Eritrea. I got bumped yesterday trying to get there. The plane stopped in Cairo, not Jeddah, and of course flights to Cairo are full. There were two dozen good clean- cut white boys heading to Asmara yesterday, assumably not for a vacation. The UN buffer zone is being set up.
I tried Warsaw after the Asmara flight, my "backup" trip in case Eritrea was somehow full - as it was. It was only when I was flipping through a brand new LP book on Eastern Europe that I noticed that Canadians need a visa for Poland. So I sat with my standby ticket, with dread in my stomach, contemplating if I should voluntarily jump into a bad situation - you can't get a visa on arrival in Poland. The chances of them granting me one are, say, just as good as the chances of them throwing me in Jail. so I found a nice bench in the Frankfurt airport to sleep on until morning.

Tuesday - I went downtown again to try and visit the two museums I missed on sunday that I wanted to see - and both were closed until 10am, too late if I actually wanted to see something in them. So I headed back to the airport, fearing the worst, but knowing that for myself I should try one more time before going home. Yesterday I had an idea of the outcome - "the flight is very full," the lady told me. So I checked in again this morning, looking at the check-in man, waiting for him to say the same thing. Then he spoke:
"Window or aisle?" he aksed.
"Um..... window."

And so it went. Time to dive deeper into Africa, if only for a short moment, and hope to God that I can get back on sunday, that one goes through Jeddah as well, which is good. I'm on a tight schedule here, considering I shouldn't really be here now anyway, but sometimes - you just need to follow your soul. I think I still have one.








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* A full account of my visit to this country is available in my yet to be published book, Means To An Exit. If you are an agent or publisher and would like to receive an outline and manuscript, please Contact Me.