South Africa: The Incident
This is where the fun (and frustration) begins. Frustration because of an “incident” at immigration and a bunch of crap with Covid happening. So… when we landed, I have to say, I had a very rough experience. Now, it was not all the airport’s fault, I had a small hand in bringing myself this mess, buuuuuut it was mostly the airport. More specifically it was immigration and how miserable the workers were, and I can understand; they were sitting around doing nothing for most of their workday and then suddenly around 200 people come off of a flight from the U.S., most of them white, and they flood the immigration booths. The first attendant was a lady who pretty much everyone was lining up in front of and she started telling people to move down to the other booths. As they filled with people, me, my mother and several dozen people were looking for an attendant to process us so we could just get out, get our luggage, and be on our way.
We found not a soul who would help so we kept walking while confusion grew. Eventually someone told me to go back the way we just came from. Now at this point, anger started brewing within my confusion, so I walked back the way I came until I saw a manageable line and we take a place in it. While in line, the man in the booth told me to “go back that way,” the way I just came from (again). At this point I’m fed up with the inefficiency of it all and I blurt out without thinking “You keep telling us different shit, how are we supposed to get through?” And this is where the situation became even more of a mess. This utterly miserable guy who was on some type of power trip stops processing his current traveler and demands to see my passport. Me, not thinking straight, assume he’s going to process me, and I finally think I’m getting somewhere, but it was indeed not where I wanted. He steps out of the booth and tells me to come with him. This is the point where I knew things were going wrong. I followed this man whom in the moment I wanted to strangle and kept pestering him about what was happening and where we were going. His only response was “I’m not letting you into this country.”
My mother comes rushing over worried, stressed and in a panic asking the same questions that were running through my mind. He’s flailing my passport around explaining that he won’t let me into the country and I, acting out of anger, make a grab for my passport. He wrestles it back out of my hand, looks at me and says, “Are you assaulting me?” which makes me think in my head “well no but now that you say that I very well may.” Control your emotions people! Dont let them control you!
