I was sitting on the Paris-->Bamako flight (decidedly NOT in business class) and realized just how incredibly steeped in culture things like airplane behavior really are. I was truly amazed at how the man next to me acted, and mostly in an 'anthropologically curious' sort of way but definitely there was a bit of 'super annoyed person in uncomfortably close proximity' layered on top.
I took the overnight NYC to Paris flight which is just full of business people who travel all the time. Everyone had their routines. Everyone knew whether they wanted the express dinner or to be woken up for breakfast. On auto-pilot everyone immediately reclined their chairs the moment the plane leveled off after take off. It was a well-oiled machine of professional travelers.
The aforementioned Paris-->Bamako flight was another story. Now the thing about flights to and from Africa is that a lot of the people on the plane are first-time plane travelers. They also tend to be people coming from places where public transportation accords you much less personal space than I am used to.
If anyone who abides by 'see something say something' was on my plane, they would have called the police 10 times minimum. There was so much seemingly sketchy stuff going on. The guy next to me had a metal suitcase that was wider than his seat that he insisted on keeping on his lap. For the first hour he got up to talk to other people in various locations throughout the plane every 10 minutes or so (which necessitated me getting out of my aisle seat to let him pass). There were a lot of exchanges of small brown packages. What's inside? Who knows? Then the guy next to me just stared in front of him for the rest of the trip. There were personal screens with all sorts of entertainment. There were free headphones with a wide selection of music. There was a pillow and a blanket if one wanted to sleep. But this guy just wanted to stare. So creepy.
But that's the thing- creepy is culturally bound. He didn't make sense on the NY--> Paris flight I just took, but he made perfect sense here. Everyone else was doing the same set of bizarre activities. So I'm the bizarre one in this case.
I'm pretty good at intellectualizing things that annoy me and putting them in my "oh, how interesting" category other than my "grrrr" category. However, disembarking the plane was a bit of a test. I had to tell myself things like "maybe that guy comes from a village where the bus only stops for a few moments at every stop so if you aren't the first person out you can't go home" or "maybe that man is on a plane for the first time and is rushing home to see his dying grandmother" or "maybe he's used to being around people who don't bruise easily". But there is really only so much I can tell myself and I got to the end after the two men on the inside seats actually stepped over me before the plane had finished taxiing, worried that i wasn't going to get out quickly and then proceeded to hit me on the head with both pieces of overhead luggage.
But you know what? I got through customs first bc my inner traveler knew to have a pen, my boarding pass, and my passport handy to quickly fill out the customs card :) So take that iron-elbows! (and I leave the option open that your iron elbows are an adaptation born of necessity).
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