"Ms. Bitter von Barren? Party of One?"

So here’s the thing. If you’re expecting one of my typical mildly sarcastic yet often insightful, nay, borderline inspirational blog posts, you might want to check back some other time. At the moment, I’m writing this missive while seated in “Aerogare Deux, ‘all Eff” of Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. It is 8PM on Wednesday.....just about the time I was supposed to be making my descent into Jomo Kenyatta Airport outside Nairobi.

Instead, because of the pin-headed incompetence of Northwest KLM staff at Dulles Airport, I missed the connecting flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi this morning. Apparently, some folks who had checked in for my flight didn’t show up, but two other folks who hadn’t checked in did, and they couldn’t decide whose luggage to remove and whose to keep. Two hours later, we finally pulled out onto the runway, where one of the plane's computer systems failed to boot. So we had to pull back into the gate and get that taken care of. An hour later, we were finally underway.

By that point I pretty much knew I’d miss my connecting flight out of Amsterdam. We had been scheduled to land at 7:30 AM on Tuesday and my Nairobi flight was supposed to leave at 10:30 AM. Even with all the excellent headwinds the sniveling,lying weasel of a head flight attendant promised, sure enough, the Nairobi flight had departed 10 minutes before our plane touched down. This was more than a little irritating, even BEFORE the blatant disrepect that immediately followed.

First, one of KLM’s European branch of the Pinhead Employees Local 101 suggested that instead of staying at the gate to re-ticket, where I was about 6th or 7th in line, I should walk over to gate T-9 for immediate service. Of course I got to T-9 and the line stretched almost to the Basque Separatist region of Spain.

Stalking back over to where I began in the first place, I fought back an overwhelming urge to just fling down my backpack and start kicking and howling like a sleep deprived 2 year old. Why had I listened to that Teutonic twit rather than trusting my own instincts and staying put?? And why couldn’t I have gotten the 7 hour layover returning from the US that I’d had going??

Instead, I steeled myself to wait for an evening flight to Nairobi. By the time I got back to the gate, I even brightened a bit, because the two older, smartly dressed French women right in front of me had just received 50 Euro travel vouchers for their inconvenience, and they’d been on the same flight as me. Hey, in this totally fucked global economy, 50 Euros ain’t nothing to sneeze at.

So imagine my surprise when, after requesting rebooking on the next Nairobi flight, a tall blond young Dutch woman looked up from her computer, gave me what had to be Amsterdam's version of the stinkeye, and asked why I had missed the connection.

At first, I thought maybe there was some sort of language barrier or something. How many people willingly miss a leg of long-haul international travel? It’s a good bet that 8 out of 10 times, a person misses a connection because their flight was delayed. And besides, I had the sneaking suspicion that the two French women hadn’t been asked why they had missed their flight.

My next thought was, "Oh no this heifer did NOT just ask me that!" My jaws were already tight, but my neck was getting ready to start pivoting like a ball in a socket joint when the agent punched in a few codes and came up with another flight for me. OUT OF FUCKING PARIS. WHICH I JUST FUCKING FLEW OVER TO GET TO FUCKING AMSTERDAM. Again, exerting astounding self-control, I resigned myself to yet another delay. And I waited. For a "Thank you for your patience." For a travel voucher and an apology for my inconvenience. What I got was a 5 minute phone card good only for use in Schiphol airport, a 10 Euro voucher that would buy me an espresso and maybe half a sandwich, and a totally dismissive glance as the agent reached around me to try and help the next person in line.

To the bottom of my toes, I KNOW Black Americans are often perceived as being too sensitive about race, and that nothing in the above described scenario automatically indicated racist intent by the harried ticket agent. But I am equally convinced that the only reason that woman treated me with such brusque contempt was because I was black. And by that point, I was a Black Bitch about to set it OFF up in Schiphol Airport.

I channeled my crispest NPR tones when I asked, “Excuse me, but where is your manager?” As she stuttered and tried to come up with some other dismissive reply, I barked, “Get him or her over here NOW!” The girl finally sensed the roiling hormonal stew that was about to scald her ass with toxic venom and scooted away to find a supervisor.

When that woman arrived, I explained the situation calmly yet authoritatively, and ended by asking them how else was I suppose to interpret two white women on the same plane as me getting travel vouchers for missing their plane and me pretty much being urged to “Be gone, dusky wench?”

Once again, more murmuring and “Well, umm, Madam" 's,” and by that point I knew there was a good chance this scenario would end with me being arrested for creating an international incident, so I just walked away. The ONLY bright spot of my entire day so far occurred when the same rude young counter agent came running up behind me with a 50 Euro travel voucher. I summoned the grace to thank her, but why did it have to get to that point?

I mean, what else can I conclude when I know Africans are pretty much roundly reviled in many European countries, and I’m sure that with my funny hair and dark skin, I was just getting a dose of what they endure on a daily basis. Was I expecting too much to think that my American accent would absolve me from that?

Even though my head was throbbing by that point, I managed a few fitful hours sleep in one of Schiphol’s surprisingly comfortable long haul loungechairs before heading to the Paris departure gate. That’s where I was told there was only a 40 minute window between my arrival in Paris and the departure of the Nairobi plane. Fortunately, when I got to Paris, the plane had been delayed.

Unfortunately, that didn’t really matter because it was nearly full, and all they could do was put me on Stand-By. No guarantee of a seat, no priority waiting list. If I don’t get on this plane, I’ll have to cop a squat on some hard-assed bench and wait til tomorrow morning to leave.

You know, come to think of it, maybe I brought all this bad travel Karma onto myself. It could have started Monday afternoon at the spankin’ new Safeway store next to the NPR building in DC. It was about 2:30 PM, and I was ordering one last Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte for the road. I’d strolled down the wide, clean, familiar store aisles, marveling at how many chemical additives Americans can cram into a wide variety of foodstuffs. But mostly, I was overwhelmed by nostalgia and sadness, ‘cause I was leaving “home” once again.

I was also looking for dried mushrooms to take back to Nairobi, because other than your basic button or occasional Portobello, you just don’t get much multiculti-mushroom action over there. But it turns out they were way too expensive to make it worth the effort, so I took a pass. While I stood at the Starbucks counter, these two women queued up behind me. They were both in their early 30’s, I’d say, and one was pushing a wagon with this teensy, “fresh out the oven” infant squirming in a safety seat. The other woman had had her baby 6 months ago, and so they were trading new mother stories, laughing and giggling and sharing knowing intimacies as only smug-assed breeders with supportive, loving husbands can do.

And there I stood, a dried up old maid looking for dried mushrooms to take on her 8,000 mile journey away from all that’s familiar and comforting and soothing, and where she not only won’t ever conceive a child, but there’s a deadlock certainty that for the next 8 months of her fellowship, she won’t even get laid, and she’ll be lonely most of the time, and mosquito-bitten and hot flash-y for most of the rest of the time, and WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE???

I mean, journalistic fulfillment is one thing, but what about "the rest of the story"????

You know, the most amazing part of this screed is that I'm not even P-M-S-ing. Anyway, my battery's running out. Let's hope I get on this plane, or you'll probably be seeing me on CNN soon.