To Travel
I enjoy the process of travelling quite a bit more and separate and distinct from enjoying being at the destination I am travelling to. I find the journey itself to be one of the more interesting aspects of it all, and it is among the most exciting things that I get to do in my life. If I go on a certain journey ten times, I know that I am going to have a different experience of the same journey each time. It is the individual unique experiences of each journey that make for the journey itself being so interesting. Many of these experiences come from chance encounters with fellow travellers that I might meet on the way.
I would not in my everyday life, for example, have the interesting encounter that I had with this striking, dark-complexioned, statuesque, stylish, very beautiful lady with whom I got into a conversation as she stood behind me on the security queue at the transit arrivals section of the Nairobi airport terminal building. We both had arrived on the same flight, and, by way of striking up a conversation, I asked her if she was transiting to Dubai. "No, I'm travelling to Bangui", she replied, confidently, in excellent English. She then proceeded to calmly inform me in a perfect, sweet crisp, clear voice, with a hint of a French accent, that she lives in Cotonou, Republic of Benin (she had joined our flight from Lagos during the stopover in Cotonou), but she is originally from the Central African Republic. She was travelling to visit her family in Bangui.
Perhaps reacting to the querying look on my face, without pause, this woman went on to explain that, yes, she indeed speaks both English and French fluently. Her flight to Bangui was leaving in about an hour, so she would have to head immediately towards her departure gate. Also, she appeared to be travelling together with a group of other ladies who seemed to be her friends. But by this point I was at the front of the queue, and I was annoyingly summoned by the security person to undergo the security procedure, thereby, abruptly terminating my conversation with her.
As my wait at this airport was to be for all of eleven hours, I had the wistful feeling that having the company of this lovely woman for the entire duration of this waiting period would be very delightful indeed. I realised, though, that to be with her would not be possible, but I did seize the chance to walk up to her and bid her farewell after she came through security herself. I could not at that moment but notice the bemusement on her friends' faces as I did this; it is quite unusual for a woman to have had such a profound effect on me that my body language revealed the unsettled excitement to others who might be watching. I was in awe of this woman, and it might have been that I was unable to hide it.
Earlier, while still on this flight to Nairobi, I was seated next to a Nigerian gentleman, an Igbo 'businessman', (a term, which in the in Nigerian context often refers to a trader, or a merchant), who was travelling ultimately to Guangzhou, China, to order and purchase merchandise to be shipped to Nigeria. He started off by complaining about how long the flight was, and worrying about the even longer connecting flight to China that was yet to come. He seemed to be very passionate about Nigeria, and shared the same concerns about the future of the country as I do, but the conversation became ever more heated when the subject shifted to Nigerian pastors. The vitriol that came from him about the pastors was intense. He complained tirelessly about those pastors for at least an hour, and about his wife, whom, he thinks, nowadays, is spending too much time in church with her pastor, and perhaps too much of his money in doing it. He was a chatterbox, which was good, because the five-hour-long flight became far less boring than it otherwise might have been.
Then there was that young Chinese guy I bumped into as I waited in the Nairobi airport who spoke not a word of English, but who through gesticulations, and saying "China, China" as he repeatedly thrust his packet of cigarettes at me, managed to persuade me to try out one of his Chinese cigarettes, and in so doing break my promise never ever again to smoke a cigarette in my life. As guilty as I feel about it, I cannot deny that the one Chinese cigarette that I ended up smoking had a pleasant taste to it. My new Chinese friend didn't know English enough to understand the "thank you, it tastes nice" I said, so I repeated the same thing in my halting French. Still he did not understand. I wondered how he would cope in the French-speaking Bangui, Central African Republic, the destination I'd seen on his boarding pass, before I remembered that Chinese people who come to Africa to work do not need to learn the language, as they likely will be working for a Chinese company, and contact with locals will be limited.
This by no means describes everything that happened, or everyone I met as I waited at the airport that night. I met an Indian gentleman recently arrived from Mumbai, who was enroute to Bamako, Mali, a place he had never been. He was travelling there to start work with a steel company. I did my best to assuage his fears and reassure him that Africans in general are hospitable, and are generous towards foreigners. Then there was also the young Somali man who lives in Uganda, but was on his way to Mogadishu with his brother. He talked tirelessly and I listened patiently, about life in Uganda, about how different it is in Kenya, about how Hargeisa in Somaliland is now a paradise, and about how Mogadishu will soon become the ultimate tourist destination, to which I nodded my head in agreement, smiled and politely excused myself. Later I found myself seated next to a distinguished older gentleman who as it turned out, is a professor from Sierra Leone. He started his journey in Freetown and was flying to Arusha, Tanzania to participate in an academic workshop of some kind. The conversation with him was so stimulating that I secretly wished he would not have to leave and say goodbye when his flight was called. But alas, this is what happened.
I had attempted to post this shortly after these events I have written about (all happened within the space of a few hours), when each was still fresh in my thoughts. But the Wi-Fi was patchy, so the first attempt to post it only led to the rather lengthy post I had hurriedly written getting deleted irretrievably. Now having to produce it again, it is possible that it's not as fresh and emotive as it had been when I first poured it out; or less intense. and not as complete and detailed as when I scribbled it the first time.
