Israel: There and Back

View Journey to Israel in a larger map

We spent the last 10 days in Israel with my Dad, K, my brother, and my brother’s girlfriend who I’ll call Koko. We’re going to do a series of blogs on Israel so I thought I’d start with the travel. Those of you who’ve read the blog regularly know that any travel situation in Kenya requires at least two of the following three: blood, sweat, and tears.

Mungai offered to drive M and me to the airport so we arrived fairly uneventfully and then we attempted to enter the airport. We were immediately barred from entering a security check-point because we didn’t have boarding passes or tickets. Sweating commenced.

We explained that we didn’t have our tickets because we hadn’t gone to the check-in counter yet. This is apparently problematic in Kenya because check-in is located through one layer of security. We told them we were flying Ethiopian Airlines but they didn’t have an office in Mombasa so we were directed to the Kenya Airways desk to print out tickets. As expected, the Kenya Airways people immediately rejected (and judged) us because “we aren’t Ethiopian Airlines, how could we print your ticket?” Perfect.

One benefit of sticking out like a sore thumb is that sometimes people take pity on you and a security guard eventually just escorted us through. The flipside of the constant wazungu-related attention is that many people assume that wazungu are too rich / educated / white (I don’t know how many other adjectives) to be doing anything “bad” so the security guard had no problem vouching for us despite meeting us seconds earlier.

We waited in line for our 4:30 flight which was inexplicably now leaving at 6 PM. This was not a delay, they just decided the flight was leaving later. We had plenty of time for our connection in Addis Ababa but it was just amusing to us.

When we got up to the check-in counter, we handed over our passports and were asked to produce an itinerary. When we explained that we hadn’t printed one (printers are hard to come by around here), they told us that we couldn’t fly unless we had the credit card we used to book the flight back in July. We were fairly certain we didn’t have the credit card. We often travel with only some of our cards so that if we’re pick-pocketed, we aren’t left with no access to funds in Kenya. Despite each having about 7 forms of ID, their acknowledgement that they had our reservation, and the fact that a stupid paper itinerary would be insanely easy to forge, only that specific credit card would work if we didn’t have an itinerary. Tears commenced.

At this point I should note that I was upset but tears are also strategic on my part. Kenyans don’t typically raise their voices or lose their tempers. Kenyan woman do it even more rarely than Kenyan men. So the standard American response where we get angry and frustrated and eventually get to speak to a supervisor wasn’t going to work. Crying was worth a shot though.

I stepped away from the counter to allow the men to handle the issue. As much as it aggravates me that I’m excluded from some of these conversations, they tend to go much more smoothly if handled man to man. M said that he could tell that the guy felt bad so he eventually agreed to call his supervisors. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there trying to think as fast as I could. Our flight was 2.5 hours away and it’s at least 3 hours roundtrip on the ferry if everything goes as planned. In desperation, I suggested to M that we have him check our other credit cards.

At this point, we realized that since we booked as if we lived in Kenya, it was possible that we had used a credit card that gets better international rates than the one we use 95% of the time in the US. Amazingly, this worked. Whether it worked because we had actually used that card or if the guy just relented and let us through, we aren’t sure but we didn’t care.

One thing that we’ve often spoken about is the bureaucracy in Kenya and the rigidity in job titles and activities. The guy knew that we had paid for the tickets and wanted to let us on but he couldn’t for fear that he would be fired for breaking the regulations. In the US, customer service folks have some leeway to apply common sense in these situations but in Kenya, he could easily have been fired or personally charged for our tickets if we were somehow committing fraud (he directly related this concern to M). We’ve repeatedly encountered similar situations where you can tell that someone wants to help you or knows that a different standard should apply than ‘normal’ but are unable / incapable / too afraid to break protocol.

At least this time, the story ended fairly well. The same could not be said for my brother’s bags which he never received. He spent 10 days in Israel wearing the same shirt and jeans (luckily there was a washer where we were staying) and our entire group trekked to the airport every night to try and find them. On the last night, he was finally told that they were waiting for him at the airport so he could take them home to the US. He arrived only to find out that they had been sent out for delivery and had to board the flight without them. So I guess travel is difficult everywhere but the trip was absolutely fantastic.

We were able to see Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Tiberius, Casearia, Petra, and Maasada on our whirlwind tour of the Dead, Med, and Red Seas. Blogs on those to come. A few favorite pics of our first day in Tel Aviv follow below.

Tel Aviv is a beach town:


This church and the mosque below were virtually on top of each other: