Babies On Planes

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Up the aisle, a bony man struggles to shove his luggage into the compartment above. His elbows look like a branch off a yellow-bark acacia. If you walked into his elbow by accident you would die from excessive haemorrhage. Feet drag past, down the aisle, searching for their seats, urged along by the severe red-lipsticked smiles of the cabin attendants with their pale faces. Up comes a Somali man with four small girls in tow, him in his baggy trousers, yammering away in staccato Somali. He will later tell me in Doha, as we wait at the threshold of business class for the elites to disembark, that his final destination is Perth, Australia. Who goes to Aussie?

 

There is the usual skirmish of someone who sat in the wrong seat, eyes squint at ticket numbers, a flight attendant intervenes. How hard can it be to find seat 23C when it’s written on both your ticket and the bunker overhead? Finally it’s resolved without teargas. One of them unclips their seatbelt and relinquishes the seat. Muffled apologies are mumbled.

 

Behind them is a wailing baby. An Asian baby. Maybe Indian or Pakistani, modern Asian parents, in any case. The father has a trendy beard which he doesn’t want the baby to ruin, so the mother is carrying the baby. The mother is a thin flower, her long fragile stalk stopping at a bob style-like crown with trendy Ray Bans atop it. She has a small tattoo of a beetle or a ladybird on the sharp edge of her collarbone. Her baby – black curly hair, tiny pencil nose – is screaming at the top of his voice, like he’s being abducted. He has a vein on his forehead. It could be stress. Or a hangover. Or he hasn’t been fed in months. It could be anything.

 

I’m scared of that baby. I’m scared of babies on planes.  

 

I’m thinking, “Lord, could you please not let your screaming baby sit with or near me today?” It’s not a very nice thought for someone with children to think but I think it and I’m almost certain everybody else is thinking it. There is an innate selfishness in people on a plane, they are mothers and fathers and nephews and uncles and nieces but nobody wants to sit next to a passenger with a crying baby. They want that baby to sit in the jump seat in the cockpit. Why not?

 

I take fearful, furtive looks at the baby and what I see doesn’t reassure me; the crying baby looks pissed off. His face seems to be saying, “I’m going to f*** up your flight, all of you smug adults with your novels and Kindles and headphones. You wait! Boy, am I going to scream loud!” The mother transfers him to the other hip and shushes him as she waits in that human jam in the aisle, searching for her seat. Everybody fears her. Even other women.

 

The seat next to me is not occupied yet, and neither are the seats right in front of and behind me, so there is a healthy probability that one of these seats is theirs. I know I was not a good person last week. I forget to pray. I don’t tithe. I make fun of SDAs. I have been saying I will go to a children’s home and give them foodstuff and diapers but I haven’t. Finally it seems God is going to slap me on the wrist. This crying baby is coming my way and he’s more than just a crying baby, he is a punishment.

 

I have not had any luck with babies on planes before.

 

A Kenyan lady from New York  connecting in Amsterdam once sat in the seat in front of me with a baby. Because of the long haul, that baby was literally crying throughout, and boy did that Yankee baby cry?! And he had a loud voice. You know those babies who seem to have broken their voices at four months? That was the New York baby. He hollered loudly for so long and nothing the mom did could soothe him. At one point she held him against her chest to burp him. Have you seen a baby’s face after they have burped? They look guilty. I can also always tell a baby who has farted. They, too, look guilty. Babies can’t hide anything from me; not a fart or a burp.

 

This baby continued yelling after burping but I could tell he was now just pushing it because he knew he had an audience now. He was like a professional mourner in our funerals. I didn’t feel sorry for this baby but I did something foolish; I asked the mother if I could hold him. She gladly handed me the baby who, by the way, weighed a ton. What the hell was this baby eating in New York? Burgers and beer? The baby was a point-five baby. Big Republican cheeks. Miraculously he immediately stopped crying when I held him.  I felt triumphant. I had the Midas touch, after all. It’s my soul. My soul calms babies.

 

What I didn’t know was that the baby was just thrown off for a bit; he was trying to comprehend if he had just been sold to me for being a crybaby. Maybe not sold, more like gifted because the market value of a crying baby in a plane is zero. The baby stared back at his mother and stared at me, probably thinking – What the hell is happening here? And who is this guy with a forehead smiling at me?  Then he let loose. A loud howl like I had pinched him. I immediately tossed him back to his mother who took him back reluctantly.

 

That was a long flight.

 

But the thing with a crying baby is that at some point the screams become normal. The screaming becomes part of the normal atmosphere in the plane. You get used to it. In fact when the baby stops crying the silence sounds like noise. During this time you also learn the amazing capacity of humans to wear straight polite faces in the face of a yelling child in the plane. Nobody ever raises their head. Because it’s impolite; after all, weren’t we all once children? In fact, some of us have never stopped.

