Requiem for a Suitcase

Another one bites the dust.  Actually, another one, two, three bites the dust.  Remember how when I first arrived in Botswana one of my bags had a giant hole in it?  Well, there is something to be said for duct tape and shrink wrap.  I didn’t want to buy another piece of luggage while in Africa, so I saved it, duct taped it back together, filled it with a bunch of stuff, and then had it plastic wrapped at the Joburg airport.  TA-DA!  It actually made it all the way home.

And then there was my luggage that was forever lost.  First in Ethiopia for several weeks.  Then it went MIA when they forgot to put it on the plane from Joburg to Gabs.  I used that one most of the time I was travelling around Africa for the past year.  But by May the zipper had broken, so I could only half unzip it.  By June it had deteriorated to not opening at all.  So, yet again, I duct taped it together and then had it wrapped at the airport.  Thankfully, that one made it all the way back to the U.S. as well.

Then there was my rolling carry-on.  The wheels on that broke months ago.  So by Christmas it no longer rolled.  It was simply a “drag it all over the place and explain to porters, bellmen and anyone else who tried to help me with my bag not to worry because it was already broken” kind of bag.

Well, today I finally made the move to bury (in the dumpster) my three pieces of luggage, taken to Africa, only to meet their maker and return lifeless.  I suppose this is just one of the steps to moving forward and saying good-bye to my time in Africa.

On the bright side, I got new luggage!  I highly recommend my new TravelPro roller bags.  They are lighter and seem to have more room than my old luggage (which by the way lasted me a record 239 passport stamps!).

Out with the old….

In with the new….

Of course, that being said, I wouldn’t be terribly heartbroken if I didn’t take an international trip for a while.  Then again, you never know.

Money, Money, Money, Money...MOOOOOO-NEY!

Though I’m not scheduled to leave Africa for a few more weeks, I thought it a good idea to start going through all my belongings and trying to downsize as much as possible.  Believe it or not, I spent a good 20 minutes trying to streamline my wallet this morning.  As a rule, when I travel, I eliminate all unnecessary items from my wallet.  When friends come to visit and I see them carrying a wallet full of 10 different credit cards, their library card, their Red Cross blood donor card, their Social Security card, and countless other cards they will never use, but are highly likely to lose here, I cringe.  When I moved to Africa I brought the following: 1 personal credit card, 1 credit card for university-related/business purposes, 1 bank debit card, my travel insurance card, and my emergency evacuation/I’M IN A LOT OF TROUBLE GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! supplementary insurance card.  That’s it!  I have since added a Botswana driver’s license.

Despite having the two credit cards and the debit card, I only use these about half the time.  Southern Africa has begun using plastic on a more regular basis, but Zimbabwe and most of central and east Africa still operate on a strictly cash system.  I knew cash would be necessary, so when I came here I brought $5,000 with me and have since changed or used most of it.  Similar to the patriotism displayed in my blog post about how I was proud to be an American and would NEVER give up my passport to obtain citizenship elsewhere, there is a lot to be said about the power of the U.S. dollar.  You know the commercial, “Visa: Accepted Everywhere”?  Not true.  It should really be, “U.S. Dollars: Accepted Everywhere.”  Though I should add that when travelling to Africa if you plan to bring a credit card, choose Visa.  My university card is a Master Card and I haven’t been able to use it several times because Master Card isn’t as widely accepted as Visa.  Apparently those Olympics commercials with Morgan Freeman ARE telling the truth.

As I was organizing my wallet today there was no need to go through my cards as those have remained stagnant.  But my supply of banknotes and coins has changed considerably.  My stash of U.S. dollars is barely enough to get me through the next couple months, but I can now rest assured that if I get stranded in any one of a dozen African countries I can buy a bottle of water, and in some cases, even dinner if necessary.  Here are some of the bills I’ve collected during my tenure in Africa:

(Left to right, top to bottom): Ugandan Shilling, Rwandan Franc, Congolese Franc, Ethiopian Birr, Zimbabwean Dollar (This is no longer in circulation. Zimbabwe has no official currency, so the U.S. dollar is primarily used, but you can now use 8 different foreign currencies as legal tender), Zambian Kwacha, U.S. Dollar, Kenyan Shilling, Namibian Dollar, Botswana Pula, Sierra Leonean Leone, South African Rand, and Lesotho Loti.

