Are You Peter May?

4.12.11

5:15 a.m.

Getting ready to land in Nairobi. Glorious aisle seat. I watch "Conviction" with Hilary Swank and almost cry in spots. I am exhausted and emotionally raw from missing Tahra and the girls. The anxiety, stress and excitement of traveling into the unknown is taking its toll. A diaper commercial now would wreck me.

My little video screen shows the path of my plane. Exotic locations are in the vicinity, underneath and east and west of me - places I've heard of but only in the newspaper, books and movies. There is Mombasa, Khartoum, Kilimanjaro, Mogadishu, Addis Ababa. It's not marked but it looks like the plane is flying south along the Nile. We're over Sudan, the biggest country in Africa. To get to the south part of Sudan we have to fly south past it, to Nairobi. There are a few international flights into Juba, from Kampala and Addis Ababa, Cairo maybe? But no direct flights from Europe, so I have to fly into Nairobi and then backtrack north up to Juba on a Kenya Airways flight.

We land in Nairobi and I obtain a transit visa and clear immigration easily after waiting in line for a while behind some laborers. My bag comes out quickly downstairs and I head outside where a phalanx of drivers, maybe 50 or more, are waiting, many of them holding up white signs with people's names on them. I see one that says MAY and under it, "Palacina." I stride confidently up.

Hi I'm Tim May going to the Sankara Hotel, right?

Yes please come with me sir. Takes my bag and we hustle outside to a nice SUV parked conveniently close by.

Not much to see on the road from the airport. People driving very dangerously. Herds of men crossing the road in chaotic lurches, trying to avoid cars and trucks. It is morning rush hour and hundreds of people are walking along the airport road, heading to jobs in the industrial part of town out by the airport. Many people are well dressed, slacks and dress shirts, the women in colorful dresses. We hit a bad traffic jam closer to the city and wait in bumper-to-bumper for 30 minutes when my driver, Luiz, who is an Arsenal fan, gets a call. He speaks rapidly in Swahili and then pauses and holds the phone to his chest.

Excuse me sir are you Peter May?

No I'm Tim May.

More rapid Swahili, now in apologetic tone into the phone and Luiz hangs up.

I am sorry but I must turn around.  I am supposed to pick up Mr. Peter May and he is waiting at the airport.

Can you just take me to the hotel and then go back, or can you send another driver for the other guy?

No I am sorry, there is no other driver. I must go back. If your driver is not there I will take you back into Nairobi.

We make a crazy U-turn out of the traffic over a dirt median onto a ramp, turn around and drive even faster, now, back to the airport. I can tell Luiz is worried. I may have cost him is job - but then I DID tell him I was TIM MAY. I should have asked him why the sign he held said Palacino on it.

I am worried, too. It is now about two hours after I landed, what are the chances my actual driver will still be waiting? Slim I thought.

We careen back to the airport and Mr. Peter May and I meet and have a good chuckle. He works for a French bank and has a sense of humor about me stealing his car. My driver is still there, too, politely standing almost alone, now, holding a very nice printed sign that says MR. TIM MAY, very clear for all to see. His name is Nicklaus, a Man U fan, and he is understanding about the pickup debacle.

He gets me safely into town, pointing out some things along the way. The guards at the hotel use a mirror on a long stick to look for bombs under our truck before they let us drive through.

I'm in Africa.