Today, I fainted. Or not.
I do not know what I’ve just experienced; however, it was not good. On the plane from Lagos to Nairobi, I was ready, eager, and anticipating my first visit to the Land of the Big Five, going through the series of events I had experienced with customs and the airport officials in my head.
I had journalled at the boarding gate. This trip was going to be the one that would break me out of my writing hiatus. I would journal every day. I told myself this was not going to be like my Cape Town trip where I felt overwhelmed upon my return because I had experienced a lot and didn’t know where to start.
It was going well. I had started my adventure on the plane with Young Sheldon on the little screen in front of me. I was by the window, and felt very accomplished in how I had managed the whole planning for this trip, from the e-visa to booking my flights, and even checking in online and getting a window seat without paying extra for it. I reached for the rest of my Loacker wafers, pouring the mini biscuits into my mouth with each wave of guilt. When did I start eating sweets? How do I break out of this habit?
My seat partner smiled at me sweetly as she asked where I was from.
‘Nigeria,’ I replied, my voice heavy with caution. This caution stemmed from a sense of self-preservation. At first, I wondered why she was talking to me—did she want something? Why was she being so sweet? It came from receiving countless pieces of advice from family to be wary of strangers, especially when travelling on a plane: to act cautiously with people who seem nice and not let my eyes wander away from my luggage in case they put something in my bag. It was this caution that answered first; the second voice that answered was more intentional.
‘What about you? Where are you from?’
‘Zimbabwe,’ she responded.
Then she turned to the person beside her and spoke a string of sentences in a foreign language. I suspect they came together.
There were only two episodes of Young Sheldon in the programme loaded on the TV. I watched both, then started watching Bob Hearts Abishola while side-eyeing the plane attendants pushing trays of food. I had planned to continue watching my Chinese series, but wanted to eat the food first before using the tray for my laptop. I was also starting to feel sleepy.
I caught myself falling asleep, but woke up immediately to find the food server still walking about the aisle with trays in hand. He had not served my seat yet. I didn’t want a repeat of my Cape Town experience where I fell asleep briefly on the plane from Cape Town to Johannesburg, only to find the server had skipped my seat to serve other people. My seat partner then wasn’t as nice as my seat partner on the plane from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, who shook my shoulders hard to collect my food. Anyway, I digress, but if there’s anything this proves, it’s my love for food, and perhaps maximising the value of every expense I make.
The warm towel came first. I cleaned my hands with it.
The food came next. It was white rice and beef sauce as the main dish, an almost half-serving of yellow cake for dessert, and a wrapped something that looked like bread dipped in white sesame seeds wrapped in cellophane. The smell of the sauce hit me before I saw it, and it didn’t smell like something I would like to eat. Yet, I ate it. Very carefully, I put one beef in my mouth, then another. It tasted awful.
I continued eating: beef, then rice, then sauce. The rice had some black coating on top of it that made it look like the crust of a burnt pot, though I believe, if I had investigated further, I may have found it to be black sesame seeds. I bit into the cake, but I couldn’t take a second bite. I was done with the food. At least, I ate all of the rice and beef, but not the pastries.
I found myself dozing again, then I caught a shadow of my neighbour’s hand handing my tray to a server. I don’t remember anything else until I awoke with the oddest feeling in my body.
My body felt listless and restless, caught between heaviness and a frantic urge to move. It felt as though something had changed in the air, like the air around me had thinned. It started to feel like I wasn’t getting enough air to breathe.
I suddenly became frighteningly conscious of the small space I was in, and needed to reach out for relief. But I wasn’t gasping for air, no. My stomach felt queasy, like something was caught in it and I needed to fart to release it, so I did. Panic clawed at me, insidious. Unrelenting.
I don’t remember why I was holding my stomach and tapping at the window, or why I was incredibly aware of the amount of time it would take to land. I glanced at the clock on my neighbour’s screen—it was 1:35 AM.
Time stretched, distorted.
I brought out my laptop and switched on the show I had downloaded to watch on the flight. Maybe I needed to focus on something else. The characters on the show felt small, and as I focused on their dialogues, the incredible urge to vomit and fart became overwhelming.
