Three Hours in O.R. Tambo Airpor

“Wake up，Dan, we’ve arrived now,” Lei shook me gently and whispered, with his body slightly leaning to me.

I woke up with eyes glazing. People seated around had already stood up to reach their luggage while the front row passengers were going out of the cabin one by one. Slight noises of the suitcase wheels rubbing against the carpet were rather clear in the small confined space. Sweet voices of the stewardess came into ears from time to time, “Thanks for taking air Namibia, bye bye….”

I quickly stood up. Lei had taken our two packsacks out of the overhead compartment, and for the other two check-in luggage,“they must be on their way to the carousel now”. I thought to myself and joined the waiting crowd on the narrow aisle.

The cell phone, which was just turned on, said it’s 7:30 in the evening. The Flight SW 737 was about half an hour earlier than expected arriving at O.R. Tambo Airport. After a 4-day trip in Namibia traveling from place to place, satisfied but tired, we couldn’t wait to go back home to lie in our cosy sofa.

Run to the passport control

The minute we went out of the cabin, I gave a wink to Lei, “Let’s go.”

“Of course,” he blurted out.

It seemed like it had been discussed, we started to trot in the airport immediately.

It’s a tacit understanding between us. We found once the plane landed, the most time-consuming part before you could leave the airport was waiting in a long queue at the immigration control. If you were in the front, things became much different. Upon there, you could call your friends or the Uber driver waiting for you in the parking lot, “I am coming out, in several minutes.” Therefore, when we were in a hurry home, we would say, “Let’s go” and rushed ahead of the crowd.

There were not too many passengers that day.Trotting through some people down to the not so wide corridor, we ran in the grand hall. My body was almost bent with the heavy packsack waggling on my back, in which were my vacuum cup, a makeup bag, a selfie stick, a Canon camera, and a thick coat.

We stood on the descending escalator and the immigration control was right down in front of us.

“Nobody was there! We’ll be the first two to go through. Yeah yeah” I said to Lei in a triumphant tone.

“Great, but take care of your steps” He looked a little weary.

At that time, Lei’s friends, a couple who were Han and Sun, had already on their way to the airport to pick us up. We would be home in no time. The sweet apartment, the cosy sofa, I am coming!

“I can’t let you go”

“No, I can’t let you go.” The immigration official looked at me in the eyes and said.

“Give me a chance. It’s my fault that I neglected it. Give us a hand and let us go, please.” I begged him.

He shook his head.

“It’s all our faults. We’ll be very careful next time. I worked here in Johannesburg for a Chinese company and she came from China two weeks ago to visit me. I just took her to Namibia for a holiday and she will come back to China several days later. We are not stowaways but good persons. We have no other purposes. Please help us with some solutions.” Lei said calmly.

The official raised his chin, indicating that other passengers were waiting and waved his hands to let us go off.

We walked aside and decided to talk to him after all the passengers left.

 

The visa

Just several minutes ago, I came to the immigration control happily. The official, whose appearance I couldn’t remember now, was chatting to his colleague sitting behind the next window in a local language, both of whom were in their dark blue uniforms.

“Good evening, officer.” I said first.

“Good evening, madam.” I expected a reply but there wasn’t.

I handed him my passport through the small window,thinking, “That’s all right. I just want to get my passport stamped. I just want to go home now.”

He flipped the passport pages with his elbows resting on the desk. Having found the certain page, he stopped flipping and turned the passport upside down to look at.

He then held the passport much closer, which almost touched his eyes.

Two minutes passed. The passengers behind us followed up one after another.

Lei stood after me. We became a little impatient.

“You can’t enter our country.” Just as I was about to say something, the official handed the passport back to me.

“Say again?” Lei leaned over my shoulder and asked unbelievably.

“She can’t go. She has no visa.”

“What? Isn’t the visa on the page? I applied for it in Beijing before I came here.” I blurted out while Lei took the passport out of my hands to check.

'How can I go abroad without a visa? I am not fool.I heard before it’s not easy to get through the immigration control in South Africa. Some officers would ask you for money. Fortunately, Lei is here. He has stayed in South Africa for more than a year… ' In a moment, so many things came into my mind before the officer said “It’s a single entry visa. You already used it on September 25th. I’ve checked the seal.”

Lei showed me the passport and pointed out the words on it “No. of Entries: Single”.

God!

Single?! How did that happen?

We were going to Cape Town the next morning. The flight tickets, the hotels, the car and the photographers, all had been booked. What’s more, most of them were not refundable. Then you told me my visa was single and I couldn’t enter the country?!

Oh my god! How could I make such a stupid mistake!!!

Oh! I had never taken “No. of Entries” into consideration and Lei was also not aware of the problem at all because he had a long-term visa. We neglected this completely!

What should I do? Who could help us? I was a little crazy.

Lei’s cell phone was ranging.

It’s Han. He had arrived at the airport. Lei told him briefly what had happened and let him go home. It’s already 8 o’clock in the evening and we barely knew where things would go next.

I told myself I must calm down.

Finally, the passengers had all left. We went tothe official again.

“Officer, please help us. How can we go in? Whatcan we do now?” I almost burst into tears.

“You will not enter South Africa. You can go back China or go to Mauritius. There you don’t need a visa.” He said ‘.