None of these bills are worth more than a dollar or two, except for the Rand and Pula which are about $20 and $23, respectively.  But I will definitely spend those as SA and Botswana are where I will be most of the time until I leave. 

Dr. Phelan: Illegal Alien Extraordinaire

If you read my blog last week you are aware that I have a residence permit which expires on May 31^st, however, I don’t have a plane ticket departing Botswana for a little while.  This means that two days from now I will be considered in the country illegally and I can technically be deported.  I will have become an illegal alien!

In all honesty, I am the best illegal alien a country could ever ask for.  I’m not looking for employment.  I’m not a refugee asking for a hand out.  I have plenty of money to spend.  I’ve paid all my bills.  I worked FOR FREE!  And I know that I am most definitely leaving… I’m just leaving slightly later than initially planned.  By the way, I’m actually not leaving later than planned.  The real problem here is that my residence permit had the wrong end date from the beginning- it was supposed to be valid through the end of June.  I brought this to the attention of the university back in October when I originally got the permit and the problem was never corrected.  So in reality I’m not leaving later than planned, I’m leaving on time and the permit was issued incorrectly. Nevertheless, I am the one who is considered at fault, meaning I am about to become an illegal alien and people with that status are generally looked down upon.  As I was contemplating my upcoming illegal status I was reminded of another experience not too long ago with illegal aliens:

Back in November I made an unexpected trip to Ethiopia when my flight to Rwanda was cancelled.  This was the trip where my perpetually lost luggage went rogue and spent six weeks in purgatory.  Part of the reason for the chaos of the Ethiopian airport during my ill-fated 24-hour layover may have been due to a mass illegal alien roundup.

Unemployment is a problem throughout Africa.  In many countries unemployment is as high as 50%, with Zimbabwe believed to have the highest rate with over 80% of the population unemployed.  Not surprisingly, many people cross borders, taking up residence in foreign countries illegally in order to obtain some sort of employment and standard of living.  Ethiopia is no exception to this rule.  Thousands of Ethiopians cannot obtain travel documents or papers, but they take the chance and WALK to Djibouti and then get on a ship bound for Saudi Arabia. Once in Saudi Arabia they secure under the table, illegal employment. But it turns out too many of them have been trying this method and there are now too many illegal migrant workers from Ethiopia in Saudi Arabia.  Since the Saudi Arabian economy can’t handle the massive influx anymore it has created a problem with homelessness and petty theft which is overburdening the Kingdom’s resources.  In short, Saudi Arabia doesn’t want them.

When I arrived in Ethiopia it was mass chaos at the airport.  Reason being because Saudi Arabia rounded up over 23,000 Ethiopians who were in the country illegally, put them on planes, and flew them back to Ethiopia.  When the planes landed Ethiopia was unwilling to accept the passengers because none of them had any legal documents.  So the Saudi planes dumped the passengers and their luggage on the tarmac and took off!  You could actually see the chaos from the terminal.  There is a huge field directly behind the Ethiopian airport where the passengers and their luggage were camped out because the customs officials didn’t know how to handle the situation.  By the time I arrived this situation had already been compounding for almost a week.  In the end I didn’t stick around to see what happened with Ethiopia’s repatriated citizens.  I did stop in Ethiopia for a few days last month and the temporary refugee camp which had been set up adjacent to the runway back in November had been dismantled.  I also saw newspaper reports stating Saudi Arabia had plans to return as many as 80,000 Ethiopian citizens, so it will be a considerable ongoing project.

Though I am about to be considered an illegal alien I don’t believe Botswana will go to such extreme measures to forcibly remove me from the country and give me a free ride home.  But after some of the challenges I’ve had during my stay here and the stress resulting from my immigration/residence permit drama I’m starting to feel a little homesick and wouldn’t mind a quick departure.  When I do get back to the U.S. at the end of the summer I may just jump across the desk and hug the passport control officer than stamps me back into the country.

