You’re STILL Wrong
Mykel's
May 2025 Blog/Column
A TUSKER GREETING
I’m leaving London because the weather is too good. I hate London when it’s not raining.
– Groucho Marks
An antitourist is a tourist whose vanity and tourist angst compels him to distance himself from other tourists by shunning organized tours, consuming local food no matter how nasty, eschewing the use of taxis in favor of public transportation, and ostentatiously not carrying a camera.
– Paul Fussel
It is not the fully conscious mind which chooses Africa in preference to Switzerland.
– Graham Greene
When I first arrived at London Heathrow, coming from New York, I asked a random person sitting behind a random desk dressed in a random uniform, about my up-coming trip to Kenya. “When should I check in for an international flight?”
“You should be at the airport three hours before departure,” she says.
The plane is scheduled to leave at 9AM.. That means I should be here at 6 in the fuckin’ morning.
“Shit,” I answer her.
She shrugs.
Heathrow Airport in London is one of the busiest in the world. And they skin you every step of the way. You even have to pay to drop someone off at the curb and let them walk to the terminal!
It’s 5:30AM. Anant is picking me up from Claire and Alistair’s in a couple minutes. He’ll drive me to Heathrow… and pay to drop me off. Watta guy! Claire and Alistair are up to see me leave and to greet Anant. 5:30 AM!!!! For me, that’s bedtime! The world doesn’t turn itself on at 5:30AM. There is no dawn’s early light. No rockets red glare. NOTHING HAPPENS at 5:30 in the morning. Except that I leave for Heathrow Airport to catch a 9:00AM flight to Nairobi, Kenya.
The airport too is just waking up. I look for my
flight on the electric signboard. It’s not there. I walk past
closed concessions… closed duty free shops… restrooms with yellow
triangle CLOSED, BEING CLEANED signs in front of them. I check
another TV screen. I see what seems like my flight… looks like it’s
telling me to go to another terminal for the gate. I want to check in
first… no I don’t. I can’t. There is no place to check in.
I
walk to the British Airways section of the main terminal. There are
no uniformed people sitting at counters, waiting to for me to hand
them my passport. Zero. It’s all machines. Scan. Scan! Scan! I don’t
know what to do. I’m an hour and a half early… typical for me.
Fuck that scan shit. I want a real flesh and bodily organs person--
not a machine. How can I tell a machine it looks like Diana Rigg?
Somewhere, there is a check-in area (AREA D) for the Nairobi flight. I have to check-in and get my boarding pass. There’s a map, showing where the check-in area is supposed to be. I follow the map and find myself in a large space with a lot of empty chairs and some of those stanchions with flat red ropes like you find outside of stores in New York, holding back lines of Generation Z’s waiting to spend their parent’s money.
[NOTE: I don’t know about your city. But one of the newest fashions in New York is waiting on line (most Americans says “in line”, in NYC we wait on-line) to shop. Walk down any Soho street and you’ll see line after line waiting to get into some clothing store or restaurant. Most of the waiting people are 20-somethings taking selfies and texting their friends. Wow! Look at me! I’m in line at the new Kith in New York fuckin’ city!]
“Can I help you, sir?” asks a… er… mature woman wearing what looks like a stewardess uniform.
“I’m supposed to be on the 9 o’clock flight to Nairobi,” I tell her. “I don’t know how to check in. No bags, I’m carrying everything on board.”
“I’ll help you,” says the matron. “Follow me.”
I follow her to one of the machines. “Let me see your passport,” she says as we approach the machine.
I hand it to her.
“And I need to see your visa… and your PTA.”
“PTA?”
I ask. “I’m not a parent. No kids in school.”
“ETA,”
she says. “Not PTA… ETA… Electronic Travel Authorization”
I
take out a folder with a printout of what I think/hope is my ETA. I
hand her the printout. It has the ugliest picture of me anywhere. I
had to take it from my home computer as I was doing the paperwork
on-line.
