I’ve been wearing the same underwear and bra now for 21 days. I wash them every night in my sink with its rusty plug hole and no plug. When I arrived in Juba at the beginning of December, my luggage didn’t arrive with me. And there’s been no sign of it since.
‘Handle-able,’ my friend, Mel, a seasoned aid worker said, when I mentioned it to her. But I must admit I’ve been struggling to cope.
It’s not just the loss of my clothes I’m mourning – although my ten cotton underpants and 5 bras – black, beige and strapless – are beginning to seem like heaven. It’s my cleanser and moisturiser, foundation, my nail kit and tweezers. My eyebrows are growing to pre-plucked Brooke Shields proportions and I have tufts of hair on my chin.
And try impressing your workmates and bosses in faded jeans and a once-white t-shirt printed with the message, ‘You are what you believe!’
I’ve been driving out to the airport each day hoping they’ve located it, but to no avail.
There’s quite the growing queue at the Airline’s office there. I’ve met a trader chasing bags of t-shirts destined for the market; a teenager visiting relatives in Juba, who vowed never to return; and among others, a family with a baby and no supplies.
It seems it’s a common story. The logistics officer at work told me she’s lost her luggage five times. (Yes, FIVE times!)
At the customs office – a huge warehouse filled with desperate travellers climbing over piles of luggage – I headed for a stack of black bags in one corner, thinking ‘Eureka!’ But the uniformed official waved me on, saying those particular items had been there for more than a year. Outside, there were hundreds of more recently unclaimed suitcases, but mine was not among them.
After ten days of vague promises from the Airline, I decided to claim on travel insurance. I chased the manager furiously for two days from the town to the airport office in search of a stamp for a so-called ‘loss statement’, which they insist is an ‘incident report’. Only after a phone call from a connected colleague at work, did she respond.
For a while, I wandered around, wondering if my luggage was somewhere in Thailand, having a better time than me.
But then, on one trip to the airport, I witnessed an event that gave me some insight into what may have happened. I was at the admissions desk, when I saw a member of the ground crew talking with a market trader, who was insisting his bags travelled on the next flight. The steward gestured at a piled luggage trolley outside and said, ‘Don’t worry. It’ll make it on the flight. If I have to, I’ll take off some of the suitcases’.
And where will they end up? Probably with my bag – and heaven knows where that is. I just hope wherever it is, the beneficiary is putting my inspirational CDs, pilates DVD and travelling Buddha to good use.
©Jean Di Marino 2012
