Najwa’s First International Journey

After moving back to the states in the early 1990s, I haven’t been out of the country. Not even to the islands. Nduku, a traveler, had a remedy. Why not take a trip across the planet to the middle east to visit her sister. Dubai sounds like a lovely place, so why not?

I have to admit. There was that nervous excitement brewing inside of me. It had been a very long time since I took a very long flight and I don’t even remember it. I was looking forward to it, but I have to say, there was a huge part of me that was already missing Washington, DC.

I mean, it’s the greatest place to be in the whole wide world. Nduku may disagree [I’m working on it], but how can you ever want to leave such a beautiful city!?

It didn’t take long before it dawned on me that having a two year old on a 14-hour flight was going to be a challenge. Maybe it was the weirdness of her new environment. Maybe her ears were popping. Maybe she wasn’t used to having absolutely nothing to do. But Najwa made it known that she had a lot of energy and nothing to do with it.

Fortunately, we handed her something to read that seemed to capture her attention for a moment. Forget that she can’t read yet and that the magazine was upside down.

Slowly, though, she got sleepy. We weren’t the only ones relieved. Everyone in coach and probably even first class let out a sigh of relief.

Finally, though, we landed. At Heathrow Airport anyway. First stop: bathroom. In America you’ll find signs such as bathroom, restroom or even WC. People will call it the latrine, the john, maybe even the loo if we wanted to sound British. But in England, they skip right to the reason why you’re there — toilets.

Airplane food isn’t quite Michelin-rated, so we looked for a place to grab a bite to eat. Our waitress looked just like Minnie Driver and it wasn’t because we were in England, but because she looked just like Minnie Driver. And sounded like her!

Though our bodies were a few hours behind, the sun was rising so we got breakfast. I ordered the basics: eggs, bacon and toast.

When Minnie brought me a plate of ham, I was a bit annoyed. Maybe it was the flight, maybe the struggle to get Najwa to fall asleep just to see she was getting her energy back, maybe it was because I really wanted bacon, but being served some ham really bothered me.

But to make it worse, Nduku had to explain to me that in America, we burn the sh!t out of our meat. We make it crispy and greasy. I was confused because that’s what bacon it. She had to explain to me to that for the rest of the world, bacon looked like what we call ham.