The Horn of Africa

On Friday I left Hargeisa without a hitch (although the USD$30 exit fee was a surprise).

 

For all the hype, the Daallo flight was quite normal. Very old plane, all the seats were broken so they bounced back and forth to full recline and back, service was dodgy, the air-nozzles didn't work, etc. Par for the course, I think.

 

The only thing that made the flight bad was the heat. We sat on the runway, with no air moving, and everyone started to sweat. As people became more and more hot, the din of chatter gave way to silence puntuated only be the sound of the paper flopping back and forth as it fanned people. After 20 minutes, I could see beads of sweat forming on my forearms. The Somali man next to me was periodically dripping sweat from his chin.

 

My plan was to sit, unmoving, like a lizard sunning itself on a rock, and just stop producing my own heat. This seemed to work, at least somewhat, and I sweated much less than the people fanning themselves around me.

 

Halfway through the flight, I felt water hit my arm and looked up to see that water was beading all along the ceiling, thick enough to drip large droplets. It's gross, to think of 60 peoples sweat pooling and then dripping onto you, but it was so hot that nobody cared.

 

The Djibouti airport had AC and was lovely, but once on to the next leg, from Djibouti to Dubai, the new plane was equally hot. We sat on the runway there for the better part of an hour. The heat was too much and I pulled out the plastic 'safety instructions' card and fanned myself vigorously until my forearms cramped.

 

The second plane was more modern and once we got into the air, they had a cooling system. The stewardesses apologized profusely, but I can't imagine it's ever any different. Djibouti is one of the hottest corners of the planet and if you don't have a cooling system that'll work while you're on the ground, you just don't. They played it off as if it was a one-time hiccup.

 

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I had a day stopover in Dubai and while I had some vague interest in going bead shopping, I really didn't want to be there. In the airport, I ate some chicken tikka masala and then went to the Emirates desk and asked to be placed on standby for an earlier flights to NYC. There was one leaving in three hours and I made my way over to the gate. I ended up boarding, almost twenty minutes after the flight was supposed to have left, because there ended up being a few "off-loads" despite it being a full flight.

 

Some mess of hours later, I touched down at JFK in New York. At customs, nobody was waiting to question me. That might be because they have no interest, though that seems odd since Somaliland is technically Somalia and there's been all this hullaballoo in the news over terror plots in the UK. Or maybe it's because I skipped the first leg of my tickets (from Addis to Dubai), ended up on an earlier flight from Dubai to NYC, because I boarded at the last possible moment, because my name was misspelled when it was entered into the computer for the Dubai to NYC flight, etc. In any case, no gabbing with the FBI this time.

 

Now I'm in NYC. While Emirates moved me to standby for an earlier flight for free, American Airlines said they wouldn't do it, despite four daily flights from NYC to SF, without me paying a $150 "change fee." That was, they said, because the flight I wanted a standby on was on the 11th and my ticket was for a flight on the 12th -- nevermind that they're within 24 hours of each other, etc.

 

San Francisco has my bed and New York City has new haunts to explore, but they're otherwise a wash. I'm as happy to stay overnight in NYC as I would be to fly to SF. I'm at NYPL now, googling up a place to stay tonight. I desperately need a shower after losing probably half a gallon of sweat on the flights from Hargeisa to Dubai. Shower, scrub, food, wander Manhattan all afternoon and into the evening.

 

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll be back in San Francisco -- "Baghdad by the Bay."