June 2, 2007 Nairobi Airport
We sleep most of the way to Kenya, but wake easily, excited to finally be in Africa. I look out the window as we taxi: green fields and acacia trees, distant hills.
The airport is not a big place; it is not crowded. We walk through the jetway and into the customs room, a large space with doors at both ends. We enter through the first door and busy ourselves immediately at the tall, sloped writing desks. We are applying for visas.
Most of our group finishes quickly, but Bill and I have five visas to apply for. Our friends hand their paperwork to the officials at the customs desk and pass through the far door. Jim hangs back and waits for us.
Another plane and yet another have arrived. The two lines at the customs desk will soon be crowded and we will fall behind. Jim encourages us to finish filling out our forms as we stand in the queue.
But already we have to wait, and now the line to our left, separated from us only by one of those retractable ribbons, is crowded with a plane-load of Africans. Behind us, people speak Spanish, but their words are soon obfuscated by the increasing volume the Africans next to us are creating.
‘They’re from the Congo,’ Jim says, and he knows. He lived in the Congo years ago, and perfected his French there.
This French is getting louder still, and it’s not the happy kind of loud. These are angry voices; the men are shouting at one another; hostility is increasing.
‘This is very unusual for Africa,’ Jim says. We’ve been warned that it is Americans who have the reputation for loudness, for obnoxiousness. But we’re waiting quietly and, it must be admitted, increasingly nervously. We’ve seen enough movies about angry men in Africa: things don’t get better right away in situations like these.
Now the men are shouting– quick, short blasts of African French. We can’t understand what they are saying; Jim isn’t translating. The rest of our group has moved on to baggage claim and we feel conspicuously white. We’re holding tightly to our passports, our visa applications, our exhausted children, two of whom hang on my waist, frightened by this angry volume.
It occurs to me that the customs officials might do something about this, but they are very clearly busy. Still, they have noted what’s going on. One of them will occasionally look toward the noise, then go back to his work.
Finally, one of the angry Congolese breaks from his position in line and marches up to the officials. He gets quite close to the desk and speaks pointedly in English: Do you know French? he asks.
The customs official’s response is efficient and sufficient to put the man in his place and give our team something to laugh about Forever After. ‘I know one word of French,’ he says, his crisp English rising above the din: ‘Shut up.’
If one is going to know ‘French’ in Kenya, then this, apparently, is the first thing to learn.