“This isn’t it,” she tells me. “It’s a piece of it, but not the whole thing. Check your phone. It should be in a message from the Kenyan Consulate.”
I turn on the the phone and open messages. Somehow, I to find the right page… a tiny attachment to a consulate file. I don’t know how it can be usable… but it is. The woman scans the phone, pushes some buttons, flips some levers, hands me my passport and a boarding pass.
“You’re all set,” she says.
“Thanks,” I answer, “but I’m never all set.”
She doesn’t
laugh.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you look like
Diana Rigg?” I ask.
“Who?” she answers.
I take my leave and find the right gate at about 8:15. It’s an ordinary airport-looking gate. A few people are there already... and boy am I pissed off. They’re all white. How is Willy going to find me among this crew? All white people look the same… except for hair color. That’s not enough.
[Note: I “met” Willy on the internet doing a search for PUNK and NAIROBI. Turns out he plays guitar in POWERSLIDE, a Kenyan punk band. We corresponded and he promised to meet me at the airport in Nairobi. He’ll also set up one night at a hotel. The next day, I’ll couch-surf with some locals. Willy asks me to bring him some books that are hard to find in Kenya. “No problem,” I tell him.]
Near the Heathrow
departure gate is a DUTY FREE shop-- open now, I buy some Jack
Daniels for my couch-surfing host. Willy will meet me at the airport... if he can find me. I still have half an hour before the plane leaves.
I check my phone to see if there are any messages from the other side
of the world. There is one from Albert, my future host in the
Nigerian countryside:
The banditry crisis in our area
has reached alarming levels. Even our area chief was recently killed
while escorting some tourists. The situation has become
unbearable—these bandits terrorize us every night, leaving us in
constant fear and unable to sleep. Just yesterday, I was on duty with
ten other men, trying to protect our community from another attack.
We are doing everything we can, but without proper support, our
efforts may not be enough.
Shit... just what I need to start the adventure. BANDITS! I look up how to say “Oy vey” in Swahili. Google Translate doesn’t.
I quickly text back to Albert, asking him if he thinks it’s too dangerous for me to visit. He tells me Kenya isn’t dangerous, but his area, Saburu, is. My friends who’ve been to Kenya say that everywhere is dangerous. Nairobi is commonly called Nairobbery, they tell me. I buy one of those chain wallets… you know. with thick links from wallet to belt… then a leather loop around the belt. I have a spare $20 and a 1000 shilling (about $10) note in a secret zippered compartment in the back of my belt.
“The pickpockets work in pairs,” my friend, Terry tells me. (She’d been in the city at the turn of the century.) “One person will grab your right shoulder from behind. You turn to him and his accomplice will reach into your left pocket and be off with the loot before you can say nakupenda.”
The plane boards on
time. It’s a huge British Airways plane-- a US built Boeing
777... a dozen seats across in the economy section. Aisles so
narrow that when the stewardess walks down them, she alternately hip
bumps first the passenger on the right and then the one on the left.
FLASH TO INSIDE THE
PLANE. While we sit on the runway, I wonder about my couch-surfing
host and hostess... wonder about my bag of books… wonder how Willy
will find me… I clearly will NOT be the only white guy on the
plane. I mentally go over my Swahili.
Nimefurahi kukutana
nawe (nice to meet you) Mimi sim Kenya. Mimi nim mwamerica. (I’m
not Kenyan. I’m American) Nina njaa (I’m hungry). Samahani.
(Excuse me) . I learned that you address an older woman as mama
and a young woman as bibi. A male stranger is bwana.
Which is what, I think, Tonto called The Lone Ranger.
We’re off! Regular readers know that I’m usually opposed to the death penalty. One exception I often talk about is driving at the speed limit in the left lane. Another, for public transportation, is leaning the seat back, often slamming into the knees of the person behind you. Yo! Look behind you! If no one is sitting there, you can recline your seat, but keep an eye out for a late-arriving passenger. If someone IS sitting there, sit up straight like your mama told you. Leaning back where there are only inches to go is rude, thoughtless, smug, and worthy of beheading. Luigi Mangione, you’d know what to do.
