Hell, you see, is taking your first pandemic era flight, strolling casually towards the luggage carousel, then watching it go round and round until everyone disappears.My bag is gone?I say it out loud and like a question before chuckling bitterly in disbelief. Then I start to panic. I run towards a guard, half asleep in a straight-backed chair, who waves me towards some airline counters that look positively apocalyptic.Though I passed by 30 minutes ago and saw actual signs of life, the arrival area is now empty and boards bellowing 'Baggage Enquiries' seem to mock me as I scurry back to the guard.“There's nobody there,” I say desperately, and the man shrugs his shoulders in the universal sign of 'not my circus' before breaking eye contact and staring at a spot on the floor.Defeated, I head back to the airline counters and then back to the carousel but they're as abandoned as I left them.Eventually, a woman appears to clear the area and she advises me to check another lost baggage depot in the main arrival terminal, so I hotfoot it towards hope.As I'm clearly distraught, two guards right by the door ask me what has me on the brink of crying and throwing up. As I explain, their eyes light up.“Sisi! Your bag was here. It's black? It's wrapped? It's this big?”It turns out that while I was staring at empty luggage carousels, the idiots who accidentally took my bag had asked the guards what to do with it and had probably taken it to a baggage depot.I'm turning to rush that way when I hear someone call my name. In my frenzy, I've forgotten why I'm in Johannesburg in the first place, and the face of the hotel driver and two other journalists stare at me quizzically.“My bag is gone!” I say before bursting into tears in front of strangers.To make a two-hour story about multiple luggage depots, a lost baggage form and three people no doubt cursing the day they were assigned to my airport transfer short, a man named Douglas finally finds my bag abandoned near International Departures.At this point, I would like to make a public service announcement.“For the love of God, people. Wrapped bags look alike. Read the f*#&ing luggage tag.”We head home.And because I haven't travelled in two years and I'm clearly in a deficit of good luck, I stumble into another Amateur Travel Hour.I forgot to pack an adapter for my MacBook.I'm a whole journalist at a two-day journalist workshop, without a functional laptop.Glory days.Like some bumbling babe at her first rodeo, I hightail it to Rosebank to buy a new one the first chance I get; only to find every shop pointedly closing their doors, because who actually checks that places are open before running, chaotic, out into the twilight?Mercifully, I eventually find a random cellphone shop hosted by a nice Indian man who only seems to know two things.The price of adapters and the phrase “cheap is expensive”.I buy the bloody thing for two million dollars and hurry towards Starbucks so I can connect to the Wi-Fi and Uber back to the hotel.But hovering outside Starbucks, trying to connect to their Wi-Fi without buying a coffee that will just give me the shakes, I realise I forgot to download the Uber app.Now I'm loitering outside the place, hustling for Wi-Fi and the general mall signal is so weak that my Uber download is like “B*tch, just buy something!”So I go into Starbucks, pay 22 bucks for a water and the barista literally takes my phone to secretly type in the code because he is demonstrably a man who will not suffer scum.With my phone's dying breath, I download Uber and summon a ride knowing one thing for sure.Whatever benevolent travel fairies I used to have must think I'm dead.They mourned.They got sh*tfaced at my wake… and left.– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com
