Ice Cream in the Afternoon

11:30am US time

My head is floating in a bubble. I got to the airport a little less than 23 hours ago, and have been en route ever since. It's a lot like leap frogging, travel like this. The hour is manufactured by the automation of the lights on the plane, and the occasional rising or lowering of the tiny portal blinds.

Food and drink keeps coming and going in a fervent attempt to keep you seated and sated. The closer one gets to Africa, the older the planes get, and the weirder the food gets. I'd be willing to test the hypothesis -- the correlation between the poverty line and the hotness and freshness of the dinner rolls.

I'm not even sure what time it is wherever I am right now. The stewardess just brought us tiny containers of strawberry ice cream and I feel like some sort of decadent infant, getting ice cream indiscriminately as a reward for something I'm not aware of.

I sleep on the plane. Sometimes sitting up, sometimes flopped across my tray with my hair cascading all around me. But the sleep is punctuated by more tea and ice cream and Boeuf Etrangé avec spicy club sauce.

Once we touch down in Douala I'll know more about whether we continue onto Kinshasa. Most of the people on this plane are getting off in Cameroon, and I wonder how empty we will be, flying ahead without them all. No news is thus far good news, and my friend in Kinshasa has heard nothing more about further coup rumblings.

I will instead focus on getting through customs, and, with luck, my luggage will have arrived with me. My ride will come too, and collect me magnificently in a whisk of professionalism and take me away from the manic crowd that usually inhabits the Kinshasa airport.

This entry is sounding drug-addled... a clear sign that what I need is not strawberry ice cream but sleep.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:1.5 hours from Douala