Author: <span>Patrick Cumby</span>

When the car’s headlights flicker and go dark, I panic. “Shit!” I yell. The Moroccan girls in the back seat giggle and echo, “Shit! Shit!”

An insistent lorry is tailgating me. I lean forward and desperately try to follow the tail lights of the car in front. SLAM! We hit a deep pothole and muddy water splashes over the windshield. I fight the steering wheel so I don’t veer into the oncoming lane. Motorcycles with no lights whatsoever crawl on the verge like dark phantoms. People dart between the moving cars. And, it’s raining—raining so hard that with every stroke the windshield wipers fling a gallon onto the curbside pedestrians. What are all these people doing out in the pouring rain in the dark?

Our Nairobi apartment community is lovely. It is also a fortress. It is not only gated, it is completely surrounded by high walls and guarded by a dozen colorfully-uniformed security…

The man offers me a date. “Very good dates. My wife buys them at our local market.”

I take the date and eat it. The skin is dried and tough, not at all like the store-bought dates from the States. He watches me carefully, waiting for my reaction. I nod appreciatively and swallow. We’ve been waiting together at the departure gate for about ten minutes. The Cairo airport is shabby by western standards, and there are very few amenities in the terminal. I am grateful for the tough date.

The man yawns, and I remark that perhaps we’ll get some sleep on the five-hour flight to Nairobi. He chuckles and shakes his head. “I can never sleep on a plane. I was kidnapped once while flying. Since then, I am always nervous when I fly.”

It’s three in the morning as the plane from Cairo lands in Nairobi. My fellow passengers are bleary-eyed and grouchy, mostly Kenyans and stone-faced Egyptian businessmen with a few excited tourists sprinkled like salt on a plate of tired beans. It’s pouring rain, so it’s hard to explain why the ground crew parks the passenger bus a hundred feet from the base of the aircraft’s exit stairs. Everybody gets soaked running through the downpour to the bus. Nobody’s mood improves as we crowd into the transport, drenched and sticky, clutching our soggy carry-on bags. It’s standing room only, and we lurch into each other as the bus starts off toward the terminal.