The “safety instructions,” usually given by a steward or stewardess… you know “you fasten the seat belt by inserting the tab into the buckle like this… and then pulling the belt firmly... like this.” is given in a video now. The screen on the back of the seat in front of you shows a video of middle ages knights in armor… strapping themselves to their horses. They have to put on their seatbelts. (Saddle belts?) The part about the dropping oxygen mask is given by the queen in her royal parlor.
The people sitting next to me seem deeply involved in the royalty on the screen. Yeah, I’ve got an aisle seat in this monster of a plane. Each section has four seats… that means there are TWO middle seats. I should have asked for one of them this time, so I could free myself from the stewardess’s hip bumps. The serious looks on the other faces in the row tell me this’ll be one of those flights where I’m not going to make any new friends. I don’t really care. The whole row is white anyway. That’s NOT why I’m going to Kenya!
I lean against the upright back of my seat… I still have 6 hours ahead of me… ahhhh! Shit! The asshole in front of me leans his seat back into my lap. I open the table in the back of his seat. Slam it open. Using two hands like I’m playing a bongo, I bang out an I Want Candy riff. The girl by the window... seeing what I’m doing… and knowing exactly why I’m doing it… turns toward me and smiles. The guy in the seat in front of me pretends nothing is wrong. We’ll see who wins this contest.
Ah, the food cart comes around. I signal the stewardess maneuvering the cart. I push my hands forward, looking at the seat in front of me. She gets it. She walks up to the guy and taps him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me, sir. We’re serving our first meal,” she says. “Please put your seat in an upright position.”
He does, and I give a thumbs up to the stewardess. She’s cute… and I feel an stirring between my legs toward its own an upright position
British Air still gives free non-alcoholic drinks with its meals… though the portions are smaller than what you’d normally buy in the local deli.
After dinner, I try to sleep. The asshole in the seat in front of me reclines it again. I kick his seat. He pretends not to notice. I half drift off to sleep, dreaming of the Nairobi airport with huge Barack Obama murals… maybe with the former president cavorting among the elephants and giraffes. Fuck, I can’t sleep... maybe if I turn and try to sleep on my side. BLAM! I slam my knee into the back of the asshole’s seat. He clears his throat.
We land very close to the scheduled time… 9:35PM. I’m sitting toward the back of the plane, where the cheap seats are. I’m in a half-sleep fog when the pilot announces we’re preparing for landing PUT AWAY YOUR TRAY TABLES AND PUT YOUR SEATS IN AN UPRIGHT POSITION. He does not say “assholes.”
As we taxi towards the gate, the more awake among us are already standing up and getting their stuff out of the overhead compartments. My backpack is under the seat in front of me and my computer bag (with trinkets for the natives), coat and hat are stuffed in one of the overheads, now being ruffled through by THE ASSHOLE.
Things retrieved, I follow the slow-moving line out of the plane, down the portable stairs rolled up to the door. We’re then shuffled into a shuttle bus to go through immigration. I check my wallet to see if I have an available 1000Ksh (Kenyan shillings) note, in case I need it for a bribe. Remembering my arrival in Senegal a couple decades ago… and talking with my travel agent in New York (from Ghana)… I come prepared.
It turns out I don’t need it. Kenyan immigration and customs is maybe the easiest of all of the 71 other countries I’ve visited. Passing through a large hall… with NO Obama pictures, I show my passport and that stupid ETA on my phone to a guy sitting at a table. He looks up at me. Smiles like a grandfather indulging his grandson, stamps my passport, and says “Welcome to Nairobi!”
I thank him and exit into the baggage room. Having no bags to retrieve, I walk through the room, asking a guard for the mensroom. He shows me the exit-from-the-baggage-pick-up door and tells me there’s a “toilet down the hall on the right.” Aaah, a civilized country where the word “toilet” isn’t taboo!
