NEW YORK CITY
This visit to New York brough back some memories - memories of my first trip abroad by myself, memories of a very young and uncertain fellow who was merely using his travel privileges to go to the city that his university teachers told him to visit. But that fellow is not the man that walked off the 80-minute late Air Canada plane in La Guardia airport this morning - that man is long gone. Here now was a very experienced traveller, more knowledgeable of the world than anyone he knew, ready to do something a bit absurd and fly to New York and try and retrieve his passport. This experience was completely different, and the context was completely different; there was no intention of sightseeing or "experiencing" the city as I had before. This was strictly business between me and the lacadaisacal folks who occasionally work at the UN mission for Guinea-Bissau.

Wandering through only five blocks of the city, all around Grand Central Station, I got a much different feel for the city. 211 east 43rd street is a bland building with an honest but intimidating security guard at the desk. "Yeah, he was in a few minutes ago, but he's gone now," he told me. I got the information from him - this was the first time the diplomat's been in his office in a week, and no one has the right to open doors. "Contact real estate on floor 3, see if they can help you," he told me in a not particularly polite tone of voice.

A cute girl was at the desk and she knew the guy; he had been in today but was out right now. The contact number she gave me didn't work. "They haven't paid rent in about two years, but we can't evict them," she told me. She said that if she cam across him, she would do her best to get the courier package in the mail.
I came back around twenty minutes later; "he's up there," the security guard said. Excellent. I rushed up and rang the buzzer on the door. A dark man wearing a cheap suit welcomed me in and told me to please be seated - he was on the phone. He was speaking an odd language - part Portugese, part French; it must have been Crioulo, the local language of Guinea-Bissau.
"Oh, I sent it out this morning," he said of my passport. Thank god, I sighed - although I would have preferred to have had it in my hand. "I'll get the waybill for you."
When he walked back down the long hallway to get the waybill, a certain slant of light came through the window for a split second; and in that split second all of the buildings outside disappeared. A lot clutter of shacks surrounded the bare government office we were in. Outside I could hear a child on a bicycle, yelling at something. The sun hung low over the town, and the slight stench of sewage mixed with earth hung in the air. Dust particles orbited around all of the objects in the surprisingly large mission. For a moment, just a brief fraction of a second, I was in Guinea-Bissau. It may be the closest I get for a long time.
Suddenly I was back in New York. The noise, the garbage, the Noo Yoak acksents - black and white up front, and underneath everything in between. Living here would probably drive me to insanity - but it's a world in one city, and I will never cease to be impressed.
Air Canada's flight back to Toronto was cancelled, due to high winds, so I took my own airline's flight back. The reprise in New York was welcoming, and an interesting way to begin my first sojourn into Africa. After a day in London, where I shipped my return ticket via Fedex to Johannesburg, and decided not to seek out the dreaded millenium dome, I was on a plane bound for Harare and Lusaka. Surprisingly to me, 80% of the people on the airplane are white. It's been three very long days without sleep..... and four hours disappeared on that flight while I fell unconcious.










Into Africa, Finally; and into Lusaka.
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