No Maps, No Street Names, No Traffic Signals, No Accidents

This time last year I was in China collecting data for a research project.  While the trip itself was rewarding because the research expedition was successful, I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the experience.  I liked visiting the Great Wall and buying beautiful silk Chinese clothes.  But towards the end of the trip I was tired of the excessive pollution and crowded spaces.  One of the things I learned was that despite traffic laws, the average speed of cars in Beijing is 9 miles per hour.  Yes, NINE.  The reason being that the streets are so congested the cars can’t go any faster even if they wanted to.

In a few of the big cities in Africa you do see excessive vehicular traffic.  And there are no emissions laws anywhere on the continent from what I can tell, so most of the public transportation (combis, matutus, boda-bodas, etc.) are constantly discharging cough-inducing bellows of black smoke.  There aren’t many people here with personal vehicles, except of course for the diplomats, NGOs and businessmen making their millions.

In general, the roads are in poor condition regardless of where you are, and the organization of those roads is even more appalling.  I mentioned in a previous post that maps simply don’t exist here.  Most people can’t read maps anyway due to the inability to understand directions.  When I was taking driving lessons my instructor never once told me to turn left or right.  He would just point, “Go that way.”  This is typical because very few people know their right from their left.  To top it all off, most streets are not given names.  They may have had names at one point, but no one knows the name and there certainly aren’t any street signs anywhere.  Years ago several African countries mounted street signs in an effort to instill upon their citizens a sense of location and place names.  This was a failed experiment as all the street signs were promptly stolen and melted down for scrap metal.  None of those signs have been replaced as it is a losing battle and too costly.  On top of all these challenges, perhaps one of the most glaring is the lack of working robots (traffic lights).  Currently in Botswana we do not have a SINGLE working robot due to power outages.

A few weeks ago I was in Ethiopia for a layover.  I was in Addis Ababa, the capital, which is a huge city by African standards.  I found it interesting that there were practically no traffic signals anywhere in the city.  Instead, most of the traffic was governed by roundabouts and general courtesy.  Here is one of the main intersections where traffic is converging from six different streets.  I find it amazing that somehow they manage to actually make it work:

A Very Busy Few Months Ahead

One of the interesting aspects of being a Fulbrighter is that you are given a lot of freedom.  As long as you are fulfilling your obligations to your host institution it is up to you how you spend the rest of your time.  There are no hard and fast rules in terms of what you are expected to accomplish, which is a good thing as red-tape and politics can make some objectives much more difficult than others.

Last year before I came to Botswana I contacted another Fulbright Scholar.  I asked about the process you had to go through in order to get permission to do research.  She informed me it was much more arduous than in the U.S. and that while she had applied for a research permit in August it wasn’t granted until May.  She left in June.

Fortunately for me I didn’t have nearly as difficult of a time obtaining my permit and IRB approval to conduct my research.  But a lot of that is pure luck; catching the right person who actually knows the answer to your question on a day when they are happy and willing to help you. 

Over the past seven months I have been busy teaching, doing research and travelling.  Most of my travel has been work related for data collection or serving as a guest speaker at other universities, though some of it has been for fun as well.  Since I arrived back from Christmas I’ve had several tourism colleagues throughout the continent invite me to visit them at their universities to guest lecture for a few days.  In order to juggle all the requests, along with other side trips I wanted to take before I left I decided to sit down and plan out the next six months.  Thank goodness I did otherwise I would have never been able to squeeze in another commitment.  This is my calendar for the next six months.  All of the shaded blocks are when I am travelling:

To give you a rundown here is what is on my calendar:

Tomorrow: Head to Cape Town, South Africa for three days to teach at Stellenbosch University.

March: Johannesburg for three days to obtain my DRC visa and visit a colleague at Vaal University with whom I am writing an article.  Then on to Lesotho to visit some of our students currently there on internship.  From Lesotho, go to Mozambique to meet a fellow Fulbrighter for some fun. (This trip takes place during our mid-semester break.)

First week of April: Zanzibar, Tanzania to meet an Egyptian friend who lives in Nairobi, Kenya to hang out on the beach for a long weekend.

Middle-Late April: Fly to Kigali, Rwanda to teach at the Rwanda Tourism University College.  From there head to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo to teach at University of Goma and then climb the volcano over the weekend.  On the way home stop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for three days to give Ethiopia a chance to redeem itself after the luggage fiasco.

