I stink.

What was I thinking, travelling without spare deodorant?  Sitting in the lounge at Zurich, not really feeling like digging through my bag for euros to buy some, smelling right foul.  I'll have to strip down in the public washroom, wash best I can with hand soap and paper towels, fresh shirt.  Damn Zurich lounge; no food short of peanuts, apples and bananas, no showers, and only one hour of Internet allowed per six hours.  I'm here for four.  And it's warm, I'm sweating more in this lounge than in East Africa!  Being the height of the East African safari season and kids off school, the vast majority of travellers are families.  The security lines take about four times longer than the rest of the year, where I'm typically brushing shoulders with seasoned world weary business travellers.  We avoid getting in lines behind families like the plague, but there's little option for that now.  I've only an hour connectIon in Toronto, and have to clear passport control and customs, and I've got carvings to declare.  It'll be tight.   Maybe if I skip the wash up, customs will wrinkle their noses and whisk me through quickly.  But I know I wouldn't want to be sitting beside me for ten hours in economy.

The quick trip home, totalling four full days of travelling for two weeks in Nova Scotia, has been eventful.  I show up at Mtwara airport and am told there's a delay for mechanical reasons, but I later find out from my back to back inbound from Dar es Salaam that not one of the carrier's planes has departed all morning.  A few phone calls and I'm able to sneak onto the oil company's charter plane for the hour hop to Dar.  There's the extremely frustrating two hours of traffic in Dar to get to the Sea Cliff, but it's worth it, to sit pool side with a fresh breeze off the Indian Ocean and sipping cappuccinos.  Next there's word of a huge fire at Nairobi airport shutting it down completely for the day, and my flight, scheduled to stop in Nairobi, is cancelled.  Just before supper I find out the flight is back on, direct to Zurich, so I dive back into the Dar traffic for two hours, for a drive that should take twenty minutes.  Ali, our dedicated driver, does an amazing job of cutting people off and driving on the sidewalk and cutting through slums and alleys and creating a slight aura of adventure, and I tip him handsomely. 

I have to do this all again in two weeks.  I'll bring deodorant.

Update:  bought deodorant, did the strip, paper towel and hand soap wash up and shirt change in the public washroom, then was very pleasantly surprised with a complimentary upgrade to business class for the ten hour haul to Toronto.  I drank too much, free Gran Marnier and fine French wine, then slept through all the meals.  Missed my connection in Toronto, but I'll make a late supper at home tonight.  Tired or hungover or perhaps both.