Always Coming Home

First of all, I have a joke to share. It begins as follows:

“So, a lawyer, a missionary, and a grad student spend the night in an airport coffee shop…”

I leave the punch line to your own ingenuity and/or imagination.

Second of all, I have recently gained some key insights into the day to day functioning of the OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg. I will now share that information with you in more or less chronological order of importance:

1. There are two stores that sell wine by the bottle, however the cheaper place stops selling at 8pm, so if you find yourself in need of 3 people’s worth of cheap red wine and coke some evening…plan ahead.

2. Nobody cares if you crack open your very own bottle of wine in the middle of the food court. If you ask nicely, you can even get a nearby bartender to lend you a corkscrew.

3. The people at the food court in charge of the comfortable orange chairs will start trying to take them away from you around 11pm or so. However, whoever it is that is in charge of the less comfortable but still perfectly serviceable blue picnic tables could give a damn.

4. The people at Mugg and Bean will not only let you sleep on their booth benches, not only let you build a little table fort to as minimize exposure, and not only pour rum into pretty much anything you ask them to…they will also send some trainee to “the shop” (?) at 11:30 in order to organize you some banana toffee waffles at midnight.

5. I’m pretty sure the airport heater gets turned off at night.

6. Airport staffers enjoy doing whatever it is they do on a night shift while listening to a mix tape of what appears to be house music overlaying gospel overlaying …screaming babies?

7. The Mugg and Bean waiter will let you know when the boss is coming with a cheery “Kusile!” and “Good morning!” at 4:45am sharp.

…only 15 hours (or is it 39?) to go.