Today, I find myself back in Pretoria. Two years almost to the day after I left. I like the symmetry of that. I have a distinct memory in my head of going downtown with Tessia just a few days after getting back from Peace Corps, stepping off a curb and getting slapped with something akin to vertigo. It was the bizarre sense that nothing had changed and the last two years had barely happened. Like a tesseract*, where you can fold space from one point to another and just skip over all the stuff in the middle. I feel like I’ve just hopped off another tesseract, from the point where I left this city two years ago and back to it today.
That said, holy damn, is Atlanta to Johannesburg long flight. But you know what makes it better? Business class!! (Who’s got two thumbs and the best aunt ever? This girl.) Sometimes flying standby can be a little nerve racking, but sometimes there are bonuses.
Here is all you need to know about flying business class: A ‘light snack’ is composed of chilled grilled shrimp salad, fresh fruit, and cookie dough cheesecake; you can LIE DOWN to sleep; and the chairs are massage chairs. Please, allow me to repeat: Your seat is a massage seat. You push a little button and the back of your airplane chair makes vague gyration-like motions intended in some way to mimic those of a masseuse.
As the plane landed, and I looked out the window at Jo’burg rushing up under us, all I could think was: “ohgodohshitholycrapohmanohgod”. But much less coherent than that.
Once I got off the plane I immediately spent the length of Terminal A all the way down to Customs and Passport Check rapidly cycling through a need to hyperventilate, cry, and throw up. I generally stuck with hyperventilate, because the other two seemed messy.
It occurred to me that this is practically too good to be true. I am going to one of my favorite places, to talk to people about my favorite thing, for a cause that’s deeply important to me, in a way that is – quite honestly – really really fun. And other people are paying for it! And I’m going to get a master’s degree out of it! Its just too good to be true. I think thats where a lot of my panic has been coming from the last few days – how is this not too good to be true? Why in god’s name are other people paying me AND giving me a degree to do something that quite frankly seems like the most awesome thing ever? Don’t get me wrong, I know that many many times this will be a giant pain in the ass, but still…good lord is this cool.
Thank goodness for the deeply fantastic seating, as the transportation I was so proud of myself for arranging ahead of time promptly failed to materialize as soon as I got off the plane. I got my bags just fine, wandered through customs just fine, and then…no convenient pickup. Just lots of other taxis offering to take me where I wanted to go for two to three times the rate. Not unfair prices, but still lots more than I was interested in paying. After a good 30-45 minutes wandering up and down the airport looking for my ride (did I mention thank god for the fact that I’d actually slept and eaten on the plane?) a lady at the South African tourism desk kindly looked up the number for the place where I was staying, but did not offer to let me use her phone. So I found a pay phone, found somebody else to get me change, called the backpackers where I’m staying right now and was told, “oh shit! We forgot to send the driver!” Did I mention how exceedingly thankful I was that I’d gotten some sleep last night on the plane? Fortunately there are several billion taxi drivers who are all exceedingly willing to give hapless tourists/researchers/morons like me a ride wherever they like (for a price) and the backpacker’s manager had kindly offered to make up the difference in the price they would charge me and the price that I had originally been told I would pay. So I found myself the very first non-official and vaguely underground ‘driver’ that I could (not on purpose, it just sort of happened) hopped into his car, and was off to Pretoria. (Mom, Dad, it was still safe. He worked at the airport, was an actual driver, was chatting with the ladies at the info/tourism booth and they were fine with it. He just didn’t happen to be one of the official OR Tambo taxi drivers).
Driving back into Pretoria was…the overused image that comes to mind is that of slipping on an old piece of clothing you’d forgotten about. Which is not perfect because its overused, to start with, but also because its not quite right. More like borrowing something from a friend for a second time after a long interval. Like a hat or a piece of jewelry you remember you wore to a club that one time and would love to try again. It was so familiar, yet still didn’t fit quite right because it never did in the first place. But in a good way.
My driver stopped to ask directions and answer his cellphone once or twice, and each time I was ecstatic that I could still understand the conversation in IsiZulu. They were not exactly grammatically complex conversations (“which way is Hatfield?” “That way. Go straight for a long time.”) but still. Still!
Tomorrow morning I’ll have a cell phone (yesssss) and figure out how exactly I’ll be getting from Pretoria to Mbabane. I’ll also get to spend some time with Lexi and hopefully a PCV or three.
YAY
*A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle. Go read it.