Lei began to make phone calls, to whomever he thought could help.

One of his colleagues suggested me to cry in front of the official. Another one said we should bribe the official. A friend who worked in the Chinese embassy in South Africa told us “It’s impossible to enter without a visa. I’ve seen cases like this; you are not going to make it.” Some just comforted us but didn’t know what to do either.

Actually, we were even depressed. We didn’t think crying would arouse any sympathy from the stubborn official. For bribery, it’s a wrong thing itself. Once we did that, we would be in the wrong side completely and it would kill all the other possibilities. We didn’t want to take the risk.

Somehow, we came up with an idea. There was a flight from Hong Kong about 6 o’clock every morning, in which most of the passengers were Chinese. We would not stand out in those passengers in the queue and maybe some other officials would not notice the visa problem. So we decided to wait overnight in the airport and try our luck the next morning.

But we didn’t want to just wait. We must try to do something to help ourselves. “We may try to find another government official to talk with. Maybe someone could help,” I suggested.

We walked around in the airport to anywhere that we could go, to find a government or airport office, up and down, left and right. Unfortunately, it turned out there was none of them.

It’s almost 8:30 at the moment. The hall was empty with only several cleaners and airport workers, one of whom, a young man, came to us and said "Don’t wander in the hall" We told him our experience in order to gain some help. However, what he said was “ You two are not permitted to stay here anymore. Go out or go to the transfer.”

Excuse me? Go out? I would definitely go if I could!

He then drove us to the transfer aisle, without any sympathy.

The angels

There was a same barrier as the one in the immigration control down in the aisle. A plump woman in uniform was sitting there, doing nothing.

An official! We ran fast in no time to her just like finding a life ring when drowning in the water.

We told her the story. We told her we would be married soon and we were going to take some photographs in Cape Town to show on our wedding ceremony. We told her we two were apart in Beijing and Johannesburg and seldom saw each other. So we didn’t want our plan for the reunion days to be disrupted. We told her all the things in detail and begged her to help us.

She listened to and nodded her heads every now and then, seemed so moved.

Shen congratulated our upcoming wedding ceremony but said slowly and calmly, “There’s a hotel in the transfer area. You can go in and have a rest there.”

What?! Going into the transfer area meant that you had already left South Africa and could not come back to the hall any longer!

We didn’t want to talk with her anymore, though she kept asking us to go in.

Not knowing what to do, we hesitated before the barrier. It’s 21:00 pm in the night. We should have been in the cosy at home,however…..

Somehow, a man appeared in the aisle. He came to the lady official and chatted with her.

I had a glance at him, short, chubby, in a black fur coat. Actually, we didn’t take him, a man who was not in a uniform, seriously at all. Lei was on the phone with his friend about our situation, I was about to go downstairs back to the immigration control to have a look at what happened there.

“Hey, girl...” All of a sudden, the lady official called me and pointed at theman, “Follow him.”

Before I said anything, the man started to go.

I didn’t remember what I was thinking at the moment. Or I even didn’t have time to think. I just pulled on Lei’s arm and walked with the man.

Down to the escalator, we were back on the floor of immigration control. He led us into an office at the corner of the hall, which you could hardly find by yourself because there was not any sign there. Not any.

Several small rooms were inside. Many people in uniforms were there, as well as some equipment, kinds of monitors or something.I couldn’t remember exactly. Inside one room there were some passengers, most of whom looked like Indians and Arabs. They sat on the chairs, with some opened luggage scattering on the ground.

It must be the office we looked for a while ago. I thought.

The black-coat man took our passports and went out of the room.

He never came back.

If I knew that at the moment, I would say thanks a thousand times when he looked at us and said “You two wait here for a moment. Don’t move”.

“Thank you, gentleman.” However, I never had the chance to say that.

About a quarter later, a tall strong official came and gave back our passports. He was in the dark blue uniform and looked like a leader.

Then he asked us to go out with him. Another thin official came along.

He took us back to the immigration control and led us into the passage for South African citizens. We stopped at one of the windows. The official sitting behind the window walked out and the thin official stepped inside and sat down.

“Give your passport to him.” The tall official said.

I handed it to the official inside.

“Peng, peng.” I heard the beautiful sound of theseal being pressed down on the passport, finally. I could go into South Africa.I could go back to our home in Sandton, Johannesburg, again.

Lei shook hands firmly with the official andexpressed his sincere gratitude.

And I, couldn’t help shedding tears.

“Thank you, thank you so much.” I said to the tall official and we hugged each other.

His hug was so warm. Then he tapped me on my shoulder and said softly, “I saw your husband’s passport will not expire before April in 2019. You can apply for a long-term visa, I think. Then you can come to visit him in our country whenever you want.”

“I will”, I nodded my head, “A thousand thanks to you.”

“Please could you also express our sincere thanks to the man in black coat? We really appreciate his help. But we even didn’t know his name.

He didn’t tell us the man’s name but said, “Definitely”.

We made a call to Han and Sun, “We are in South Africa now. Could you please come to the airport and pick us up?”

“What? What do you mean by saying you are in South Africa? You mean the passport control let you two go in finally, without a visa?”

“Yes, that’s it”

“Oh, my god! Of course we will come. No problem. But, what on earth happened? How have you made it?”

“We just met angels.”