Journey to Cape Town

When I started off on my biggest adventure this year, I was feeling pretty good about my preparedness for the trip. I had completed all my charts. I had packed everything and forgotten nothing, as near as I could tell. I remembered to take out the compost before I left, return the library books, download every electronic book and podcast I could possibly imagine myself reading for two weeks and fill my entire waitlist of requests for e-books. I even remembered really obscure items on my to do list, like emailing the folks at home a list of the foods that needed to get eaten or they would spoil, and I had traded in a bunch of old $20 bills for recent year bills at the bank, since they can fetch a higher exchange rate. I had also done something incredibly dumb, which was that the night prior to my departure, I worked all night, then obviously slept very little the next day as I spent hours arranging my suitcase contents and hugging my children repeatedly, then went to work again at 4pm with a plan to drive straight from work to the airport at 2am for my 6am flight. I had brought a large nitro cold brew coffee and I was drinking it constantly, but I was exhausted. Fortunately there were no other cars on the road, and I made it to the airport and onto my flight without any issues. Don’t ever want to make that mistake again.

I sailed through with my TSA PreCheck, flew from Boston to Washington DC, and then boarded the longest leg of my journey, a flight to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. I was pleased to find out that I had gotten my request of a window seat, until my seat neighbor appeared. He was a very portly Ethiopian man, and he settled in next to me with a thud, immediately encroaching on my space since he had no room for his arms except over the armrests on either side. He appeared very jovial and wanted to chat. I decided to deploy my ‘sleep outfit’. When I travel, I typically wear a set of “athleisure” clothes that could double as pajamas. I also wear this great old find from Betabrand (an experimental clothing retailer, if you don’t know them), which is a travel sweater. It’s drapey and cozy and has a hood with a built in sleep mask that you can fasten behind your head with an elastic. It probably looks absolutely ridiculous, but I love it. I popped on my Ethiopian airlines socks, the sleep mask hood, and my travel pillow, and…. Someone in a nearby seat started coughing. It was no normal cough. This was a paroxysmal, can’t stop, wheezing death cough (official medical terminology being used here). The cough kept going on, and on, and as a person who had just spent 16 hours of the past day or so taking care of sick people, I was on edge at the thought that my services might be needed, since this person didn’t really sound OK to get on a 10 hour flight, and then also cross with myself for being irritable about a person who was clearly quite ill through no fault of their own. This lasted an interminably long time. I really think they might have made the passenger disembark the plane, because I never heard the cough again for the rest of the flight. I fell asleep to my guilty thoughts that I was glad the coughing person was gone, but I was really in no mood to be summoned to an in flight medical situation. 

I slept for about 4 hours, which I thought was decent considering there was a large man with his elbow and his knee in my seat. When I woke up, I felt clever since I had brought an empty water flask and had the flight attendant fill it up with cold water. I started watching Guardians of the Galaxy, since I like watching movies I’d likely never watch otherwise on planes, and again feeling pretty slick. Have I done enough foreshadowing to suggest that I’m going to end up screwing something up later on? I think I have. But the remainder of my flight to Cape Town was safe and uneventful, and I arrived over one day after I had departed Boston, very sore all over but excited as we landed and the crowd of people in the plane all started applauding and ululating with glee. I think being part of a cheering and ululating crowd is an experience everyone in the world should have at some point in their lives.

I found the proprietor of the small lodging house I was staying at waiting for me at the airport arrivals area, a very friendly and helpful gentleman who seemed excited to introduce me to his beloved home city.