 

But if you think being in a plane with a crying baby is inconveniencing, you  should try being the mother for just five minutes. It must be double hell for her; she’s exhausted and sleepy and irritated and frustrated. She doesn’t know what else to do with that baby to get her to sleep. She has tried everything; changed fresh diapers, fed her, burped her, sang to her, made faces at her, prayed for her. Nothing. On top of this her breast milk is probably leaking through her blouse. Maybe she also has post-baby weight to shed off, so she doesn’t particularly feel sexy or find anything sexy. Plus her feet are swollen like she’s pregnant again. She hasn’t eaten anything because the baby hasn’t let her. She can’t remember the last time she read a chapter of a book without the baby interrupting with cries. Her eyes are red from exhaustion and she is at the very end of her emotional tether. Forget the crying baby, that woman is a time bomb more dangerous than the 100 ml liquids that they don’t let us into the plane with. All you have to do is tell her one wrong word. Just one wrong word and the captain will have to come out.

 

So everybody looks away. Lest she locks eyes with you.

 

I say a small prayer as the Asian family approach with their human siren. Everybody says a small prayer: Lord, show me a sign of your compassion. Show me that you are not a vindictive God.  If nothing else, please cover that baby’s mouth with your hand.

 

You know, babies and drunks have always been my waterloo in planes.  I never ever get a chance to sit next to a hot chick in flights like some men. Good things like that never happen to me. Airlines have devised a watertight algorithm to lock me out of sitting next to a hot chick. And it’s all good because you can’t fight a hot chick for the armrest. Well, you can. But you shouldn’t.  

 

There are things that travel insurance covers that make sense. ICEA LION, for 2,000 bob, covers against the usual things like being bumped off to the next flight and losing a day of your accommodation at your destination. Or if an airline sends your luggage to Karachi while you were going to Nigeria and so you end up buying strange Nigerian lotion and socks. Or if you are arrested for jaywalking in Boston, because you are Kenyan and you are used to crossing the road anywhere you damned well please. Or if you ate a 4K meal because the airline delayed their flight.

 

I think travel insurance should also consider covering sitting next to a wailing baby, but only for flights that take more than four hours. Because there are tons of things travel insurance covers that don’t make as much sense as the real danger of sitting next to a crying baby.  I mean, what are the odds that I would walk through a glass door in Sao Paulo and break it (and my nose) in the process?  Or that I doze off in a park bench in Bangalore and a monkey steals my camera? Or that I am arrested in Japan during their random police checks because I stepped out of the hotel without my passport. Or I break a leg in Addis, or pop an eardrum in Amsterdam or contract dengue fever in Morocco or get food poisoning or herpes in Bangkok. Or for some reason I decide to desecrate a national monument  in Nice, France, or get arrested for peeing on a fence in London?

 

The odds of these things happening are so low, at least for me, but sitting next to a crying baby? Or a drunk? Those two are plausible. People who drink during flights are annoying. Because they want to talk. They want to know where you are going. And what you do. They lean in and ask, “What book is that you are reading?” And you want to say, “Oh, it’s a whodunit about a guy who was found dead by the cabin crew  at the end of a flight, a plastic fork lodged in his throat.” Then they are always waking you up and excusing themselves as they step over you, to go to the loo. Then they snore when they sleep. Cover me against this, instead of the possibility of being arrested in Dubai for indecent “lewd” public behaviour.

 

The Asian family neared my seat, with the man staring at the seat numbers overhead, his lips moving slightly. The cries of his baby followed behind him. I looked out the window hoping that they would pass, instead I heard a voice say, “Excuse me, I think you are in my seat.” I turned around to see which other idiot had sat in someone’s seat. The Asian guy was looking at me. His wife was looking at me. His baby had stopped crying and was now looking at me. The whole plane seemed to be looking at me.

 

I looked at my ticket and looked at the seat number. Shit.

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129 Comments
  1. Hahahahaha, it was you who sat in their seat! Love the twist there Biko! And you’re right, the mother is more dangerous than her crying baby. It’s just awful.

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  2. Haha, really Biko, you are just going to leave us hanging, what happened next, I think you must have played poker against the devil and he won since this was definitely going to apply to you ‘How hard can it be to find seat 23C when it’s written on both your ticket and the bunker overhead? Finally it’s resolved without teargas.’
    Ps. Everyone is selfish when it comes to sharing in flights

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    1. I think so too. It goes around as it comes.

