The "Layover and Take It"

So I’m writing my blog post about my trip to Europe with my family and I want to give the trip and my insights about it justice.  However, the first major experience I have on the trip is, while a good story, pretty negative.  So instead, I’ll separate the two and allow my rant to flourish without guilt:

It all starts in an airplane.  I’ve been in an airplane since I’ve come to country, but it was a small airplane leaving a small airport and landing in another small airport in Mozambique.  This new airplane landed in the Kenya International Airport, in which I was met with massive well-lit duty free stores, bars, white people, leather chairs, and a restaurant that serves burritos and not-Carlsberg beer.  Everything was so bright and the burritos were so delicious that my eyes may or may not have teared up.  However, the novelty, unfortunately, was about to wear off.  I’m in line to board my next flight for Amsterdam (!!!) when I’m stopped at the gate.  I’d been flying with tickets all day from Lilongwe to Lusaka (Zambia) to Kenya with a misprinted boarding pass.  Instead of Stacey Neilson, my mother’s name, Sheri, appeared.  It hadn’t been a big deal, in fact, no one noticed, myself included.  Until its 10PM in the Kenya airport, which, I might add, Peace Corps Volunteers are not allowed to leave because of the political unrest, and I’m refused entry to the plane.  Well, shit.  Also, I’m out of cash and my means of communication are absurd AND my parents are already in the air flying to their connection to Denmark.  So, I turn all my powers of persuasion on to the gate crew.  I play nice and innocent, I play angry and blame them and their counterparts in Malawi and Zambia, I call the manager, and then the supervisor, I threaten and guilt trip, and eventually turn on the tears (this has never, EVER failed me before, and because it DID fail me in Kenya for the first time, I will forever hold a vehement grudge against the country as a whole).  So now I’m really desperate.  They refuse to fix my name, even upon my production of several forms of ID’s and the confirmation and sales receipt of my ticket.  They check their records and sure enough there is a reservation in my name that has been mysteriously canceled and replaced by one with my mother’s name as the passenger.  I finally throw a fit like no one has ever seen me throw a fit before.  And it’s one of those kinds of fits I didn’t know I could throw and you probably never ever want to be on the receiving end of unless you want to be physically blown up with the force of anger in my eyeballs.  It was ugly.  I made a lot of enemies in Kenya that night.  Then the plane takes off and I’m sitting at the gate, pouting, stranded in a stupid over-lit International Airport with overpriced not-Carlsberg beer.  Long story short, I buy a new ticket for the first flight out in the morning and finagle my way into the first class International lounge to spend my night drinking a lot of free South African wine and stealing a bunch of those little mini bottles of booze they give you on the airplane.  I also stuffed my bag with their first-class International morning pastries.  So THERE, stupid Kenya!