The joy of travelling

Friday was one of those days where everything goes wrong. I didn't have a plane ticket until one o'clock in the afternoon, a mere two hours before I had to be in the cab on the way to the airport. This was only the first in a long line of screw ups by the people handling my travel file, which made for a pretty miserable day.

Nearing what I thought was the end of this pretty miserable day, as the plane was landing in NDJ, I watched the flight information scroll by on the faint blue screen above my head. At 2,000 feet in the air, the temperature was at 28 degrees, and climbed more or less a degree for every hundred feet or so we descended. This despite the sun having set hours ago, and it not being the 'hot season'. I started to wonder whether even my summer business suits were going to be cool enough.

As it turns out, my speculations were irrelevant, since I have NO GODDAM LUGGAGE. Yes, I arrived in my now-stinking sweatshirt and jeans in 30 degree heat with no luggage. The Chadian ground crew were sympathetic and gave me a sachet full of Occitane products from Air France, but I gotta tell you, it's a small comfort.

Actually, that's not altogether true. The essential oils in the Occitane products are improving my quality of life a little bit just now, because Chad stinks. I had forgotten that, at least consciously. But the subconscious mind never forgets, and the moment I stepped off the plane, I went, "Oh yeah. *sniff sniff* Chad."

The bottom line is I’m in a sad state at the moment. I have no adapter for my laptop (in the luggage), so the “technicien” at the hotel jerry-rigged some kind of system involving a lot of electrical tape. My computer might catch fire, but hey – at least I can blog. I have no PJs (in the luggage), so I’m sitting in an oversized T-shirt that came in my Air France sachet. I thought ahead to bring my own pillowcase (ref. first blog entry from my last trip to Chad), but of course that’s in the goddam luggage. The only thing on TV is French WWF (or whatever it's called now), where a fake Rosie O'Donnell is kicking the crap out of a fake Donald Trump. (The only upside of this is that I have learned how to say "beat your ass" in French, which I reckon will come in handy someday.)

Oh, and I have several mosquito bites. Awesome.

I’d better go to bed before my day gets any worse.