Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare

At Johannesburg airport on February 2, 2014, while waiting to be picked up to go to a hotel, I was trying to count how many airplanes I had taken in my life. I could remember 32 countries and at least 50 different cities. I was not sure whether I should be thankful for all those past trouble-free trips or be saddened by what I was still facing. My original itinerary had been to depart Washington, D.C. on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and arrive in Maseru, Lesotho on Sunday afternoon via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Johannesburg, South Africa. By this time Sunday night, I was supposed to have already checked in at my hotel in Maseru and been getting ready for work on Monday.

Instead, it was Sunday night and I was in Johannesburg. I had arrived via Addis Ababa and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. While checking in my luggage in Dulles airport, I was told that my flight would be delayed a little bit. As I had a layover of more than three hours in Addis Ababa, I was not concerned much at that point. As the delay got longer and longer, I started to worry. After more than two hours I argued with the airline gate agent about rerouting my itinerary as I would miss the connection flight. But the agent was adamant and said, “Don’t worry. You will still have a chance to catch the connection flight. Even if you miss it, you can find many routes in Addis Ababa.”

I missed my connection in Addis Ababa, of course, and found the airport overcrowded with so many others who had missed theirs as well. At the airline counter, people who obviously were very tired from a long flight were anxiously waiting in line; soon I became one of them. When it got to my turn, I was first offered an overnight stay at a hotel there and then a flight the next day at the same time as my original connection, which meant that I would have to miss work on Monday as I would arrive in Maseru in the late afternoon. Since I insisted on finding another route to make it to work on Monday morning, she found the route via Dar Es Salaam that I was on. This route would allow me to arrive in Johannesburg on Sunday evening and then I could take a 6 a.m. flight to Maseru. When I asked about my luggage, she comforted me by saying that it would arrive in Johannesburg.

Then, I ran to catch my flight. After about a three-hour flight from Addis Ababa, I arrived at the airport in Dar Es Salaam. They required everyone to show their passports to reprocess airline tickets for their connecting flights, which seemed quite unusual. In front of a small transit counter staffed by just two agents, people were pushing to hand over their passports first since there was no proper waiting line. One agent collected all the passports and tickets, and the other collected all the baggage check receipts; then, both of them disappeared after saying just “WAIT!”

While waiting, I tried to find a Wi-Fi hotspot so I could inform my colleagues of my trouble. Some people I asked looked at me and wondered, “What’s Wi-Fi?” and then a guy said to me, “There’s no Wi-Fi in this airport.” After a while, the agent who had taken my baggage check receipts came back and said to me, “I couldn’t find your luggage.” And then the agent who had taken all the passports and tickets returned, and gave everyone back their passports and reissued tickets. “At least I received my passport and tickets,” I thought, dismissing the worry about my luggage. Once I left the transit counter, I was able to find a business lounge where Wi-Fi was available. It overjoyed me I could email my colleagues about my journey and promised to inform them what time I could arrive in Maseru once I found out at Johannesburg airport.

From Dar Es Salaam to Johannesburg, the flight with South African Air (SAA) was quite pleasant with a good selection of movies. I chose Gravity and, by the time I had finished the movie, the plane arrived in Johannesburg. At the baggage carousel, I waited for my suitcases until all the other bags were picked up. When I asked some agents there, they told me that I should go to the airline desk to report my luggage as missing. So I went to the SAA desk and was told that it was Ethiopian Air’s responsibility since I had flown out from D.C. with them. She added kindly that the SAA desk couldn’t even track where my luggage would be. Then when I asked about my flight to Maseru the following morning, she said to me,

“Sorry to tell you this: your ticket from Johannesburg to Maseru got cancelled in Addis Ababa when you were rerouted. If you want to go to Maseru, you have to buy a ticket.”

The agent also said that since my ticket was issued and rerouted through Ethiopian Air, I had to go to their desk to find out the details about the cancelled flight to Maseru. When I went to the information desk to ask where the Ethiopian Air desk was, the lady at the information desk, whose name tag said ‘Jamie,’ told me that it would be open only for a few hours during the day since they had only one flight at 2 p.m. daily; so I would have to wait until the following afternoon if I wished to talk to them.