May: Amanda and Ashleigh come to visit me in Botswana!  Finally, I get to play host to friends from home.

June: Back to Tanzania to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Then Dad comes to visit for 10 days and I get to show him around Botswana.  The day Dad departs I go to Mauritius where I am presenting two papers at a conference.

July: Perhaps return to the U.S.? 

I would have to say if nothing else I have certainly taken full advantage of my time here.  And I think Fulbright has also gotten its money’s worth. I may have to give my passport a rest whenever I finally make it back across the ocean.

My Birthday Comes One Week Early

You know how yesterday I said I had the best day ever?  I may have to amend that because today ranks pretty close to the best day ever, for slightly different reasons.

Today I flew to Johannesburg to meet up with one of the professors from my department back at Texas Tech.  She is here doing a three day seminar at Vaal University.  Since she is a Nutrition professor, I took advantage of her visit to make some contacts in the Hospitality and Tourism department there.  I am also planning to visit another Hospitality and Tourism professor friend of mine from the University of South Africa.  We met at the Ecotourism Conference I attended in September in Nairobi.

When I arrived at my guest lodge in Johannesburg I was greeted by a gift:

Yes, that is luggage.  My long lost luggage.  The luggage I thought was gone forever after my trip from hell to Ethiopia.  Keep in mind I was in Ethiopia on November 24^th.  That means it took 45 days to get it back to me.  Actually, that’s not entirely true.  Ethiopian Airlines delivered it to Johannesburg on December 17^th, so it was really only 24 days, but they couldn’t send it all the way to Gaborone because they don’t fly to Botswana and because I was in Namibia anyway and wouldn’t have been able to pick it up at the time.  So I asked them to deliver it to the lodge where I knew I would be staying during this trip to Joburg.  Thankfully the lodge didn’t mind holding the bag for almost a month.

When I heard the luggage had arrived a few weeks ago I was cautiously optimistic because I had no idea whether it was the correct bag, or if it completely empty.  This was attached to the bag:

But this was what worried me:

When I checked the bag in on November 24^th it had a lock (which are legal and pretty much required here in Africa).  So I was a little concerned about what may have been removed from the bag after the lock had been cut.

Fortunately when I opened the bag it appeared everything had survived.  If something had been taken it was something I didn’t care about.  All the things I was hoping to see again (and mourning when I thought the bag was gone forever, because I knew I couldn’t replace these things here) were alive and well.  My zebra print Bobs, purple purse, universal converter, curling iron, UB library book, and even the plantain chips I bought in Uganda were all there:

Now, the luggage would have been enough to make this the best early birthday present ever.  But on top of that I got to see Mary, the Nutrition professor from TTU tonight as well.  We went to dinner and she brought me a few things from the U.S.  When my Super Mom heard the zebra print Bobs and purple purse fell victim to the Ethiopian Airlines Luggage demons she sprang into action and sent a new purse, zebra Bobs, two additional pairs of Bobs and a few other goodies over with Mary:

It looks like it’s going to be a pretty good year.

My 24 Hour Unintentional Visit to Ethiopia

After my visit to Uganda I was supposed to go to Rwanda for a few days to teach at the Rwanda University Tourism College.  Despite all the best laid plans, This Is Africa, and my plans quickly went to hell in a hand basket.  The Kampala to Kigali flight was only 40 minutes, so even though it was a night flight I figured I would arrive in enough time to actually get some sleep in my hotel.  Far from it.

The flight departed promptly at 12:30am Sunday morning.  At about 1am the pilot announced we would be landing very soon, “There is a little mist over the Kigali airport, but it shouldn’t affect our landing.”  Not five minutes later the pilot informed us the mist had become too thick and we would have to circle the airport for a bit.  After an hour of circling the pilot informed us we were running low in fuel and had to return to Kampala.

We arrived back in Kampala right around 3am to find the Kigali airport was “closed” until dawn.  (Important background information: After dropping half the passengers in Kigali the plane was supposed to continue on to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.) After sitting on the tarmac in Kampala for two hours, the pilot made the call that he would take everyone to Addis and then those of us who were supposed to go to Kigali could catch a direct flight later that day.

