Airport Parkour
Ah, the 4am airport kinda sleep. Nothing quite like it.
Paul plays a Roblox game called Tower of Hell that creates jumping and climbing challenges that are as awesome as they are improbable. At some points you have to run. At others you just have to wait. Periodically other players get in your way or show you how to get to the next stage.
That’s basically Paul and my exit from Nairobi.
GAME BEGIN!
We get our negative COVID test results at around 4 pm, which gave us time to say farewell to all of the folks we had befriended in our almost two-week stay at the Four Points in Nairobi (a few of whom are still exchanging WhatsApp messages with me).
We hail an Uber for 12:30 am, forewarned by Theresa and Ava that we would need every minute to make our 4:45 am flight. Our exit path was a set of reminders that as comfortable as I had come to feel in Kenya, it is still very much a country where rule of law is not always the norm.
Checking out was interrupted by a muckety-muck escorted by several men in cammo. I never understood exactly what he wanted (maybe a floor for him & his retinue?), but when he entered I was quietly and politely shunted aside and told to come back when he was done.
Our Uber turned up in a car that definitely did not meet Uber standards & barely fit the two of us and our bags. The check engine + low fuel lights were on, and something beeped for the first several minutes of ta ride. Paul instantly passed out, but the driver and I ended up talking about business & corruption most of the half an hour trip over roads that alternated between perfectly paved and covered in potholes that could have swollowed the car.
When we arrived at the airport, Paul and I had to get out and go through a pedestrian metal detector, while the car was scanned for bombs and illegal immigrants. The airport itself was chaotic, with signs and lines only emerging gradually and irregularly. We looked pathetic enough at 1:30 am (and also aggressively occupied a central spot on the floor in front of what we guessed would eventually be our ticket counter) that we were eventually guided to the front of the line. Forewarned by Theresa's experiences, we had everything printed, which saved us probably an hour of looking up to 8 million documents we needed on my phone.
LEVEL I COMPLETED!
Being ahead of the game let us claim reclined chairs to wait out the instantly announced 4 hour delay (which meant that in theory we could have been sleeping in comfortable hotel beds).
We drifted in and out of sleeping, in front of a large and loud TV showing African World Cup qualifying matches. Several hours and a third security checkpoint later, we made our way on to the plane.
I ended up in an exit row, which was lovely. One row behind me Paul was in a row with, as he described, it "first time airplane flyers without any sense of personal space." Getting out to go to the bathroom for him was a multi-lingual pantomime worthy of Charlie Chaplin. It was less than ideal. But we made it to Istanbul, having missed our connection, but with a hotel booked that we could cancel until six pm. Boom!
LEVEL 2 COMPLETED!
By the time we had hit three desks and were finally ready to go, the line at Turkish Airways was at least two hours long and people were…emotional.
Rebooking our missed connection was an exercise in patience, firmness, t charm. We ended up in three lines, at 3 gates, as well as on the phone with Orbitz. Each person told us our tickets were in someone else's hands. Many of the employees had been trapped in the airport for days due to the unseasonable snow, so we tried to be empathetic. But watching their hostility and multiple occasions of deliberate humiliation of other passengers who were confused or didn’t speak English well made empathy harder.
After overhearing one employee ask an older man, "why do you not speak English?!?!" Paul asked me "Dad, why are they being so mean?"
We eventually persuaded a man from Royal Jordanian Air, who somehow ended up with our Turkish Airlines tickets, to spend the needed half our untangling us. On his side it involved his personal cell phone, lots of yelling, and the occasional supervisor intervention. On our side, it involved fending off a multi-pronged, multi-cultural group assault of people trying to get his attention for their varied needs. I politely informed people that there was a line, and that he would be happy to help them when he was finished with us, while also directing people to the Turkish Airlines counter, the transit visa counter, the bathrooms, and the directions of the gates. We had let a Ukrainian woman with a tight connection and a crying woman from Peru skip ahead of us, so I credit some of his hard work on our behalf to karma.
By the time we left, with tickets in hand for a flight that we had been informed by e-mail was already cancelled, there was a riot brewing at Turkish Air and a line stretching down the hall seemingly forever. But we had tickets would doubtless be rescheduled fate next day. We didn’t even really want to get to Jordan that night- there was a snowstorm there!
We were fine to wait in a hotel in Istanbul so as to give this a day or two to melt. Alas, it was not to be.
