East African Resident Rob

It was with great honor that I cut to the front of the line at Dar es Salaam passport control to join the line designated for "East African Residents" - that's me!

The baggage claim area was more chaotic than I had remembered. Two small carousels serve all incoming flights - domestic and international - and passengers from huge planes funnel into the room where tensions pile as high as the boxes of figs. Unsure which carousel my luggage would eventually arrive on (when the bags arrive, the staff just put them on a carousel, and it doesn't usually matter since someone is likely to pull it off and stack it on the floor somewhere anyway).

People were stumbling and falling all around me (it reminded me of the beach party in Port Elizabeth), there was a woman near me yelling at a man, a box of figs suddenly exploded everywhere, there was no air circulation in the room, it was hard to breathe, and I was pinned in place by people, bags and carts.

Finally, after about 45 minutes, enough people had left that I could break my way free and make my way to the door to the staging area where the luggage is loaded onto the carousels. I asked an airport staff member there "Have the bags from the South African flight from Johannesburg been loaded onto the carousels yet?" "Some have," he said. "Do you know which carousel they were put on?" I followed-up with a smile; "Probably some on that one and some on that one," he replied.

I thanked the man ("Asante sana!"), and somehow through it all kept my cool - trusting that my bags would arrive eventually, and that I would find them in the piles of luggage all around me.

It was at that moment, when I was turning away from the airport staff member, that I spotted the bright red band on my big suitcase - I had found it! And on the other side, under one or two bags and probably as many people, sat my bag with the bright blue band.

I felt like a parent who reunited with a missing child in a busy supermarket. I kindly worked my way around the room to one bag, and then back around the room to the far side for the other, and with both of my bags I proceeded outside, where luckily my ride had no yet given up on me.

I hope there will be many success stories that I will be writing about on this page in the months ahead, but I consider this first one to be really exciting: I have managed to move to Tanzania, and spend about 1.5 weeks traveling in South Africa on the way, and have not yet lost a thing. And once you see the airport in Dar, you will know: that's not an easy feat!