I take care of business then look around for Willy, who said he’d be at the airport to greet me. Not that I know what he looks like. Despite all the white people, there should at least be one local looking like he’s looking for someone. And no, there are no Obama pictures inside the terminal… or anywhere else I can see.
I walk around, trying to look like I’m trying to look for someone. It doesn’t work. In my trench-coat and fedora, in any other country, I’d have a man in uniform immediately asking, “Can I help you with something?” while radioing headquarters with my description.
I leave the terminal. Outside are a lot of men who look like they’re cab drivers looking for customers. I look around for someone who looks like I imagine Willy looks. No luck. I walk up to one of the cab-driver looking guys.
“Unaweza kuongea kiingereza?” I ask.
He laughs at my stumbling Swahili. “Everybody in Kenya speaks English,” he says. “We learn it in elementary school.”
“I can’t find my
friend,” I tell him. “Could you speak to him and tell him where I
am? I don’t know where I am.”
He laughs again, but
says, “sure.”
I call Willy’s number on my Samsung, then hand the phone to the driver. He runs away with it. Naw, I’m shittin’ you.
Really, he speaks to Willy and explains where we are. Around ten minutes later, Willy and his attractive girlfriend, Jecinta, show up right in front of me.
“Mykel!” he says giving me a hug.
After a short conversation, Jecinta says she has to leave… work tomorrow morning I think. We give our good byes. This will be the last time I ever see her… for the whole duration of the trip. After she walks off, Willy texts his uber, waiting in the airport parking lot. We get it and the driver goes off to the expensive hotel, Hotel Ibis.
It’s near the airport. And it’s my first night... after a long flight, I can spring for the $70. No shower for the week in London. I expect there’s one in the hotel room. Nothing like arriving at a couch-surfer’s home smelling like Irish Spring.
I check in at the hotel desk. The woman at the desk takes my credit card, runs it through her machine and hands me a card for the room, and, as it turns out, is also a card for entrance to the hallway that leads to the room. And for the upper floors in the elevator. This is my first experience with SECURITY… actually over-security… in Kenya. In many ways, I think Kenya will prove to be a model for future America. I’ll write about that later.
After checking in,
Willy and I go to a table near the entrance and sit down so I can
give him the books I bought for him. Mostly Nietzsche, and Eastern
philosophy… [NOTE: as time goes on, I notice Willy sits with his
eyes closed, hands on his lap in deep meditation before every meal.
He’s a Buddhist... like YOUTH OF TODAY] I bring him one extra book
he didn’t ask for and explain that it’s written by a much
respected American author and he should read it to really understand
America.
After that, I drop my bags off in the room. And go up to the rooftop bar with Willy. Oh yeah! Tusker beer at the hotel. Looks like it’s only us in the bar. I toast Willy with HONGERA, the Swahili word for “cheers” taught to me by Albert in a facebook message. Willy doesn’t react. The waiter frowns.
“What’s that?” he asks.
“I thought it was cheers in Swahili. My facebook friend taught it to me.”
“Maybe it’s a local language word.” he says. “We usually say, mad-LOW-ba!”
Willy smiles. Now I don’t know if they’re shittin’ me or not. Serves me right. At Drink Club in NYC, I tell my Japanese friends that Besa mi culo means “cheers” in Spanish. I tell my German friends that Pitchka ti mate in Serbian means “cheers.” Everybody else learns from me that Mong chong ii is “cheers” in Korean.
After I buy us a few drinks. At around 12:30, Willy takes his leave, I go down to my hotel room and DON’T take a shower. I’m beat. I’ll just do that thing that guys do to help them sleep… and sleep I do. Check-out is 10 AM!!! Whoever heard of such a thing? But it is. So I have to get up at 9 o’clock, eat my free breakfast and make my way into downtown Nairobi.
My phone alarm wakes me at 9. I stupidly hit the SNOOZE button, and get up again with 10 minutes to spare.
