Situation #1

First- character introductions!

Cat: Cat is a human who is looking out for me here in Guinea. She has travelled to Africa several times, though never to to this field site. She is very nice and calm and likable! Oh, and she's from Scotland. 

Matsuzawa: This dude is what it's all about. He is in charge. He is the leader of everything. He is from Kyoto, Japan. The main thing I have to say about him right now (because we haven't gotten to talk a whole lot yet) is that he smiles a LOT. Genuinely. It makes me smile... and not only because smiling is contagious. 

Now- to the story.

We board the plane from Paris to Guinea earlier than the large majority of the passengers. This is because Cat is Cool and has one of those Sky Gold Special Card things. So, we get on. We aren't sitting together, so as she stops to take her seat, I keep walking through towards the back of the plane. I find my seat and take it. Aisle!! Woo!

So, as I'm investigating the provided pillow and blanky- I hear some ruckus.

I look up and forward to see three cops charging down the aisle straight towards me!! It was super obvious that they weren't after me... Because they were carrying a full-grown man hotdog-style. The man was screaming and writhing back and forth! I leaned away from the aisle as they passed so that I wouldn't get kicked in the tooth by his flailing limbs! As the officials struggled to get him down the aisle and into a seat, I noticed that the man's hands AND feet were bound together by zip-ties. What the HECK was this dude so in trouble for!?! Is he dangerous? Did he try to get on the plane with something he shouldn't have? Like what!? Should I run away?? Uh, no- because how would I ever know the answers to any of those questions?

So I sat there, directly diagonal from this screaming/wiggling guy. As in, he was right next to the seat right behind me. 

The dude screamed and screamed. And wouldn't stop fighting back! There were 7 police on him! Meanwhile, I'm just chilling. Eventually I pull out some unsalted almonds to snack on. They had to put the guy in a spit mask!

It got weird when I started noticing that other people were coming aboard the plane... Geez, this dude is fighting all these police! Shouldn't we all be escorted out/saved from harm? Lol no!

So people started coming into the plane... This guy is making all the cops sweat. When the guy would scream, people would look back at him with faces painted with pure horror. Ok, not "pure." There was also some splashes of confusion. 

Oh, keep in mind that all of this is in French! 

So people are like wtf. I'm like wtf. Everyone is like wtf. And then this one girl starts REALLY being like wtf when she realizes that her assigned seat is right in front of the whole shebang! She raises hell, the officials start yelling, and I have no idea what is going on.

Luckily, that's when my neighbor arrives. Name: Cita. I get up to let him in, and guess what- he speaks English!! Yes!! He catches me up to speed! 

Cita tells me that the upset girl is an upset girl because she "paid thousands of dollars for her ticket and now she has to sit next to this dangerous mentally ill man." Oops.

This story makes complete sense at this time because a few moments earlier I witnessed a police officer (the who was in charge of straddling the dude to pin him down) actually unzipped the screamer's two layers of clothing in order to let his body cool down. That's oddly nice of you to do for someone who literally just head-butted you in the face 5 minutes ago.

So the guy was mentally ill. Was he scared of the plane? Was he just having a bad day? What was going to calm him down?

That's when Cita explains to me a rumor that the man was being deported. Whaaaaat. I couldn't believe that one.

But it became more and more clear that this rumor was true! The man was being deported!? All while we are dissecting the  situation, people are filing into the plane. This is when chaos strikes.

Lol that sounds dramatic... But I'm sorta serious! Everyone started screaming! And fighting with the cops, it seemed! I couldn't understand anything. Cita was listening intently, so I didn't wanna bother him too much. I kept hearing one phrase come out of one of the loudest ladies' mouth- "comme ça." Cita said her point was that Guineans don't stand up for each other. That's how they are. But here, they need to stick together! 

Everything was starting to make sense! The Guineans didn't want this man to be deported! I found out after we landed that the French have been getting weird about their deportation procedures, so this was real!!

Ok, to begin to conclude, the SWAT-lookalike team was called in. This whole situation made us an hour late to depart! We couldn't go into the air like that! One or two of the dudes came into the plane... But no one settled down. Meanwhile, official after official kept coming in to tell everyone to PLEASE calm down! 

I forgot!! At one point, a fancy looking dude and a pretty older lady came down from first class and were headin towards the raging deportee. Cita's face lit up! He said the guy was a member of parliament! He said it was the Foreign Minister of Sport! I don't know what his job usually is, but he seemed to think that today it was to calm the rager boy down. Didn't work.

Anyways, finally the captan said that they needed to leave. People finally stopped yelling and clapped when all the police got off the plane. This is what they looked like:

 

Then I guess we flew to Guinea.

That was fun.

We are at a hotel tonight. The drive up here was extremely interesting... Reminded me a little tiny bit of India. It's hot. We drove for maybe 20 minutes at around 10:00 pm.

The biggest difference that I noticed about the area was that it was so DARK. There just weren't a lot of lights! So many people... Darting in and out of traffic with and without a vehicle. People were selling all kinds of things next to the airport. This is going to be an interesting trip.