LEVEL 3 COMPLETED!
Paul and I got a meal at the restaurant where Theresa and Ava slept a few nights earlier, then proceeded to check-in to our hotel, booking the extended stay so we wouldn't have to roam the airport from when the standard stay ended (8am) until whenever our flight ended up being. It was a cool hotel, modeled on a space capsule, and, exhausted, we looked forward to an early night.
Something made me check the status of the plane, despite the email we had canceling it, and to my alarm it said, “Departing on time.” Conditions in Jordan were snowy and messy, and I really did not want to get there only to be trapped in the airport, especially with a comfortable hotel room already arranged (and probably payed for with flight insurance. I went ahead and walked to the gate, just to be sure, or worst-case to negotiate a change to the next day, leaving an exhausted Paul to relax in ta room.
Alas, at the gate I found them boarding. Talking to a gate agent, I was told, “we had some other late passengers coming. You have (checking his watch) 28 minutes to be back here or you'll have to rebook your own tickets and hope we can get your bags off.
BONUS LEVEL UNLOCKED!!!
In a movie, the next scene would be a hilarious montage: Sprint back to hotel in shoes without laces. (.7 miles- 4 minutes) Grab Paul, repack stuff (5min), strap on backpacks and Ukulele. Take off down hallway. Paul trips and bites it hard, skinning both knees. "Dad, my knees are bleeding. I can’t run." Me: “Yes you can. Remember all these zombie movies we watched during covid? It's escape the Zombies time.”
It ended up bleeding way worse than this shows. (yes, I take pictures every time my kids have bled on this trip.)
5 minutes and .5 miles later. Paul: "Dad, I have to stop. I can’t breathe." Me: "You can stop at the gate. It’s just around the corner." Paul (panting): “OK.”
We arrive at the gate with 13 minutes to spare. Gate agents with stunned expressions take in our sweaty forms bring water. "You can wait out here until you stop sweating."
The gate agents were so impressed/horrified they upgrade our tickets and lead us on to the plane.
BONUS LEVEL COMPLETED!
That would be a great place to wrap the story. Happy endings are, after all, basically about knowing when to stop talking. Alas, it was not to be.
The Jordan airport was totally fine for a snowed in mess with a lot of institutional paranoia. We got visa's, got our retinas scanned, got COVID tests, had our documents checked several times, got our bags, checked on Theresa's lost bag (still lost). Then we got into the taxi line, only to hear that the roads to Theresa's cousin's house were still snowed in. “Get a hotel.”
Our warm futuristic hotel room in Istanbul several hundred miles away, we saw the Amman Airport Hotel shuttle bus pulling away. A quick sprint to grab it, and a brief check of Expedia got us an available room before we had even pulled off. We showed the driver our confirmation and we were on our way. Yeah technology!
Arrive at said hotel. There were no actual rooms and lots of people clearly settling in to sleep in the lobby.
WARNING: ENERGY LEVELS REACHING CRITICAL!
Paul is being a trooper, but he’s been going for 24 hours with a couple of power naps. His expression at taking in the lobby couches is heartbreaking and I felt like a crappy Dad. A quick WhatsApp with Theresa revealed that the Marriott Downtown has rooms we can book on points. But can we get there?
Pathetic begging to the very apologetic hotel manager gets us a ride back to the airport in a not-very-official looking minivan. Another sprint to the taxi stand gets us one of the last taxi's of the night. The driver and I do our best to communicate in a mix of languages, but quickly the icy/snow-covered roads combined with pea-soup fog make concentration on the road more important than conversation. Paul is instantly asleep.
Our arrival at the Marriot was almost anti-climactic. It felt like a commercial, and at 2am everyone was almost comically welcoming. My two Arabic phrases (hello and thank you) were graciously accepted. We were taken to our lovely room, given vouches for the breakfast feast, and were asleep both 5 minutes later. I woke up briefly when there was a knock on the door, dreading some additional layer of security or mishap, and mumbled bleary thanks for the fruit plate and bottle of wine delivered by the porter.
The next day, I wandered down to breakfast, leaving Paul a note to join me when he woke up. After I asked some questions about what was traditional and things I didn’t recognize, various people kept bringing me traditional dishes to sample. I decided I would like this country.
By afternoon, pouring rain had melted the snow off most of the roads, and Duke and Theresa picked us up, and we were on our way home.
