transit

I started to feel like Tom Hanks' character in that one movie in which he lives in an airport. You can live in an airport, actually, and it doesn't even have to be the size of O'Hare or Schipol. You can live in even the Nairobi airport. I ate at Java House and the One Dollar Cafe. I slept at the Sleep & Shower (tiny bed in a room just large enough to walk on one side of the bed - $60). I wandered around, doing nothing and periodically checking on my waitlisted status for the flight to Amsterdam.

It's a comedy of imcompetence, actually. Northwest and Kenya Airways are currently on my irritated list and rising quickly to the top as the most irritating institutions of all time. When I originally bought my tickets from Northwest, using miles, I had to call them 8 times to get the tickets. They didn't know where Kigali was. They couldn't find the flight numbers from Amsterdam to Nairobi. They couldn't contact Kenya Airways. They couldn't access the Kenya Airways system. Finally we found flights. Not the days I wanted, but flights. I was ticketed for Kigali-Nairobi on the 25th and Nairobi-Amsterdam on the 29th. The Northwest people told me to check with Kenya Airways in Africa to see if it was possible to continue on the 25th to Amsterdam.

So, in Kigali, I went to Kenya Airways. The Kenya Airways people in Kigali sent messages to Northwest asking how much the fee was to change. Never got a response. After THREE MONTHS. They finally told me I'd just have to try to change at the airport and fly standby to Amsterdam. Okay, fine.

I arrived in Nairobi at 230 pm on the 25th of August. I went straight to the transfer desk and explained my situation. They told me that they would waitlist me for the 1010 pm flight to Amsterdam and I should come back at 900 pm. I came back at 800 pm, only to be told that the change of date required approval from the Flying Dutchman (KLM) helpdesk and they had closed for the day. I called Northwest in the US instead (used $20 worth of phone cards) and tried to explain to them, although they did not understand. They told me they couldn't change my flight because they didn't show any empty seats on the 1010 pm flight (thus the meaning of the phrase, "flying standby"). Then they told me to have the Kenya Airways desk send an OSI on the PNR asking for the change to be permitted, saying that they would answer "immediately." The Kenya Airways guy I was dealing with claimed NOT TO KNOW WHAT AN OSI MESSAGE WAS and to be unable to send one. Note that neither Kenya Airways nor Northwest are allowed to call overseas, which means their only means of communication is these messages which Northwest apparently does not answer and now the Kenya Airways employee claims not to know how to send. So I missed the pm flight.

Then I cried to a supervisor for a while, and he promised me a spot on the morning flight because it was a Kenya Airways flight like my original flight (not KLM like the evening flight) and so the change should be no problem. He told me to come back at 900 am. I went and slept and came back at 820 am and talked for a while to another employee who said that an OSI was something that everyone knew how to send and he sent one. He called the KLM desk but they said that the approval had to come from Northwest Airlines. I tried to call Northwest at about 840 only to find that they had closed their office at 830 Kenya time (1230 am Central US time) and would be closed for five hours. Apparently the supervisor was wrong when he said that it was simple to switch from one Kenya Airways flight to another. So, I missed that flight.

At about 1145, sitting dejectedly in an internet cafe trying to blog without hope, I ran into an old friend from Rwanda, traveling to Uganda, who, after coffee and a sandwich and sympathy, said to me, "You need to get out of this airport right now or you are going to go crazy. Go get some sleep in a real bed."

So I did. And now I'm at a hotel in Nairobi. Still no flight. I spent another $26 on calling the US, to no avail. Right now my mom is working on it.

I hate the Nairobi airport. I hate Kenya Airways. I hate Northwest Airlines.

WHY AM I STILL STUCK IN THIS COUNTRY?