Life on the Lamb

Every time I'm returning from out of the country and the plane wheels touch down, I'm so grateful to be home. I love my country. As I walk off the plane I see signs of organization and order. Moral and good people who are for the most part considerate and kind...

But then I enter into another world known as customs. I've certainly never enjoyed my experience working my way through the netherworld of customs, but tonight as I attempted to navigate my way through the chaos, it was a much different experience than I have had the pleasure of expereincing.

I'm always afraid I'm going to say some bad terrorism buzz word that will get me thrown into prison for years. I just try to answer questions in the most direct way possible - but something went drastically wrong this evening.

As I waited in line, the lady in front of me, on her way up to the official, invites her entire family in the back of the line to come join her. And as much as that stuff frustrates me, we had plenty of time to kill before our next flight, so I waited until her crew was through and told Douglas I would meet up with he and Pastor Caleb (a haitian american pastor friend) on the other side of the glass.

I finally made my way up to the official and was asked three questions: where were you born, where are you coming from, did you ever live in Indiana... I answered them and packed up to be on my way - however, he said that I needed to follow a customs office for further questioning.

The official led me down a long hallway and into a rather small(ish) room packed with about 250-300 people. As I looked around I noticed that I was one of the only caucasian-americans in the room. The official who led me into the room, turned around quickly and left through another door. As I opened the door to follow him, other officials communicated very clearly that I was not to go in "that" room and that I needed to wait in "this" room.

There was another official who was standing on his chair yelling (literally) at the crowd to make some space at the front of the room (which was really humorous because of 1-the size of the room and 2-the amount of people crammed into this small space. I asked the man yelling at the room if my name will be called or if I was supposed to wait for someone. He shot me a dirty look and said, "I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR YOU!" Because they had my passport, I found a seat near the back of the room and tried to figure out what was going on. I found a couple people who spoke english and found out that they had been in there for anywhere between 3 & 5 hours, and since I had a plane to catch in 3 hours, I was getting very nervous. I sent Douglas a text as quickly as I could so I wouldn't have my phone "confiscated", and told him I might not be making the next flight with him.

After about an hour of waiting, a man came in and asked if anyone in the room was in transit and hadn't already missed their flight. Three of us shot up our hands, but because they had actually already missed their flight, I was directed to come to the front. He asked me a few more quick questions then said I could go. I asked him if he would tell me what in the world the problem was. He explained that there was a warrant out for an arrest for a Chris Cox from Anderson, IN (which is where I lived for 4 years) and took them a while to figure out that I was not the one they were looking for. I grabbed my passport and ran out of there as quickly as I could, eventually found Douglas and spent the rest of the time there trying to stop shaking from frustration.

So that was my night last night...how was yours?