The First Piece of Luggage

     The first piece of luggage pulled out of the cab’s trunk was picked up by one of the porters at the O. B. Tambo  airport in Johannesburg before I even knew what he was doing.  The cabbie was still reaching into the trunk for my carry-on bag and I was fumbling through my purse for the unfamiliar South African rands for a tip, when I felt a tap on my sleeve.  I looked up to see the young porter pointing at my big suitcase and saying something with an accent I didn’t yet recognize. 

I had come to South Africa on the run-up (as they put it) to the 1994 historic elections that made Nelson Mandela the President of the “new South Africa.” The timing was just coincidence, really, not directly related to the immense shifts about to come to this apartheid government.  I was invited by the Chairman of the Surgery Department, and Head of the Curriculum Committee, at the University of Transkei Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (or so the school was named at the time) to review and consult with them on their setting up of a problem-based, community-oriented medical curriculum and their multi-faceted student evaluation system that included standardized (or simulated) patients.  

The Transkei itself was a black “homeland”, and its medical school, not yet five years old was the only black medical school in all of South Africa.

The country of South Africa was headed into heady and sometimes violent change. The “homelands”, similar to our Native American reservations, were established in 1948 when apartheid became the official law of the land, and were about to be dissolved and reincorporated into the larger South Africa, where they had de facto existed all along.  

 But the official lowering of one flag and raising of the other was to take place in just a few days, during my visit. Various factions were struggling, sometimes with violence, to gain a grip on power.  In particular, the party of Nelson Mandela, the ANC—African National Congress—was very strong where I was headed, among the Xhosas in the Transkei homeland.  But the Zulus in the adjacent KwaZulu/Natal territory were bitterly opposed to the ANC and championed their own leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and they were disposed to expressing their feelings with guns and even with “necklacing”—placing a rubber automobile tire around a victim and setting it afire. 

Because of the violence, real and perceived, the police and security people were on high alert and on the lookout for smuggled guns and other weapons.  This is what had occasioned the tap on my sleeve.  The porter had placed my suitcase in the metal detector newly placed at the entrance to the airport, and it had “flagged” my suitcase.  

“Madam,” he said as I finally understood the words through his accent, “what do you have in your bag?” 

I was so distracted it didn’t occur to me that there was a real problem here—it hadn’t occurred to me in advance of the trip that the surplus arm and wrist and leg braces that I had been asked to bring to the orthopedic surgeon who would provide housing for me during my visit could set off a metal detector.  It never occurred to me that there would BE a metal detector.  But detect it did. Those out-of-date braces had metal “stays”, whereas newer ones had plastic ones.  

“I have braces”, I stammered.  

 “Oh, fine”, he said.  “Personal medical equipment.” And he waved to the security person manning the machine to push the bag through.  They didn’t ask to open the bag and check, probably because I was Doctor Camp on my ticket, and I was a white woman, not a young black male with an African accent.  

 Still, it was a mistake on their part, and I was glad of it.