      And just like that, he misses the window seat, Sits next to the Asian baby and gets the armrests wrestled off him by a family.

      How bad can it get?

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  3. Whelp! Super fan girl here but this one underwhelmed. Or maybe it’s because I’m stuck in a queue at Milimani courts. Don’t mind me

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  4. I enjoyed the conversation you had with Editor….. each person saying what they want to not necessarily same conversation, but communicating anyhow.
    You should try sitting next to a baby who has been weaned in a 12hr bus ride Mombasa to Western …. then you’ll know 4 hour plane ride is a joke … they’ll eat, burp, throw up, have their diaper changed, step on you, sleep on you and cry freely when not doing any of the above from boredom.

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  5. I thought nice, caring parents crush sleeping pills and mix them into their babies’ milk and have them drink it before the flight. Once they get on the plane, the baby is out like a light. If for some reason, like being young Superman, it wakes up mid-flight, you crush more pills and the minute it opens it’s mouth to yell you throw the powder into it’s mouth. Parents like this could solve the Middle East crisis. Or did parents who did this go extinct after we stopped eating gluten?
    Speaking of heavy babies: I volunteered to hold a cute 8-month old baby girl. Now I’m 6ft tall and have a bit of extra weight, so I can handle pretty much anything thrown at me. Except this baby. My God this child was heavy. What’s worse is that she didn’t look heavy. She’s aso innocent and trusting you’d stare into her beautiful dark eyes and she’d hold out her arms to lure you and your ego’d be like ‘aaww babies love me’ and then BAM you have 30kgs on your hands. Worse, no one would take her from me; apparently everyone knew of her weight and so they just make baby noises at her and walk away. By the time I handed her back to the mother, who is a short, normal-weight woman with eyebrows drawn like the square-root symbol, my arms hurt. They hurt so bad, I couldn’t lify them to scratch my shoulder, my neck, let alone an ear or my nose. That baby reminded me of why I don’t go to the gym.

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    1. You are funny and so evil lol… you and my friend belong to the same class only that she believes in giving babies rum to sleep

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  6. Hey chocolate man, just FYI, Toni Braxton is set to marry Birdman. Just thought you should know. No, okay bye *evil laugh*

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  7. What do you expect Biko, LOL, a burger and a beer is quite some heavy s***… Farts are inevitable!!!
    Awesome read!!

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  8. I was once that guy… two babies in tow age 3 and 1.5… NBO-AMS.
    My wife and i could feel the judgement and the “they better not be sitting here” looks…
    Weirdly the little ones behaved the entire flight. . .

    Very vivid Biko.

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  9. To me, crying babies are a nightmare in Church. That moment you are trying to all intimate with God and this 1 YO will hear none of it.

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  10. When did all of you arrive here? Anyway, I know this comment will be lost in the crowd but how do I put up a profile picture?
    TIA

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  11. “I turned around to see which other idiot had sat in someone’s seat. The Asian guy was looking at me. His wife was looking at me. His baby had stopped crying and was now looking at me. The whole plane seemed to be looking at me.”
    How real can this be…hahahahaha. Am laughing so hard my colleagues think I have gone bonkers… Pole sana Chocolate man. Am I the only one who was left hanging? Am like….and then????????

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  12. with number on ticket and the seat and still….. And those insurance packages make you wonder where and why on earth would …. Then you remember it just might. Life humbles you there and then.

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  13. Babies are okay Biko. They are okay. They cry but then they compensate for it with their little angelic countenance.

    Good read.

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  14. i like the way i can visualize through as i read. “Oh, it’s a whodunit about a guy who was found dead by the cabin crew at the end of a flight, a plastic fork lodged in his throat.” dont we all want to stab some stubborn fella with a plastic fork…haha

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  15. Kuna mtu amekukanyagia chini…

    Someone has stepped on the ground for you with the crying babies and drunks

    Cheers…

  16. Oh yes how hard can it be to sit on the wrong seat while your sit number is written on your ticket and banker overhead………..

