After 28
hours traveling from San Francisco – Los Angeles – Amsterdam - Nairobi, I was more than ready to get
off the 747 when it landed at Jomo Kenyatta Airport late last night. Amid a
light rain we 350 passengers stepped cautiously down the slippery metal
staircase into pitch darkness and were herded into buses going to the Arrivals
Terminal. We offloaded, however, into a
completely dark building, shuffling like moles through an underground tunnel
toward the immigration control stations.
There we attempted to “queue up”, as they say, for visas. Utter chaos! The cavernous hall was completely black, overcrowded, stuffy and filled with more than its share of crying infants. We could not see the signs; the immigration computers were not
working, the staff did not have sufficient cash to make change, and the luggage
carousels were not functioning. After an hour of milling about, bumping into
one another and stumbling over backpacks, we all erupted in cheers when airport
workers appeared with portable lanterns. Another two hours evaporated before I
made it to my transit destination across town: Villa Maria, the lovely Mercy Convent in
Nairobi. Ahhh, the joy of going
horizontal in a real bed for the night!
I tried to take a pix inside the terminal, but alas, this is what it looked like:
