There aren’t a lot of pictures of my Dad and me, so I wanted to get one before leaving the country. My airport chauffeur, “Wizard Dave”, snapped this one before I left this morning. I like to call my personal fashion choice “hobo chic”.
I have to get through three flights and three continents until I reach Cape Town (I am counting North America because it makes my statistics more interesting).
Six years ago I went to Suriname to study monkeys in the rainforest, and we had to bring our own food. This meant lots and lots of cliff bars. Every time I went through security, they pulled out the cliff bars and squeezed them and sniffed them and scanned them and eyed me suspiciously. “It’s food, it smells like peanut butter, I’ll eat one in front of you”, I would explain, repeatedly. Under the scanner, they are probably indistinguishable from hash. This trip I packed some Rxbars to eat on the plane, although I figured those would attract equivalent suspicion, and so far I am correct! My bag was immediately pulled by Pittsburgh TSA and my snacks scrutinized by several TSA agents. “They’re really tasty, you can have one” doesn’t really make you look like less of a drug mule. Going through customs should be fun!
Jen in Africa 