Things in Africa Just Don’t Make Sense

Sometimes I’ll tell people that Things in Africa Just Don’t Make Sense, but it’s hard to come up with a specific example. This little incident on my way to Johannesburg is a perfect way to express the aforementioned statement.

Although I have quite a bit of luggage between my camping gear, books, clothes, etc. it’s nothing extravagant since I have to carry everything myself, and it’s certainly not more than what I’ve traveled with in the past. As I was checking in on my South African Airways flight, I was told that I could only have 20 kg worth of check-in baggage (which is essentially the weight of my backpack filled with books and papers). I’ve never heard of this restriction before, and when I demanded to see this in writing, I was told that oh, after all, I was allowed to have two pieces of luggage, each weighing a max of 20kg. My first check-in bag was an enormous duffle bag that weighs next to nothing, because it has my sleeping bag and sleeping pad, pillow, towel, etc. My next check-in piece was my suitcase, which is pretty heavy and checked in at 23kg. I was then told that I would have to pay a supplement for excess weight as the suitcase was three kilograms over the allotted 20kg per bag. When I pointed out that my previous bag had only weighed six kilos, and that combined with my suitcase I was well under the allotted amount of 40kg, this failed to make an impression on the lady who told me that I would still have to pay a supplement because my suitcase was three kilos over the allotted weight. Our heated discussion caught the attention of a supervisor, and I told him my reasoning along with the fact that I could have just taken out 3kg worth of stuff from my suitcase and exchanged this with stuff from the duffle bag. However, the duffle bag had already been sent down the conveyer belt and the woman said this would have been impossible anyway since the duffle bag was packed to the brim (not understanding that the whole point was to EXCHAGNGE stuff from the two bags, not simply add to the duffle bag).

After much discussion and time spent holding up the line, my bags went through and I didn’t have to pay any fees. Can’t wait to see what else will come up on this trip.