New airport security measures are taking effect all over the world, not just in the United States–and let me tell you, it’s making for some surreal moments.
Just the other day I got off a Copa Airlines flight from Panama to Guatemala only to be greeted by a herd of shaggy drug- and bomb-sniffing German shepherds–and a seven-piece marimba band.
As our baggage looped around the carousel, the dogs, hauling their green uniformed handlers around on short leashes, scrambled over the bags, sniffing. Nearby, the stony-faced marimba players pounded out a highlands tune, beside a sign identifying them as part of the airport’s “public works” program.
I had to smile. If you’re going to risk being wrestled to the ground by a trained German shepherd, nothing quite adds to the moment like a state-sponsored marimba number.
Actually the Latin Americans airways have been remarkably pleasant since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most flights are largely empty, leaving the few remaining passengers with room to stretch out. Lines at the check-in counter are short, and your favorite choice among the inflight meals is always available.
The new carry-on rules, however, take a little adjustment. As a more-than-frequent flier I rarely travel with more than a regulation-size carry-on bag and my computer case. This combination has worked all over the world for years and lets me skip the baggage claim wait.
No more. Now a good selection of what I usually stuff in my carry-on must be checked. Fingernail clippers? Can’t go carry-on. Nor can tweezers or the set of jeweler’s screwdrivers I use to fix my glasses and computer.
Even worse, batteries aren’t allowed in the cabin anymore. That means my camera, my little travel alarm clock, my mini-flashlight, my tape recorder and a half-dozen other small items now have to be checked–or I have to painstakingly remove the batteries at each airport, chuck them out and then buy new on the other end, an expensive proposition.
Right now I’m thankful they haven’t yet made a fuss over my laptop computer battery.
I’m also going to have to rethink my toiletries. The metal-handled hairbrush, which now sends anxious X-ray agents digging into my bag, has to go. So do the various metal cosmetics containers. Plastic is de rigueur.
I can’t say I’ve exactly made things easy on myself on this most recent trip, the first since the attacks. While not thinking clearly I bought an enormous bow and set of handmade arrows in the jungles of Panama.
Afterward I had them wrapped in a long cardboard tube, and hauled them to the airport. I was met with arched eyebrows at check-in.
“What’s that?”
“It’s, ah, well, I guess you’d say it’s Indian artisania.”
“What exactly?”
“Ah, well, sort of arrows and spears.”
Weapons. What could I have been thinking? Anyway, it eventually got on the plane, after the agents X-rayed it and then disdainfully dropped it on the luggage conveyor.
My passport is a harder problem to solve. For the last year I’ve been working much of the time in Cuba, and my now-thick passport is jammed with Cuban visas, as well as a sea of other stamps from all over the world.
In Panama City, as I was preparing to take a small plane north to see the Naso Indians, a immigration officer walked up and asked to see my passport.
“But I’m not flying out of the country,” I protested. Still, I handed it over.
For the next 20 minutes he thumbed carefully through the pages of colorful stamps from places as farflung as Paraguay and China. He paused for a long time at the Cuban visas.
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
“I’m a journalist.”
He gave me a long, somewhat skeptical look.
“For what medium?”
The questioning went on a while, until finally he thanked me, handed the passport back and went on his way. I sat feeling an odd sense of guilty relief, thankful that at least I hadn’t been to Iraq or Libya lately.
For the most part, the new tighter security isn’t very different from what’s been going on in conflict-ravaged Colombia or other hot spots of the world for years. I remember standing in an airport line in Berlin 15 years ago as the passengers in front of me were grilled in detail–all in German. I frantically searched the darkest recesses of my mind for long-lost high school German vocabulary, then was relieved when the agent, after a glance at my passport, launched his barrage at me in English.
The new security rules amount to the same kind of thing–and passengers are accepting them with grace and courtesy. Fliers who once would have howled at being thoroughly patted down are now keeping a stiff upper lip. On a recent flight, I had to show my passport five separate times before getting on the plane, had my carry-on and checked bags thoroughly and wasn’t given my gate assignment until the moment before the flight boarded.
I smiled through it all. It’s the only sane thing to do.
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Laurie Goering, senior Latin American correspondent for the Tribune, is stationed in Mexico City and Havana.
