Luggage update III

Dr. Michael called on Thursday night and said that my bag had arrived in Kisoro. Deo would bring it to my apartment.

This was the bag that should have arrived with me on the plane ten days ago. The bag that finally did arrive in Uganda last Friday. The bag that supposedly was being driven by DHL to Kisoro on Monday. The bag, containing all my underwear and socks, that kept not showing up on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday.

This bag needed a week to make a 9-hour drive.

So when Deo pulled up in the van I was bouncing on my tiptoes. I shook his hand vigorously and thanked him for coming. He clicked the back door of the van open and revealed: a cardboard box.

“Where’s my bag?”

Deo looked puzzled. “This is what DHL delivered.”

The phrase ‘my heart sank’ does not begin to describe the despair I lapsed into then. “This cannot--- this cannot, no. No!” I remember hunting around the van, behind the other seats. I was kind of delirious.

When I finally tore open the cardboard box, it wasn’t a rational strategy. It was a fit of vengeance against the parcel that had usurped my precious underwear and socks.

But the strategy worked. (If you’re clever you’ll have figured this out already.) Turns out DHL had smashed my bag into a cardboard box to protect it. Bastards.

And so happiness, peace, and clean underwear reigns once again.