“Is your name Lucy?” It’s a Xhosa man with a sweet round face and perfect skin peering over my shoulder while I fill out the rather confusing lost luggage form for Delta. “Your mammy is outside and she wants to know if you’re still here” he enquires rather robotically. The baggage hall is empty. I am trying to work out how my missing suitcase ended up in Atlanta, a city not appearing anywhere on my itinerary. Did they offload it in Dakar at our 2am stopover and send it back to the States, I wonder. Shelving my growing impatience, I smile sweetly at the man in charge. “Tell her I’ll be right out” I sing-song back to the friendly porter my mother has tasked to cross the customs line and report back with my whereabouts.
It is the second time I have smiled since disembarking that stuffy plane a half hour ago. “This line is only for Suth Efrikens” yelled the immigration agent at two blank-faced Indians next in line. Mounting her chair behind the counter, she gesticulates madly. “Go over there!” she waves over the heads of the sniggering South Africans, towards to the alarmed foreign crowd. 
So they lost my suitcase and I am without pajamas, any tops for my bottoms and a bottle of murky Vietnamese fish sauce for my famous pad thai dish. I can’t help but admit that despite the hodge podge service everyone is always so nice. The lack of attitude and general contentment is part and parcel of that South African lassaiz-faire personality.
The warm, salted air blowing from the Indian Ocean misted my face as I rounded the corner to my parents’ home in my Avis rental the lady described as a “vacuum cleaner”. The car suits me almost as much as the weather. So what if jetlag will be the winner and I will be up in a few hours pacing and ushering in a new dawn sky? A school of dolphins playing leapfrog in the bay below are delicious welcoming committee, and soon the porter, the manic immigration lady and missing pajamas are nothing more than a mildly amusing story.