At 7:45am we arrived in Addis where NO ONE gave us any information or made any effort to help us.  We weren’t supposed to be in Ethiopia, so we couldn’t go through Immigration.  So we were stuck in limbo, like Tom Hanks in The Terminal.  The 40 or so of us Kigali passengers stuck together, but no one would give us any definitive answers.  Apparently the answer to everything is, “You have to speak to a supervisor.”  Funny, we NEVER found a supervisor.

Around 8:30am after being left alone at the departure gate, despite none of us having boarding passes, one lone gate clerk appeared and told us he only had about 25 seats on the flight.  That caused the expected outburst of anger from the crowd.  At this point I realized I probably would not be going to Rwanda.  And at this point I really didn’t want to; I just wanted to go home.  I have to say Ethiopia has the worst hospitality of any country I’ve visited. After more than 40 countries, that is a pretty harsh criticism coming from me, particularly because I tend to be a pretty level headed and understanding traveler; it takes a lot to get me bent out of shape.

After watching the chaos of one gate clerk trying to issue 25 tickets to 40 angry people I decided to leave and figure out another alternative.  At this point I learned Addis does not have iron-clad security which most airports attempt to claim.  I walked out through the security gates, without getting a visa or entry stamp.  Then walked through an “Employees only” door because I thought it might lead me back onto the tarmac, which, thankfully, it did.  I thought at this point I should be getting myself arrested (which I figured would be helpful because then someone would HAVE to help me) since I was a civilian walking across the tarmac underneath the parked airplanes and around all the fuel trucks.  Somehow NO ONE saw this as a red flag!

I went to the Ethiopian Airlines Arrivals and Transfers Desk where I was ignored until the one desk clerk finally told me she’s not helping people; I needed to get in the next line. “This line?  The line where everyone is standing, yet there is no one at this desk to help anyone? Oh, great, thanks for letting me know I should be in THIS line.”

After about twenty minutes I arrived at the front of the line because the deaf Chinese family of 7 in front of me decided they had wasted enough time and gave up.  Shortly after, another desk clerk appeared to assist customers!  YAY!  I explained the fact I couldn’t get on the Kigali flight because they didn’t have enough seats for all of us.  I asked her to just send me home to Gaborone.  Thirty minutes later I finally got a new ticket, leaving this morning to Johannesburg and continuing on to Gaborone in the afternoon.  This meant I had to spend last night in Addis.

I spent the next hour getting through Immigration, followed by harassing the baggage claim attendants.  Apparently, they scan the barcodes on the bags as they put them on the planes.  But, they do NOT scan those barcodes as they are off loaded.  So, they couldn’t tell me whether my luggage had been removed from the plane or where it was, in this or ANY country.  I’m thinking I will never see that bag again, which is particularly disappointing because the hiking boots for my Kilimanjaro climb in less than a month are in there.  If I don’t get the bag soon I need to buy some new boots immediately so I can start breaking them in.

My lack of confidence that my luggage will ever surface emanates from my time spent in the baggage area yesterday. Imagine a baggage claim area with 8 conveyor belts.  All conveyor belts are continuously moving with luggage, but every square inch of flooring between the belts; you know, where people normally stand and watch the belts in hopes of finding their luggage?; every square inch of floor space is filled with unclaimed luggage.  So passengers are literately climbing over mountains of luggage looking for their bags, while also hoping it might fall off a conveyor belt.  I watched this scene for about an hour while Blen, the baggage claim lady, who I told I would tip $100 if she found my luggage, manually searched for my bag.  In the end she couldn’t find it.

I couldn’t take it anymore. After three hours in the Kampala airport, 8 hours on the plane going from Kampala to Kigali to Kampala to Addis, and then another 5 hours in the Addis airport trying to get things sorted out, I left for my hotel.  I was too exhausted from the travel and lack of sleep, and my nerves were completely shot from the stress that I didn’t even play tourist.  Normally when I get “stuck” in a new city I will at least make an effort to see something, anything.  Not this time.  I checked into my hotel, took a nap, watched some tv and then went back to bed until my flight this morning.  And my two flights today were wonderful.  I’m always happy to get back to the Gaborone airport.  I’m happy it’s my home airport because it’s probably the easiest airport I’ve ever been through.  And I’ve never been so happy to be back as I was this afternoon.