Kids’ Doc in Jos

We’re finally in the US for the first time in nearly 3 years. As you no doubt know if you travel by air, security is definitely improving, at least protecting us from the dangers of shampoo, diaper pins, and nail clippers. To be fair, who knows what some clever hackers might be able to concoct out of those, so we shouldn’t dismiss them. If you think a diaper pin is not dangerous, it just shows that you’re not applying the rule of “think like your enemy,” as the experts do when they make the rules.

I mean, a lone diaper pin might not be hazardous, but what if you have several fellow travelers also carrying them? You could use nail clippers to cut off the sharp, straight shafts of, say, a dozen diaper pins, bond them together with shampoo, or maybe superglue disguised as shampoo, and that would be the start of a dangerous arrow head, still a little too light, maybe, or a blow gun dart. Even that would not be a weapon you’d want to rely on, which just goes to prove that the security program is making it tough for terrorists. But, if you then dipped the safety pin heads into drinking water from Africa, the threat might become more credible. So it’s no wonder that all these things are contraband.

Anyway, we went through security approximately a zillion times (a zillion and one if you count the dog sniffing us at the gate in Frankfurt), considering we were just going from Africa to the US, a single trip, and each time the inspectors caught something suspicious, which shows how alert they are. That each time something different was found proves that they’re not just acting routinely, either.

In Abuja, they spotted the portable hard drive with wires. They also caught the diaper pin on Barb’s purse–she is never without a diaper pin. Kindly, they allowed her to put it into the checked bags since they were still accessible.

In Frankfurt, we got past the sniffing canine and drank our remaining water, but were caught with the shampoo (Barb actually had less than the 3-ounce maximum allowed shampoo, but the nearly-empty 8-ounce bottle was above the limit).

In Munich, it was an LED flashlight that caught the attention, maybe because it has some electronics in the head to keep the intensity steady even as the battery voltage drops. The inspector called the supervisor, and they both tried this and that, but couldn’t get the head off (I don’t think it’s removable). I thought I was going to lose that nice light, but in the end, the team decided it was safe.

Ah, finally in the US, I thought as we walked into the Charlotte airport. Finally a place where I’m a homelander, a citizen, and don’t have to feel guilty about what I might accidentally be carrying or doing. “What animals have you touched?” asked the passport control official. This caught me off guard. I had checked a box something to that effect on one of the forms, but I thought it would be the ag inspectors later who asked about it.

“What animals have you touched?” the inspector repeated.

“Oh, goats, chickens … you know, we were in Africa.” (By the way, that last part violated the first principle of surviving interrogations: don’t answer questions that haven’t been asked). The passport control officer was friendly and did say “God bless you for your work,” (or maybe he didn’t actually use the G word, because his conversations are probably monitored, but that was how we interpreted it).

Now, what do they do if you’ve touched the wrong kind of animal, sometime in the past 3 years? Maybe you have to go into quarantine? I don’t know, but I guess goats and chickens were ok because we got through that part. However, when they found out that we had walked on dirt in Nigeria, they had to disinfect all our shoes. Not wanting to cause any trouble, I didn’t ask about the dirt that might be on our clothes or under our fingernails.

The last hurdle was customs. We were carrying, for another missionary, hand-made quilts by the HIV widows of the Mashiah Foundation, to be sold in the US to help support them. Ah, yes, have to check the “Carrying commercial merchandise” box on the customs form. That led to a long conversation with a friendly customs agent, along the lines of

“So, what’s in the boxes, quilts you say?”

“Yes, quilts and stuff like that.”

“And you’re going to be selling them?”

“No, we’re bringing them for a friend, see, they’re made by HIV+ widows and sold in the US to help support them.”

“It’s another organization that is doing this?”

“Yes, Mashiah Foundation.”

I wrote it down for him and he googled it or something and found their web page.

“And you’re with a different group, or part of that group, or what?”

“We’re in a different group, SIM, and just doing it to help.”

“SIM, what is SIM?”

I was getting the picture that this kind of thing didn’t come up every day at the customs inspection station. Or, maybe, they just needed something interesting and different to do.

“So, who is selling them?”

“Well, we don’t know exactly. They’re going to the person listed here on the box.”

“And what are they all worth? Are the prices marked in dollars or Nigerian money?”

“Well, we don’t know exactly what they’re worth. I think the prices must be marked in dollars since they’re sending them here.”

“OK, take the top box and put it on the counter and we’ll take a look.”

As he was opening the box he asked, “So, how are these going to be sold? On the Internet? Flea markets? A company?”

“Well, we don’t know exactly how they’ll be sold. In churches, I suppose, and maybe the Internet. Maybe to friends.”

He pulled out a couple of quilts. “Hmm, this one says ‘8000′ for the price. That’s not 8000 dollars is it?” He was actually being nice, not needling us; he already had us pegged, I think, as missionary do-gooders, innocent if a little fuzzy-headed.

“Now, I know you’re doing this for a good cause and all, but in the future, be more careful. See, especially in Nigeria, there are many, well, ‘notorious’ people who might try to take advantage. If someone put some contraband in the box and you didn’t know, well, you might end up in a lot of trouble.”

Now, that warning had a certain humorous resonance, the idea of these ladies or one of the workers slipping a little cocaine or a few diamonds in among the quilts and stuffed tree ornaments. On the other, hand, how did we know? < -- Begin totally serious section --> Nevertheless, it’s a very good point, and after watching ‘Lost,’ we should have remembered that even missionaries can be exploited. Not sure how we would have detected, say, cocaine inside a Christmas ornament, so it’s enough to give us the shivers. < -- End totally serious section -->

Finally, the agent decided not to drag out everything, and he tried to find whether these goods were dutiable. Surprisingly, he didn’t just type in something on the computer as he had to find “Mashiah Foundation.” Rather, there were real, live binders of tables and codes. Finding nothing in the first set, he dragged out another. Finally he concluded that handicrafts from developing world countries are duty-free! “If, for example, they were from Europe, that would be different, and you would have to pay duty,” he said, “but Nigeria counts as a developing country, so they’re duty-free.”

We thankfully took the yellow “pass jail and go directly to home” card and walked into “the old country.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Mike's jottings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.