[To be
continued…]
See you in hell,
Mykel Board
ENDNOTES: [You can contact me on facebook or by email at mykelboard@gmail.com. Through the post office: send those... er... private DVDs..or music or zines... or anything else (legal only!) to: Mykel Board, POB 137, New York, NY 10012-0003. If you like my writing, you can be notified when anything new is available. Send me an email with SUBSCRIBE in the subject line. Back blogs and columns are at https://mykelsblog.blogspot.com]
→ Next
Surveillance Dept: Sid Yiddish sent me this…
about a new bacteria find that can be traced by machine. I can’t imagine who
would be interested in the possibility of infecting people with a
bacteria that makes them easy to follow. Can you?
→ I
Wrote on Facebook Dept: I posted this on Facebook. So sorry
to see George Santos going to prison for longer than he has served in
Congress. That guy was such a great actor... and the most atoms
person in government. Only my
pal Tony Autoharp asked what “the most atoms person" meant. The
other commenters –and there were a bunch– were just interested in
chiding me for my opinions, even though I’m sure they didn’t get the "atoms" either. Oh yeah, you know atoms, right? They make up everything.
→Repeat Performance Dept: The Week magazine had this article that shows the effect of a well-placed sharp piece of metal. I hear the insurance company in the article reversed itself right after the Luigi Mangione adventure: See? It works.
LINK TRADE DEPARTMENT:
LINKS
I read that the search engines like lots of links... and it's also nice to support my friends and enemies in their blogs. So facebook me or email me if you have a blog, webpage or something else to connect to. I add you. You add me.
Here's a start:
Sid Yiddish sent me this link to all his videos. It’s a great place to start, especially if you don’t know him.
I did a nice interview with The Aither zine. Interesting questions, complete, and questions I’ve never been asked before. You can read it here. It’s a good one.
Here’s Ricardo Wang with a “micro-label” in Seattle “specializing in 8-track tapes and CDs. WOW! Check out one of their label staples: The Dead Air Fresheners, best band name of the year.
Also
on bandcamp: My very long time faves in NYC, the BLACKOUT
SHOPPERS.
Featuring pals Seth and possibly the next vice-president of the
US
Sid Yiddish has posted a video of a show done for WZRD
in Chicago. Great live performances, and if you catch the video
around the 20+ minute point you might see a familiar face doing the
lyrics to his songs (some unrecorded) as poetry. You’ll find it
here.
And this sounds right up Sid’s alley. The Bilderberg Jazz Arkestra on Bandcamp!
Eric Grayson has an online music review zine, Sobriquet. Full pictures of the sleeves too! Something missing from too many zines. Sometimes you CAN judge a… er… book… by its cover.
Steen Thomsen is a Dane I’ve known ever since Lincoln was shot. I put his band THE ZERO POINT on the great WORLD CLASS PUNK Cassette for ROIR. It must be worth a mint now. I don’t have any left, I’m afraid. You can (and should) connect to the Zero Point on facebook. Tell ‘em Mykel’s blog sent you.
Sorry Dorothy, we are STILL in Kansas. And it’s as weird as OZ. Check out Bob Cutler’s DISTOPEKA.
You
already know Murder & Mayhem zine… those guys who did the Mykel
Board centerfold. (No genitals shown… and probably for the better.)
Their online version is here.
The
Clean Boys
from Denmark are also longtime friends of mine. In Denmark we
recorded as The
Bend-over Boys.
Only one 10-inch available… but at least now I can say I have a
10-incher!
Finally, for this month, Margaret O’Brian asked me to include the site: anti-war.com They seem to be folks after my own heart.
Oh yeah, then there’s me. I have a blog of stuff I’ve written mostly from last century. You might enjoy it. Then again, you might not. It’s here.
Let me know if you have a blog… or a print zine… or a YouTube and want to be added to the list. You show me yours… you’ve already seen mine. god@mykelboard.com
