The road home

Greetings from majestic O.R. Thambo airport in Johannesburg.  This is to say I am finally back in SA.  This place must be starting to feel like home, because even just being around in the airport is feeling like a familiar comforting thing.  That I've only done like twice before ever.  Anyway, here's a picture for no reason:

Thambo is an airport.  Of the normal sort, mostly.  I am currently squatting between the entrances to the two bathrooms (mens and ladies), outside of Soaring Eagle Spur, so that I can use their wifi without getting irate glares from the waitress for sitting there for 2 hours and ordering nothing more than Rooibos.
My flight is not for like 4 more hours, and I have only about 8 student papers to grade, so get ready for some remarks about my Lagos -> Joburg experience.  Why?  Not because it is interesting.  Well, maybe certain aspects of it are, especially a few bits of the Lagos side...

Case #1: the bathrooms.  The ones in Lagos were dreadful the last time I was there, but they have since been redone.  There's even an ablution place designated as such by a piece of paper with 90pt times new roman bold.  I would have taken a picture of it, except that some dude was abluting himself, so it would probably have been pretty creepy.
Since I got into Joburg at about 5:30 (=05h30 – the bad one), no one was around.  I therefore had less compunction about snapping the elegant squatting toilet:

This I would have expected more in Lagos, but whatever.

Case #2: the food.  We went to the (not 'a') restaurant before the security check-in, whilst waiting for the check-in desks to open.  It is called 'Abibiz', and the wrapper on each straw and toothpick proudly proclaims that it gives you 'The African experience, from A–Z–Z!'
The menu was odd.  Various choices with foreign names that seemed extraordinarily out of place in Nigeria: Mexico Chilli Steak, for example.

Prices were unpleasant.  I paid 3,000 Naira (about US$18) for the 'Chicken Finger':

I thought 'Fried finger' was an odd way to describe any thing that came from any part of any chicken.  However, to the contrary, the dish turned out to look almost exactly like that: graspy fingers of chicken attempting to steal your fries away and take them back to France to serve in hot plate with seasonal vegetables.  (What exactly are the specific vegetables that typify the wet season, anyway?)

Hedde's mixed grill can be seen in the background.  It looks decadent, and he reported it tasting approximately so.

Since the SAA check-in desk in Lagos opened at 5:30 (=17h30), I went through security around 7, what with the line being the better part of a kilometer in length.  Since my flight wasn't supposed to leave until 10, that meant some more hours of waiting on the other side of the gate.  I wandered around for a bit, doing stuff like taking pictures of my stately vessel:

I also discovered that the duty free shop has Talisker whisk(e?)y from the Isle of Skye.

This fact might be of interest to Sylvia, who I think is on said Isle right now.  And maybe to the greater Lagos community of blind scotch afficianados.  Not really my target market.  Anyway, I didn't have anywhere near that much cash left to blow, so I did not buy it.  I contented myself instead with a soda and a double-pack of Nollywood movies ('Sexy Wizard' and 'Sezy Wizard 2', for just $10!).  We'll see if they play, and if they're any good.  In that order, I assume.

Case #3: Security.
This is the real reason I am writing this post: the hilarity of some of the customs practices, on both ends of the equation.
In Lagos, to stop me from taking liquids onto the plane, they confiscated the cap of my water bottle in the waiting room.

I really can't decide if that's genius or idiocy.  I mean, on the one hand, it did lead me to leave my extra water behind.  But on the other, I could have easily smuggled in an extra cap...

The South African customs side was groggy and bleary-eyed.  My bag got the royal search treatment.  Items of particular consternation to the customs agent:

• My Bug-a-Salt
• a frisbee I was given to take back to donate to the local ultimate group
• the towel wrapped around my dirty clothes to separate them from the clean ones
• the Rutgers pen & keychain set that Ümit gave me as a parting gift 7 months ago.  (Fortunately, he did not notice the set of lockpicks tucked inside the box)
• the water bottle full of palm oil I bought from the kitchen staff in Ibadan

I guess some of these aren't legal to cross borders with?  He said even something like an orange was off-limits, so definitely any oil or food is not allowed.  But then he also said he wasn't taking it away.  He made no remarks about the new West African apparel I brought home.

...and so I have made it through, all souveneiueœurs and such intact.  Which is good.  This means Nigerian food and dress are lurking in our future....

-Will out.