olodo*
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 26/Oct/2010 11:51, 34 days ago
The first time I flew anywhere, I was 17 and went to Rome.I was almost unspeakably excited, and it was indeed brilliant.I quite love flying.I love the tug in your belly when the plane accelerates on the runway.I love seeing towns and cities spread out beneath me, many of them suddenly making sense with curving avenues and neatly planned grids.I find it unspeakably exciting, for some weird reason, to pass over somewhere I know well on a map, and see that it’s exactly the same shape (the Isle of Wight is my favourite for this).Provided I’m not hungover, I even love the endless hanging around: it’s a time to read; to spend money in a giant rat cage where nothing really has any meaning; to drink at any time of the day and feel entirely normal.Airports are (for relatively short periods) blissfully anonymous, empty spaces where no-one knows who you are, and they all care even less.My favourite thing of all is to look at the clouds out of the window: at the secret valleys and tunnels and mountains that float through the air, seemingly so concrete and perfectly, endlessly varied in design.I used to play games in primary school where we imagined a world living on top of the clouds.It’s a beautiful place.And, ever since I readHyperion: a satyr(which I wholeheartedly recommend), I can’t be above a cloud without wondering what Keats would have thought had he ever had that opportunity.It saddens me greatly: that I’ve had – indeed have repeatedly – this awe inspiring experience, while many people who could describe it more fully, could live it more vibrantly, and who frankly deserve it a lot more never did.(There are things I dislike about it, too, of course.My shoulders quiver and my blood howls at the absurd– it’d be comic if I wasn’t so powerless in its presence – rudeness which almost all airport staff seem to have drilled into their souls.I want to scream‘this is ridiculous’ and slaver like a wild animal at many of the insane security measures while the same people who argue fiercely against decreasing the speed limit meekly remove their shoes and place tiny bottles of liquid into plastic bags.I despise myself every time I eagerly– indeed impatiently – await the delivery of food and drink, like a pig in a cage on antibiotics (and I shudder to think of what I’m sure would be Byron’s magnificent disdain for me at those moments).)The weekend just gone, however, I found myself in an airport desperately desiring nothing in the world more than a small room in which I could howl with misery– and preferably smash some small, valueless objects.I’d spent a largely very enjoyable week in Lagos, working (yes, actually doing something!I just had to leave my state and colleagues to do it) with a group on teacher training.I was due to be flown back home to revel in the transitory joys of love for the weekend before flying back again for the second week of training.I’m just an international jet setter (and, given the absurd amount of ourper diems, two plane tickets are actually cheaper than keeping me there).All the beautiful organisation with whom I’ve been placed had to do was get me to the airport on time.(There’s no suspense here: I wouldn’t be writing this (or be sat firmly in Kaduna while doing so) had they managed to do what they do, day in, day out for their real employees, consultants, and generally important people.)For a 3.10 flight, the car collected me (and other colleagues not flying– together in order to save money rather than sending an earlier car just for me) at 1.45.The journey with good traffic should take about an hour.It was Friday afternoon in Lagos, and I think there are children I taught who are still fairly sure that Baz Luhrmann is Shakespeare who would identify the likely risk of congestion.We arrived at the airport at 3.30.No problem: next solution is that the final flight to Kaduna is from a different terminal, and leaves at 4.30.They’ll buy me a ticket, I’ll go, it’ll all be fine (this is perhaps the point at which the economic wisdom of sending one late car rather than a separate, earlier, one for me should be called into question).Next problem is that the‘plane is fully booked (of course it is: it’s a Friday afternoon commuters’ flight).Easily solved: Nigerian flights, like National Express coaches, sell standby tickets.I got standby 7, an assurance that it’d all be completely fine, and left in the airport with a tiny tiny bubble of hope in my chest that everything would work out ok. (This is often one of my major problems: I’m secretly an optimist, so when things go wrong and crash down around my waxy ears, I’m utterly crushed.Until the next time.)If you ever come to Nigeria, I strongly recommend that you don’t end up with a standby ticket for a flight, particularly an evening one.You check in like everyone else (oooh, interesting, that man in front of me in the queue has a fairly vicious looking knife removed from his hand luggage), praying fervently that you don’t get asked for ID because of course lovely ESSPIN have booked you in with the wrong surname, and trot along to the gate sharpish following the instructions from your helpful colleagues.Being an airport, of course, everyone at the gate is scathingly rude to you, and you stand watching a long line of real passengers boarding the plane, wondering how many people can fit inside a metal tube and if anyone would be happy for you to sit on their knee.Around you gather a little group of other standbys (and, were God a 17 year old poet, storm clouds would gather in the skies overhead).The arguments about who has the greater need to get home commence– and it’s a Nigerian male argument, so it’s louder and taller and (at least in the absolute present moment) really much angrier than you’re comfortable with or capable of being.Oooh, look– there’s that man who had the knife at check-in, he’s going to join this argument too.How simply thrilling.At this point, it passed through my mind that I could just sit upon the ground and tell sad tales about the death of hopes in a thoroughly time honoured English manner.But I also thought that it’d be a rubbish reason to not spend a weekend with my wife, and – damn it – I’m trying to build my ferocious arguing skills as part of my cultural engagement.So I tried to argue, too– focusing my attention on the (of course) other person with a standby 7 ticket: wheedling and arguing and bargaining for the status of 7a should there in fact be 7 and only 7 seats free.Forty-five minutes of this fairly purgatorial experience (and no Beatrice in sight) later, the message comes through that there are but four seats free.The shouting ceases immediately (it’s a remarkable ability: to become so apparently indignant and switch as soon as it no longer matters.It’s a card I played frequently as a teacher, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to play it with People in the Real World), and everyone’s good humoured and amused by their plight.I’m not.I’m seething with rage and sadness and disbelief.In all fairness to them, ESSPIN sent a driver (an hour’s wait) bought meanotherticket (another hour’s wait, but at least the one I didn’t use was refunded) and drove me to a hotel (another hour’s journey) for the night.Where I spent quite a lot of my excessiveper diemson alcohol and food and slept the unhappy sleep of an angry man.I feel like a bit of a petulant child (which certainly appears to be the attitude of my colleagues), but I’m not sure I want to fly in Nigeria again (a handgun, incidentally, was removed from the hold luggage of a man I sat next to on the eventual return flight).I certainly don’t want to tie my hands behind my back, give up all control, and be flown anywhere by ESSPIN again.Having spent much of the weekend making a list of pros and cons about my placement as a whole, I think there’s some writing moving onto some walls – not for me in Nigeria, just yet, but for this farcical waste of my time.I have no desire to miss children growing up, friends getting married, and put my life and career on hold in order to stand in an airport trying not to consider the worst case scenario, or sitting in an office knowing that I’ll spend the day achieving nothing, for nobody.It’s not all a barrel of laughs, this VSO lark.*Which isn't Hausa: it's a Yoruba insult fromodomeaning 'zero'. I like it a lot.