Lost luggage

I stumbled upon another brilliant gem!
This is a much much better report than my flimsy attempt at writing like dad! http://satisembi.blogspot.com/2006/01/luggagewhat-luggage.html


Wednesday, June 26, 2002 Dear People, IT HAPPENED AGAIN! I ARRIVED IN MUMBAI WITHOUT A SPARE PAIR OF UNDERPANTS. At first I wasn’t sure we had come to the right destination. I travelled by Syrian Airlines. They were cheap – I will grant them that! That was what attracted me in the first place – I am a cheap bastard. But that is where the attractions stopped. A worst case of “Matatu Airlines” I have not encountered. They are worse than Kenya Airways, and that is saying something. Their planes last had a clean up in 1978 – which was the last time the Russians paid for the service. Each part of the plane was an olfactory wonderland – one corner smelt of vomit, another of sewage, a third of twenty-year old tobacco smoke, a fourth of camel dung. The toilets are works of art – painted in layer upon layer of dried piss and other less attractive excreta. You do your business wishing that you could open a window. We were taken to Damascus and abandoned. There were arrows pointing in various directions, all saying “TRANSIT”. I suppose you were supposed to decide which way you wanted to go. The Arab ladies at these counters all spoke incomprehenselish with a FRENCH accent – they thought it made them sound sophisticated. “Baggage!” one barked at me. I pointed at my carry bag. She looked relieved and even gave me half a smile. “I also checked in a suitcase in London”. “Then why didn’t you say so?” she demanded. I gave her my baggage tag. She muttered praises of me in Arabic while she struggled to introduce this earth-shaking information into her computer. “Next!” she shouted after ten minutes. I wandered around the terminal, following arrows pointing in various directions saying TRANSIT. Any question to an official elicited a bout of heavy breathing, which meant that the person was exercising superhuman restraint in not assaulting me physically. I wandered into a departure gate where more brown faces seemed to be in evidence. No one paid the slightest bit of attention. The plane ended up in Abu Dhabi, where they wouldn’t let me off the plane. No one would answer any question – not even in an Arab French accent. The plane took off and landed again (a medley of people being sick all over the plane), and the crew cocked a thumb at the door. I was desperate to get off the plane by now, and wandered off through empty corridors (4 o’clock in the morning). I came across a strange apparition – a FAN on a stand, whirring away at full blast. This looked familiar. I came across a desperado looking like he’d just escaped from a Mexican prison – in a brown uniform. It was a policeman. I was in Mumbai, I decided, hugely relieved.

to be cont...