I shut my laptop and put it in my bag. The cord connecting my phone to the port on the TV screen was getting in my way, so I yanked it with my phone and threw both in my bag. I didn’t check if my phone’s battery was full. Everything was getting in my way, and the space was becoming incredibly smaller.
Perhaps, walking would make it better. I could get some air, or I might induce myself to vomit. I thought perhaps it was the food I ate, and maybe I was allergic to something in it, so vomiting could make everything better. It took a while for me to stand. I remember standing, then sitting, then experiencing it all again.
I looked to my right to find my seat partners sleeping. I don’t know how long it took me to bring myself to decide to go to the restroom. I tapped on my seat partner’s shoulder, and in a voice so alien from mine, whispered ‘I want to go to the restroom.’
She mumbled something back in a sleepy voice. I don’t remember her standing, but I remember standing, looking at the profiles seated on the plane.
They danced in circles. The world was spinning around me, and everything was beginning to close in on me. I thought if I could just walk to the restroom and put my finger in my mouth, then…
The next thing I remember, I looked up and saw my seat partner standing, looking quizzically at me. She said something to the other lady about already reaching out to ‘them.’ I don’t know what she was talking about. Then she said to me, ‘Maybe you’d like to sit here.’ ‘Here’ meant the other lady’s seat. I didn’t understand why she’d say that. I looked up again, and cast a lazy glance at where I was and realised I was in my seat partner’s seat. On my way to the toilet, I had slumped in her seat. I also don’t remember how I switched back to my seat.
But I remember falling in and out of sleep after this had happened and thinking, pondering over this experience that drew the life out of me. I sat still for a very long time.
When I awoke, it felt like I had been through something—like something big and unusual had hit me. Whatever it was, it was unsettling. I do not know how someone full of life could be so out of it in an instant. How had everything come undone in such a short moment? I wondered if this was what mortality felt like. An overwhelming awareness of fragility, of how life can falter in an instant. I waited for my breath, for my body to find me again.
The window was closed. I had shut it earlier in frustration. I cast a glance inwardly to gauge how I was feeling. My body was beginning to come back to me. After what felt like hours, I pulled up the window cover slowly.
The hanging clouds felt quietened. Towards the east lay a serene horizon with soft hues of orange, yellow, and blue blending at sunrise. I wondered if morning had come for me as well, as I reached for my phone in my bag to take a snapshot of this promise. Instinctively, I knew we were about to land; the aircraft felt engaged with activity. I glanced at my seat partner—she seemed to be packing up. My hand still searching in my bag, it suddenly registered in horror that my phone was missing. Panic rose as I feared I had lost it in the chaos. My seat partner smiled at me and asked what I was looking for. I said, ‘My phone.’
She offered suggestions of where it might be and asked if I had searched my bag. I stood up, now fully alert, to search the crevices of my seat, but it wasn’t there. With heightened senses, I suspiciously reached for my bag and searched through it again, and found my phone nestled in my laptop pocket.
‘Found it,’ I said tiredly, glancing in my seat partner’s direction. I owed her an explanation of what had happened with me, so I started with an apology. At the time, I didn’t realise the full extent of what had happened from my seat partner’s point of view. I had a faint memory of sitting in her seat. However, after I had offered my apology, she said they were only worried. Apparently, they thought I had just fallen asleep in her seat. When I asked how long I had been out ‘asleep‘ in her seat, she replied, ’10 minutes.’
As I opened my Notes app to journal about this experience, I thought about the fickleness of time. What is time if not a vessel for our experiences, bending and stretching to our perception, yet steadfast and unyielding as the world spins on, indifferent to our moments of stillness, angst or urgency?
This world is indeed ours; each individual experience adds up to the experience of the greater universe, and if not brought into the experience of another by a will of intention, the world spins on, unaffected, unaware of said experience. My seat partner could have become aware of the severity of the situation if the aircraft had landed and I had still not stirred.
‘Have you fastened your seatbelt?’ my seat partner’s voice snapped me back to reality from my wandering thoughts. I glanced down at my lap and noticed my seatbelt was unfastened.
I wore my seatbelt and prepared for landing.
The winged time traveller 