I
can still remember my first glimpse of Luanda as the plane touched down on the
runway. I looked out the window at a sea of shacks surrounded by dirt and
trash. The air on the plane quickly filled with ringing cell phones, foreign
chatter, and applause from the other passengers. My jaw must have been on the
floor of the plane, clearly giving away my initial thoughts of Luanda, because
Adam turned to me with a smile on his face and said, “not what you were expecting?”
After two days of traveling, trying to get whatever sleep I could on an
airplane, and enduring long layovers in foreign airports, I am not entirely
sure what exactly I was expecting. I knew that Angola wasn’t the United States,
and Luanda certainly not Kansas, but until I saw my surroundings for the first
time I had no idea what this small town girl had gotten herself into.
Before
the plane came to a complete stop, or even slowed down for that matter, passengers
were scrambling out of their seats and climbing over each other to collect
their belongings. The flight attendants repeated attempts to get them to sit
back down simply fell on deaf ears. This behavior was absolutely foreign to me
considering that most passengers on American flights follow the rules of the
air, with the exception of the occasional electronic device left on during take
off and landing. One little electronic device wasn’t going to take down the
plane, right? Besides, if I turned my iPad off I would lose the candy crush
game that I was only two jellies away from winning. Adam did his best to
explain the other passengers’ foreign behavior to me. Angolans clap when the
plane lands because they are so happy to be home. I initially had a hard time
grasping this concept considering my first sight of Luanda was steel shacks and
garbage. I have since come to understand it after discovering the beauty that
lies beyond the airport runway.
As
I took my first step off of the plane, the hot sun began to melt my face. I saw
the shuttle bus waiting at the bottom of the stairs for us. The bus looked
extremely full, so I assumed that we would be waiting for the next shuttle bus.
I was wrong. Adam grabbed my hand and
helped me squeeze into what little space we could find on the bus. Even though we
got the last spots left, we weren’t the last people to board the shuttle.
Atleast 10 more people squeezed on after us pushing us onto the backs of the
people in front of us. So there we were, piggybacking our way from the runway
to the airport while being cooled off by the shower of dripping sweat off of
the person next to us. The word disgusting defined in a sentence.
Immigration
was nothing like what I had expected. I had imagined nice straight and
organized lines, like the ones we have in the States. Instead, it ended up
being just the opposite. Despite immigration’s attempts to create lines through
the use of barriers and ropes and promote organization with numbered stations, people
had their own idea: do whatever you have
to do to get to the front of the immigration line. People were sliding in
front of others and using their luggage bags as “place markers” while the rest
of us waited patiently. Every time two more people made it through immigration,
I felt like we were five more spots back in line than we were before they made
it through. At this rate, I thought we were never going to make it past immigration. I was extremely irritated at the lack of consideration people gave
each other. Adam told me to get use to it because it wasn’t just going to be
like this in immigration, but everywhere we went. I realized at this moment that clicking
my little red heels together wouldn’t land me back in Kansas because THIS was
my new “home,” and I had so much more to learn about it.
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