Apinautica: Marooned in Egypt, Arriving in the Kingdom of Sakiland
Continuing the Apinautica from Dubai
Marooned in Egypt
Up at 3:30am for the 5am departure to Egypt. After four hours of sitting on the floor by the gate we finally board and take off at 0900. This of course causes us to miss the Cairo to Nigeria flight by several hours, and I find myself sitting on the floor at the Cairo terminal for several more hours, along with the surprisingly large number of other Nigeria-bound passengers effected. A fully stocked concession kiosk stands tauntingly near us, but only accepts Egyptian pounds. None of us have Egyptian pounds, and so we can just gaze hungrily at the snacks we can’t have as we uncomfortably wait for the airline to tell us what they’ll do about us.
“There’s not another flight until tomorrow, we’ll put you up in a hotel until then, when you hear your name called please come up to the desk” they finally announce.
“Oh no you don’t!” a British citizen immediately approaches the desk, “I’ve been through this before and don’t want anything to do with it again, give me back my passport, I’ll make my own arrangements!” The rest of us looked at eachother, this is a bit ominous.
I’m developing a headache and general achey feeling. They take us to a hotel, which actually seems fairly nice. They want to put us two to a room but Nigerians in business suits strenuously object with the battlecry “I am a business owner!” until the hotel relents.
I fall into my hotel bed and sleep till dinner time, at which point I wake up feeling thoroughly awful but drag myself down to the restaurant not wanting to miss dinner. There’s a buffet but nothing to drink, not even water, is provided. The Nigerian business owners, complaining that their business class tickets entitle them to more than this, refuse to pay for water, but eventually a friendly young Pakistani-Nigerian fellow pays for all their waters. I’m barely able to pick at a fruit salad as raging indigestion has joined my ailments.
Four hour flight to Abuja, during which I have to get up and go to the lavatory at least every half hour, unfortunately for the two people who had to get up every time to let me outt.
Arriving in Abuja, my luggage of course does not arrive. At the lost luggage desk it’s like a reunion from Cairo, all of us from the previous day’s missed flight hadn’t had our luggage arrive.
While traveling internationally one seems to enter a strange dimension where time and date have little meaning - is it the time in the place where I left or the time where I arrive or something in between? When I reorient myself in Abuja it’s April 4th, I had left my house in Australia on Monday morning and now it’s Thursday afternoon, it had taken 70 hours of travel.
Though I felt too unwell to properly appreciate it at the time, when I arrived in Abuja I had actually completed a circumnavigation of the world, having the been there the previous year, and having since then kept traveling west to the US, west to Australia and west again to arrive back at Abuja.
Chapter VII - Nigeria III - Sakiland
Thursday, April 4th, 2013 - “The King of Saki is looking forward to meeting you! He had heard many good things about your previous project in Ibadan and has been looking forward to your arrival for months!” John from The Organization tells me as we drive from the airport to the hotel. John is the same age as me, 30, and will accompany me on this project. He mentions that he had had to work as a volunteer at Non-Profits for many years before his resume was impressive enough to get this job.
I feel very flattered that a king should want to see me, and in the mean time, here is the literal princess still working in the hotel lobby. She is looking gorgeous in her elegant clothes, glittering gold jewelry, broad smile of brilliantly white teeth as she greets me and brown eyes sparkling confidently. She remembers me as if it had been just yesterday we’d last met. “We should hang out … maybe when I’m back from Saki” I say, I still feel too unwell to contemplate socializing even with gorgeous princesses. My friend the security guard appears to no longer work here, and the receptionist doesn’t know his number.
The next day John picks me up to take me to the airport for the domestic flight to Oyo State. He’s running on Nigerian time, which stresses me out but surely he knows his country - we get to the airport at 3:00pm for the 3:00pm flight. Nope the flight has left, and there’s only one a day. But on the bright side, here’s my luggage arrived!
I’m very frustrated, this project is sandwiched in before a project in Egypt so there were only 9 training days but now that’s been reduced to 7.
“The King of Saki is really looking forward to your arrival!” Yes well. But there’s a bright side to another evening in Abuja, Princess Nwaji is keen to hang out, though I still feel very unwell. She’s happy to come chill with me in my room and watch a movie, though I still feel like an invalid and still have to keep running to the bathroom. I fear I’m not at my most charismatic.
Saturday, April 6th - We once again arrive at the airport 5 minutes after the flight’s scheduled departure but that’s okay because it doesn’t depart for another hour. From there it takes four hours to travel 100 miles north through Nigerian scrub, zigzagging across the road to avoid the enormous potholes. Finally we arrive in Saki. The guest house is in a quiet government compound surrounded by lots of space and trees. There’s a small welcoming party is waiting outside the guest-house which includes two or three people I had met last year in Ibadan.
“The King of Saki has been greatly looking forward to meeting you … but he died yesterday.”