Last year, I visited South Africa for my first time … actually that was my first visit to the continent of Africa. The purpose for my trip was to present a paper about the integration of culture into United States medical schools. So, the presentation was my primary reason for going to Johannesburg or Jo’burg as the citizens call it. Besides I had talked extensively with a South African who said there was not much reason to go there. She was right, except she didn’t tell me how terrible the airport is!
Our first experience, we fly from Livingstone, Zambia to Jo’burg on South African Airlines [great airline by the way]. Our first signs of trouble started with customs … we were coming from Zambia. Remember, English is the common language spoken in South Africa, but we couldn’t tell from the airport employees, who seemed quite irritated that there were all these people in the airport. And, yes they did speak English. Okay, maybe this was just an example of lazy employees. Practice your maze skills before you go … you will need them if you want to exit the airport. Even as a native English speaker, this is something is I should have done given the poor signage.
So, we finally think that we make it were we need to go and we had, but where are all the taxis … “oh, they can’t come to that part of the airport, you have to use a shuttle and the last one is about to leave,” is what we are told. We honestly did not see any taxis either. So, we have to pay this employee and he gives us a receipt to give to the driver. I thinking, is this a con job, is this guy just taking my money and not going to take me anywhere? A little confusing, no? The ride was not inexpensive either. Well, this is apparently how you get to your destination from Jo’burg International (JNB), since we presented the specific driver we were told to wait for with the receipt and he took us to our destination.
Trying to depart from the airport is even worst!
