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There's my next idea for a film (obviously following the snakes on a plane theme), but first lets start with the journey to Nigeria.

From Cape Town to Lagos, you need to connect in Johannesburg. Seems fairly straight forward you would think. Well, first problem was that I got stuck in loop in the domestic terminal and only after walking a full circuit of the airport did I realize that the sign saying “all departures” really meant all domestic departures. In fairness, it should have been obvious as they do color code the airplane symbols - yellow for domestic and green for internation. Stupidly I was just reading the words though and hadn't stopped to work out their code.

OK - after walking what seemed to be miles, mainly because it was hot I ended up in a building site which was, in fact, the international terminal. Bit of development going on. After stepping past people that were working - well, supposed to be working, but they seemed more occupied with watching all the people trying step over their equipment that doing any work - we got to the check in desk.

Already checked in, so zipped past that bit and onto security. Straight through there. The metal detector beeped as I walked through, but nobody seemed to be worried about that so I just picked up my stuff and carried on to passport control. This is where things went (to use a technical term) tits up! The passport controller shook my passport trying to get something out of it, then turned to me and said “I can't find your residency card” so I appologized and handed him my green card. It was confusing me as to why a) he needed to see it and b) how he knew I was not a UK resident; but not worth the arguing so I gave it to him. “Not that, your South African residency card” he replied. Becoming more confused I told him that I was not a resident of South Africa. Apparently, according to this chap, you need a visa to get into South Africa - I think it's one of those things that they give you, then they take back when you leave. Well, I didn't know that and was not given one when I entered the country. This seemed to be my fault - he kept telling me I should have asked for one and that I was in the country illegally.

Next, I did one of those things where you think you're going to help yourself and you're actually making it worse. I told him (which is all true) that I had been pulled out of the queue on entry, on account of the fact that I'm disabled and sent to a separate line with the residents and maybe nobody had told the person on that line what the procedures were. I then produced my customs entry form and told him that nobody seemed to want to collect this from me. (This is one of those forms that you need to declare stuff on when entering the country). When I produced the form, he just looked at me and said “you're here illegally and I need to take you to the office to sort this out.”

Not good at the best of times, but, as I pointed out to him, I only had 10 minutes before my plane started to board. Obviously then next thing he saw fit to do was to start explaning things to me in a language other than English - maybe Afrikaans, I don't know, but I didn't understand it.

So, we march off across the airport to “the office” when he just turns round and walks back telling me to carry on. I said I didn't know where the office was and this seemed to annoy him further as I just got a barrage of non English back at me. Anyway, he wandered back to log off from his terminal, came back and picked me up, took me to the office. After being asked a bunch of the same questions by more people, particularly the “why didn't you get a visa when you came into the country?” which after telling them that they didn't give me one, they created one for me, gave it to me, then took it back.

Hopefully this hasn't put me on some watch list or anything as I have to go back in a couple of days.

Anyway, hurried along to the plane. The sign said it was boarding, but the sign just comes up with that based on the time - nothing to do with whether or not the plane is actually boarding. Talked to the person on the desk to be informed that the plane was delayed on account of the fact that they had parked it on top of a bees nest and the bees had come out and onto the plane. This is an airport where you walk onto the tarmac and climb the stairs to get onto the plane - not one that you walk across a jetty from the terminal.

Thankfully that was the last bit of fun. After that it was plane sailing and I'm now here in Nigeria. Just about to head off out.