Day 5: Stuck in a travel vortex

It has taken me several days to conjure up enough emotional mo-jo to write this post. When things go wrong, I’m a “don’t look back, move on ahead” kind of girl. When I think about Zanzibar, I don’t want to look back. I told Coffee Guy when we got home that maybe I would skip writing about the trip all together, because then I wouldn’t have to mention Zanzibar. Anyway, fair’s fair and I promised you I would. Here’s the story…

We left Burundi tired out by all the new experiences our tiny little brains had taken in within days. As we arrive in Kenya, I half wish we were flying straight home. I was missing our little terrorist and feeling ready to be in my own bed. Plus, by this point, Neo and I both had full on diarrhea. But, we had decided early on in our trip planning that we need to go to a place and “process” Burundi together before going home.

We scooted up to the transfer desk to get our boarding passes and found out that our flight to Zanzibar had been canceled. “It’s been WHAT?!?” I said loosing my cool quick and jazzy like. Things got a little heated at the transfer desk after that, which Coffee Guy and I both admit to with a pinch of shame. In the end, a very annoyed Kenya Airways employee issued us boarding passes to KILIMANJARO with the name of a lady who was going to meet us as we disembarked, to show us to our Zanzibar plane, scribbled down the side of our boarding passes. We were supposed to meet her and head directly to our next plane which was set to depart a half hour after our arrival. Oh Lordy, we should have known then!

Once we arrived in Kilimanjaro… there was no one waiting for us. We asked around, and no one knew of the lady whose name was scribbled on our tickets. We headed into the airport building, and it was there that we realized we were in Tanzania. Duh. New country = new visa. We were supposed to fill out miles of paperwork for the Tanzanian government… meanwhile we have no pen, no boarding passes, no meet n greet lady, and our plane is departing in twenty minutes. In a mad panic I grab hold of a random airport worker and say. “We are supposed to be connecting directly to Zanzibar…RIGHT NOW!” I think he saw the red in the whites of my eyes and knew we needed some help. He rushed us through immigration (without stamping our passports) and took us into the fray. Five major flights to international destinations had been canceled that day. The airport was a sea of angry tired white tourists. It was total chaos, and the airport worker left us in it. We had no idea where to go to get on our next flight. Then, we saw the plane leaving without us.

For four hours we battled with the people in the Precision Air office for boarding passes. They took us behind the ticketing counter, and began to work on our boarding passes, until the people the a loooong line in front of the counter screamed in outrage. Back to the office. Back to the counter. The passports disappeared with someone. They re-appeared. Back to the office. Back to the counter. More angry people. More sweating. More crying babies… oh wait, make that just one crying baby, and it was mine. People came and went. Some victoriously holding boarding passes for the last flight out of Kilimanjaro. Some loosing their tempers and coming close to decking the airline employees. Some sweating through their clothes in frustration. Some envisioning a new life in the Kilimanjaro airport.

what it really says is “we know our service is really crappy, but please don’t hit us.”

A group of laid back blinged out Tanzanians trying to fly standby to Dar El Salam made plans for us in case we didn’t get on the flight. They made fun of us for having so little faith… The departure time came and went and we had no tickets, but “it was all ok” they said, because the plane had not even arrived yet. It was over an hour late. Twenty minutes before the late plane departed… we got our boarding passes and so did our pimped out friends. People cheered as the plane took off and jeered and laughed when the airline appologized for inconveniences.

We left Burundi at 9am, and at 11pm we finally touched down in Zanzibar… and the day’s not over yet!

Love,

me

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