"He's at lunch," said the woman holding my shipment of possessions from Colombia, "I'm sure he'll be done soon."
Rewind.
After landing in São Paulo, successfully navigating customs and retrieving all parcels of luggage, a member of the school welcoming committee took me over to the cargo and shipping building in an attempt to at least locate and confirm that somewhere within the facilities country was the other half of my belongings.
The last memory I had of them was watching as a slatted pick-up truck drove away, swerving to avoid the plethora of potholes multiplying on my quiet street in barrio Limonar.
A visit to the "holding office;" a stop at the Copa Airlines office (after having temporary security photo-ID badges made up at the information kiosk); photocopies of my passport, visa, plane tickets from Minnesota all the way to São Paulo, and the itinerary that at one point in time I flew from Cali to Minnesota, and a few signatures later, we ended back at the "holding office" to be encouraged to "go have a coffee" and come back while they sort out the paperwork.
While the rest of the new import staff and my luggage headed off to Campinas, my director and I stayed to finish the job of freeing my boxes from their forklift-guarded incarceration. Once the paperwork was filed - and our coffee break over - we then had to pay a small ransom processing fee at the bank.
It should be noted that there were several banks on location. At the shipping building. Which is well-separated from the airport and near nothing else. That may not be fair; the loading dock workers probably appreciate all the financial counseling opportunities afforded them right on the job site!
After making bail the payment, the "holding office" said it would be another 30 minutes to an hour to locate the boxes and then pass customs. While I was thrilled they had made good use of their time during the hour we were running around signing, copying, and depositing things, not to mention the week it had been sitting in the warehouse after arriving from a foreign country, I was just happy to be almost reunited.
I was so close!
Enter the previously quoted woman. She is the "gate-keeper," if you will. Seated delicately at her wheely-chair with a look of more authority than anyone behind a press board desk should ever have, this lady and her gun-metal grey scanner determine which packages can be legally liberated from the warehouse. After pulling the car to the loading dock exit, my director and I watched, impressed, as the forklift drivers whipped around the vast shiny concrete floor, easily maneuvering around stacks of boxes, people with a death-wish on foot, and each other much like dragonflies over a pond of newly hatched mosquitoes.
The trance brought on by the dance of the fork-lift drivers was broken when the woman notified us that the driver was coming with the boxes momentarily. Sure enough, they emerged from around the corned! My director left to open the car as the driver stopped and unceremoniously put my plastic bins on the ground behind the gate keeper's desk and drove away.
So. Close.
Turns out the code that someone we met sometime during the previous gincana was supposed to enter, wasn't. And now he is lunching. And because this is Latin America still and no one else can do anyone else's job, we must wait.
As all lunch breaks eventually do, this one too, ended. My things were freed and we began the drive to my new home where I would eventually unpack and consider, whilst unpacking and remembering certain items, whether it was worth the wait. And weight.