I felt like Sandra Bullock in the movie Gravity where she faced problem after problem while in space. I was about to collapse. As if Jamie noticed the seriousness of my problem, she asked me whether there would be anything else she could help with. Once I explained to her my situation, she comforted me by saying that she could recommend a good hotel at a decent price, informing me that a big mining conference had made all the big hotels either fully booked or hike up their prices. After she made a few calls, she told me that a hotel driver would come and pick me up in about half an hour. Then I asked her, “How would I know who it is?”

She smiled at me and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll walk with you when he comes.”

While waiting for the hotel driver, I walked around to find a store where I could buy necessary items to survive overnight without my luggage. When I came back to Jamie, she told me that the driver was running late due to traffic. So I sat down on a bench next to a window. It was already quite dark. My phone was dead and since I didn’t wear a watch, I wasn’t sure how late it was. I opened up my computer to check the time. It was close to 9 p.m. and then, all of a sudden, I felt so hungry and worried about my family who might be waiting for my call. When I started struggling to find a Wi-Fi signal to communicate with my family and colleagues, Jamie called over to me. 

A Caucasian guy with a military look had shown up to pick me up. After saying a BIG thank you to Jamie, I followed the driver to a parking lot. He introduced himself as the owner of a hotel called Blue Mango. Then, he talked about how he started his business with his wife just about a year ago and continued his story while driving. Originally from England, he met his wife here and while he was away in a war, his wife prepared this business by remodeling the guesthouse in his house. Ever since they opened up, the business was booming and they had added more rooms in that guesthouse. He seemed so proud of his hotel.

His hotel was more like a small B&B. It had a beautiful garden, though. His wife was cooking in a small kitchen with their children. He led me to a windowless 8 ft. by 8 ft. room that had a tiny sink and shower for a bathroom. “Well, I would stay here only for six hours as I have to catch an early flight. Besides, at least they have free Wi-Fi,” I thought to myself. The next morning, I left for the airport at 4:45 a.m. I ended up having to pay for the one-way ticket from Johannesburg to Maseru. I finally got on the plane and arrived in Maseru at around 8 a.m. From when I left my home at around 8 o’clock on Saturday morning, it was a more than 36 hour journey. And my luggage still hadn’t arrived.

I went to the central bank for my work project wearing the same yoga pants and gray t-shirt I’d been wearing since I left my home on Saturday morning. After work I wished to buy a few clothes but I was told that all the shops in Maseru close at around four o’clock in the afternoon. The next morning, I was about to go out for shopping to buy some clothes after finishing urgent work at the central bank; the central bank’s project manager came with a big smile and said to me, “I have good news for you.” Then, the central bank’s driver took me to the airport to get my luggage.

I felt euphoric when I saw my luggage at the airport. The lady at the Maseru airport baggage claim center, whom I reported my lost luggage to when I’d arrived the day before, said to me,

“You are so lucky. I didn’t imagine your luggage would arrive here as your rerouting sounded so complicated.”

At the moment it felt a little ironic hearing the word ‘lucky’ after having experienced this much trouble and also that I was so thankful for nothing new but my old luggage.

On the way back from Maseru to home I finished reading Alan C. Fox’s book, People Tools: 54 Strategies for Building Relationships, Creating Joy, and Embracing Prosperity, which I bought at the Dulles airport while waiting for the delayed departure. In one of the chapters, titled “Green Grass Now,” Fox shared his experience: “In one group exercise, I was asked to write down the most important persons or things in my life. I did first, then second and up to the tenth. Next I was asked to imagine the tenth item disappearing; then the ninth, the eighth. By the time I imagined #1 vanishing, I cried. The entire group became a circle of tears. Then the leader asked us to imagine #10 coming back into our lives. Then #9. By the time I reclaimed #1, whatever it was, I felt euphoric.”

It is a week before Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a year full of harvest. In case of only a little harvest or even no harvest at all this year, I wish all of us could be thankful for the blessings of what we haven’t lost.

(November 2014)

(Author's note) My literary journey started with this essay. In November 2014, I happened to see the annual contest announcement by the Korean Literary Society of Washington (KLSW) and wrote this in Korean on the final day of the contest and submitted in a rush. Since then, I've been writing essays in both Korean and English as a member of the KLSW.