BONES

bush plane heading to Maun and told me to make my own way home from there on Air Botswana.

In Maun I was met by the kindly lady who had been our fixer. She took me home and put me in bed. Twenty minutes later she brought me a steaming bowl of spagbol.

“I’m so sorry,” she said anxiously, “but it’s movie night tonight and it only happens once a month and I’m going stir crazy in this town so I can’t miss it.”

She left. I didn’t mind.

I realised that my left wrist was also broken when I couldn’t hold the fork. So I put my face in the bowl and ate like a dog. Then, drained by the day, I fell back on the pillow and passed out.

My hostess woke me with her screams. She stood by the bed, a living Edvard Munch. She thought my head had exploded while she was at the movies.

She looked closer. “Oh. It’s tomato sauce. Sorry.”

In the morning, I hopped into the Maun airport terminal on one leg. The runway was half-closed for resurfacing so the airline was using only a tiny plane. Two flights came in and the passengers rushed them. No room for me. Sorry.

Sitting in the airport, wondering how to get out of Maun, I heard the distant drone of a six-cylinder Continental aircraft engine. Now lots of planes use “Contis” but I knew, in that second, that it was my pilot father coming to fetch me. And so it was.

I think of that day every time I hear a Continental engine drone overhead. I wish my dad could see me now. “Too soon old and too late smart,” he would say. And he’d be right.

Do you have a funny or quirky story about your travels? Send 600 words to travelmag@sundaytimes.co.za and include a recent photo of yourself.