Part 3 - "You're in the wrong queue!"

Brief American English translation for those like me that had never heard the word before the last year or so: queue sounds like ‘cue’ and is the British English for a lineup or waiting line.

So the next morning I head to the airport & make it in plenty of time. They have the security set up as you first enter the airport doors – so no one goes in unless they have tickets. After standing through the line & getting my bags checked, I stand in line at the ticket counter with the pages I was given yesterday at the Kenya airlines office. I get to the front & the lady just looks at me – this ticket isn’t valid. I need to go back to the office to get a printout from them before I can get my boarding pass! :( Of course, right – so begins my day of being in the wrong queue! So I go back outside, quite livid, and walk the 500 meters to the office where I’m trying hard to be polite yet firm, but having a very hard time being patient as I have a plane to catch in the next hour! They print it out, I go back through security, back through the line at the ticket counter & finally get to my gate. HUGE sigh of relief. Finally I’m on my way to South Africa! Just have to comment at this point that I am SO THANKFUL that I packed everything to carry on as I probably would have lost all my luggage to this point going on this luck.

The flight to South Africa goes just fine, but I do realize that the tickets they booked for my flight from Joburg to Cape Town only leave me about 1 ½ hours in Joburg…ok, let’s see how this goes! (can you tell by now that its not going to go well?) I’m in a rush because I need to make it on this next flight. We head towards immigration & there are two entrances – the first one is the one everyone on the plane is going through. I see another entrance another 50 meters down the hallway. Ah-ha, I think, I’ll go to that one & maybe find a quicker line. I get in there & head to my line for those without a S.A. passport. I wait a minute & then ask the lady guarding the lines if there is somewhere I can get through quicker, since I’m going to miss my flight – she points to the ‘special cases’ line at the end where about 5 families are queued. I head there & after about 5 minutes of no movement and kids screaming, I decide to go back to my original line. About 10 minutes later I’m up to the front, facing the immigration official as he looks at me, looks at my passport and says: “You’re in the wrong queue”. See, that first entrance was the only place I could go through for the flight I was on – they won’t let me through at this immigration station. No flexibility, no hope. So, I head back up the stairs & to the first entrance where I come to a scarily large room with like 300 people queuing to get through!!! I panic, I admit & when I see the sign that says international transfers, I think – surely that’s me, I just came internationally! I stand in that queue about 5 minutes & then ask a lady that works there as she passes by – no, I’m not in the right queue, I need to go back to the line of 300 people! Right – by now I’ve pretty much lost hope at getting on my plane since I have 30 minutes, but I pray for just a little help. I decide to be firm & take my pitiful self to a lady who seems to be in charge of all the lines – I tell her my awful sob story & she lets me go through the S.A. line which has only about 3 people in it! YAY! No baggage to pick up on the other side, so I head as quickly as I can towards the exit to the domestic terminal – but am stopped at the door by the customs lady who is quite curt. I have to fill out a customs form – which they never gave us on the plane! So, in an absolute huff, I fill out the form, hand it to the lady and run through – I’m really just so sick of this place now, I’m not even thinking through where I need to go & why. I end up in the international terminal in a food court – not sure how, but that’s where I was & found a lovely lady who looked at me like I was crazy when I told her what flight I was trying to get on. She said, you’re very far from where you need to be! Big surprise, right? I follow her good directions to the next building over – which is a good 10 minute walk/jog.

