Illicit Behavior

East London, South Africa...I arrived here a week from last Tuesday and was surprised at how easy the flight was. My first real impression of the country came form the woman from here that I was sitting next to on the plane. She asked if this was my first visit to South Africa and when I responded that it was she said, “It is a beautiful country, but a dangerous one as well. Be careful.” Not the best thing for my nerves…anyways, when I got to Johannesburg, the adventure started. I’m embarrassed to admit that my first actions in this country were illegal…I had gotten my baggage, found the domestic terminal (or rather, followed a man who enthusiastically took my luggage to the domestic terminal) and was standing in line when they weighed it. I was 12 Kilos over the limit. 395 the girl told me, to which I responded “395??!” Please keep in mind that I had just traveled about 24 hours on various airlines, and who knows what time it was or what time zone I was adjusted to at this point, but I was tired. I remembered that Eric had told me Bianca had to pay over $600 for her luggage, and I was thinking that this 395 number was in dollars, hence the outburst. Things were confusing and I didn’t understand what the girl wanted me to do because she didn’t speak very good English and eventually a man dressed in plain clothes came and said in English I could still hardly understand that he would make it so that I didn’t have to pay the 395 in exchange for a favor.

Nowwww here’s where I should have said no thank you and walked away…I don’t actually remember what I said but it was something along the lines of “I don’t have to pay the 395??” and he said “No, I will take care of it, you just pay me 150” and I said “thank you!” and started pulling out my money and he said “NO no no, not here!” and that’s when I realized that I was being illegal…Well I knew I was being illegal before, but remember I was thinking in dollars here and $395 is a lot of money! I suppose the most accurate way to put it is that is when I actually felt illegal. He handed me a fixed sheet with my extra weight waived, and told me to go through and that he would meet me on the other side. I got in line for check in and while I was waiting it occurred to me that they were probably talking about Rand, the South African currency, not American dollars in which case 395 equaled about $50 and 150 equals about $19. Too late to change my mind though…I checked in and when I walked out of the line the man suddenly appeared walking next to me. When we walked behind a column I quickly handed him a wad of rand and he took is said thank you and walked back the other direction. And that was my big illegal introduction to this country.