairobi airport is infact pretty boring. I think I’ve looked in all the duty free shops and done like 6 laps down the one hallway.

I made it out of Malawi ok. I did almost miss my flight though, that would have been amusing. No one informed me where the boarding area was or when it was time to board, just when it was leaving. So I was just hanging around drinking some beers. I just finished brushing my teeth and came out of the bathroom when this exasperated lady inquired if there were any more Nairobi passengers. There were. I pretty much ran through the metal detector. She told me I was the last passenger. Ha. Oh well, let’em wait we still got off early. So now I’m here and really bored. My flight leaves in like 2 - 3 hours and they haven’t even told me which gate to be at yet so I can’t really like nap or anything. Oh and it’s hot as crap. Stupid equator. Rainy season has started here too.

This morning was a bit crazy. Apparently my meeting with Dale, the CD, took like 2 hours. I was surprised. It was just a lot of form questions like “what do you think was your greatest achievement in Malawi?” Fun stuff. It actually made me late for the transport to the airport so I was running all over the place. Probably forgot something pretty important. Actually I know I did. I forgot to leave my house keys with Dora. That’s funny. Sweet memento. I hope that’s spelled right. They’ll figure something out. There’s an extra set with the Headmaster.

One thing I think is funny about this airport is there are no clocks anywhere almost. They only seem to be on these flat panel displays that show the flight information but there are only about three of those. Even in this big coffee shop here, obviously the hangout, there’s no clock. Ridiculous. I hope Amsterdam is cooler.

It was funny. PC gives me travel allowance, and in dollars at that. Except they didn’t have any one dollar bills this morning. So they asked if I wanted kwacha. Why would I want kwacha? I told him I did not want kwacha. MC ended up helping me out by making a little forex swap where she got kwacha for dollars from PC and I got her dollars. I used it to buy a Bitter Lemon soda. Ah Zanzibar. I’ll miss Africa. I like it’s ridiculous style. More later I’d guess.

Oh I also had the ending of that Pink Floyd song stuck in my earlier. “Good bye cruel world, I’m leaving you today, good bye, good bye, good bye.”