Now, this airport is not like airports in the states. Its more like London Heathrow – ever been there? In order to get your boarding pass for your domestic flight, you have to go to the ticket counter again, which is in this massively huge warehouse type room that has hundreds of desks, but only one or two that serve your specific flight. So, I enter this obtrusive room at noon – when my flight is leaving…ok, well, surely I can still get to Cape Town today, right? After asking a few people, all I’m told is to stand in the line for the next flight on that airline & then get them to change the flight when I get to the front. So, for the next 20 mintues of queue I’m at least entertained by this lovely French guy who also was on my flight and missed his connection to Cape Town. When I get to the front, the guy looks at me & says that there is no way to change my ticket – there are no more seats today…and I look at him as if he’s the bain of my existence. I tell him that cannot be possible, he doesn’t know what I’ve been through to now & I have to get on a plane TODAY! He says my only hope is to go to the other customer service desk and get them to upgrade my ticket. Ok, he points the way & here I go to another queue. At the front, the lady says there are no other seats, its not possible, but another airline might be able to get me on & points me across the huge warehouse to another customer service desk. I go there – stand in their queue – and am told they have no seats left, no luck. At this point, I lose it. I don’t know what else to do…and I begin to sob. After a few minutes of telling myself this isn’t helping anything, I head back to the original customer service desk & demand that something has to be done – I’ll pay more, I just want to get there today! The lady says they’ve been told not to sell any more tickets today…but its only 1pm!!!!! So I stand there crying & she tells me to wait a minute.

Side note here – my love & support goes out to all those airport ticket counter reps as that has got to be so hard to handle really frustrated people all the time. But if only I had gotten a smile, an understanding nod, something along the way! I’ve been in the customer service business & its HARD. I’m just saying I feel for them & yet I still get really frustrated with them!

She comes back & says I can pay about $200 for an upgrade. Great. I do it, anything to get there & be done with traveling!!!! She’s gives me a slip and says now I need to go stand in the other line again to get the boarding pass. Ok, so I head to the higher class line & go through. The guy prints my ticket & I begin walking away, actually excited at the thought of having a nicer seat on the way. As I walk, I notice the ticket still says ‘economy’ – must be a mistake! I go back to the counter and interrupt the man, asking why this is an economy ticket? He says because that’s what I purchased – but I said no, I paid to upgrade. He said you’ll need to talk to the customer service lady. Back again – she explains its just an upgrade to a seat that she could sell to me, but not any special class above economy. Right, of course not, how stupid of me to think that $200 would be worth a better seat, maybe a snack or some type of slack at this point. Fine, I go through security & am finally, FINALLY, ready to wait a bit before my flight leaves.

Now, I desperately need to call Constance to let her know I’m going to be much later than I thought. Well, I’m in S.A. now & my sim card from Nairobi of course doesn’t work. So, I find the payphones – except none seem to work with the credit cards that they advertise they work with. I have no S.A. Rand (money) because I’ve only been in the airport & didn’t need it. Surely there’s an ATM around…no, only outside of security. Well, maybe I can buy a sim card & some airtime to call her. The phone kiosk only sells through a machine that only takes rand (cash) which I don’t have. The guy sends me to the convenience store. I ask about sim cards & that guy points me to another machine – only takes cash. Can you imagine how I’m doing at this point? Utterly defeated and exhausted…not a good combination. My last ditch effort is the internet place – maybe they have a way to call through the internet that I could use my credit card? I walk up to the desk & explain I need to make a call (to an international number, no less), is it possible to call through the internet? The very nice lady says, well there are payphones around the corner…and I absolutely lose it! I’m a basketcase of tears! I tell her my sobstory and the poor lady just stands there shocked and so concerned – she tells me not to cry & hands me 4 rand of her personal money! She said its going to be fine, go call your friend! Through my tears, I offer her the 10 USDollars I have in exchange, but she won’t hear of it. I stand there sobbing & say “you’re the first nice person I’ve met all day” and with a huge thank you & a ridiculous exit, I make it to the payphone & leave Constance a blubbering message about when I’ll arrive, etc.

Yeah – my plane of course was delayed, but I did make it on! That was my horrible experience, luckily Constance was waiting for me on the other side & the whole trip we continued to experience my luck of ‘standing in the wrong queue’. I even managed to go to the wrong terminal on my way back to Uganda – but made it ok that time! :)

Oh, and if you made it this far in reading my ridiculousness, you’re either a sucker for hoping for a good ending or someone who loves to dwell in the misery of others – either way, thanks for humoring me! :)