  17. “How hard can it be to find seat 23C when it’s written on both your ticket and the bunker overhead? ”
    I guess now you know! Smh

  18. Nice post, worth the wait..but the suspense?
    This has been a big discussion in our travel groups, and on youtube. The responses on the travel groups are more benign, as folk use their real names and no one wants to come across as a baby hater, as well there are admins to quell unfriendly fires; but on youtube, when I say I’m for the babies on board; giving reasons such as they are in a strange environment and the ear pressure may be hard on them, you bet the foul-mouthed anonymous keyboard warriors have cyber-lynched me. More so when I’ve retorted that the airlines make provision for little persons to fly meaning that baby has as much right as anyone else to be there, and if they have a problem with those arrangements, they might as well save up for private jets.
    I think everyone should understand. If flights can be uncomfortable for adults who ease their discomfort when flights take off; yawning to pop out ears, chewing gum, swallowing and nibbling on sticks of ginger to ward off waves of nausea,…then baby has no idea where they are or of what is transpiring…they are newbie earthlings getting used to the cold, heat, sounds, pains just a couple of months after leaving the warmth and comfort of the womb. The loud noise may be frightening, the discomfort in their ears may be painful, and the fact that they are confined in a wee space for hours may be incomprehensible to their little minds.
    I will never get it when folks begin to moan and groan, proffering loud sighs and shooting nasty glances to the parents of a little baby who has broken out into a crying fit after take off.
    When traveling with my little big one, and we see mums in distress we set off to the rescue trying to distract the little baby. It has worked many times, so let’s show a little compassion to babies on board and their parents/siblings.
    ICEA Lion sounds like a cool insurance. Some travel insurances are just looters, with a good understanding of human psychology. They will butter one up when the person is considering them; pushing an eye-candy gift-of-gab spiffy-looking-suited up person (of the opposite sex) towards you to make the sale, but when shit hits the fan, they begin to talk of limits and how much they can insure, and they begin to drag their feet when it comes to reimbursement. That makes me boil. Why didn’t they explain everything before? One should always go through the fine print of what will be insured and what won’t, especially for lengthy adventure-seeking trips where one carries expensive equipment with them..and the probability of accidents and mishaps is high. There are some all-encompassing global insurances out there but when you look at the costs! Hapana.

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  19. Really Biko!!You are one of those who sit on the wrong seats?? I mean how difficult is it to locate seat 23C when it’s written on your boarding card and on the overheard bunk…..tihihihihihi.

  20. luckily the asian couple were not short tempered unarmed combat practicing folk, and also thank God it wasn’t mbukinya

  21. Hahahaha! Love that…honest mistake I believe.

    I don’t like crying babies. I’m a mother and I just can bear it. It tears at your heart completely.

    Kudos to mothers!

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  22. Bahahahaa I must be a prophetess or something. I said to myself that you might find yourself sitting in the Asian family’s seat at the end of the aisle jam

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  23. I looked at my ticket and looked at the seat number. Shit.

    This was the funniest. Hahahahahahahaha!
    Travel insurance is the truth… Comes in quite handy if your flight is cancelled or delayed or your baggage gets lost or you fall ill in a strange land where medical expenses are nuts… If you never use, be glad but make sure you have it 🙂

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  24. Hilarious. I should say pole but I’m laughing, At least, babies in planes have diapers, A zillion years ago, on a night bus from Nai to Kisumu…you know where this is ending. Yes, this mother had 3 children but one ticket. She was my seatmate and she asked-no-dumped her youngest on me, Long story short, that baby peed on me, puked on me…I was 22 and utterly disgusted. She called it a ‘blessing.’

    So when things are really thick and I’m praying, I remind God of that blessing. I think it gets me some favours.

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  25. Nice read Biko. I found this hilarious….your conclusion on sighting that Asian guy, “The father has a trendy beard which he doesn’t want the baby to ruin, so the mother is carrying the baby.”

    The reasons as to why that mother with the baby could be a live wire are a pointer to the sacred duty and sacrifices responsible mothers do every day-motherhood. Respect.

    I hope the seat matter was resolved without teargas.

  26. I’ve been that mum with a baby on the plane. the people that give u sympathetic looks, those are parents.others give u that”give that baby le boob already”.like all babies respond to boob.those usually are not parents!sucks travelling with a baby.also toddlers.i pitty people who travel with toddlers coz they can’t sit still.thank God for iPads.keeps some busy

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  27. Her eyes are red from exhaustion and she is at the very end of her emotional tether. Forget the crying baby, that woman is a time bomb more dangerous than the 100 ml liquids that they don’t let us into the plane with. All you have to do is tell her one wrong word. Just one wrong word and the captain will have to come out.

    This has taken me back,way back and true dont try and mess with a mother of an infant.

  28. Good things like that never happen to me. Airlines have devised a watertight algorithm to lock me out of sitting next to a hot chick. And it’s all good because you can’t fight a hot chick for the armrest. Well, you can. But you shouldn’t.

  29. That’s what you get for hating on thise who can’t check their seat numbers right. Great read….as usual worth every second.

  30. First of all,
    thank you for not choking us in your air of suspense.

    Secondly, I really want to see your face when this happened and release a little mojo jojo laugh,well now that’s said;I’m glad to say what goes around comes back around,Biko.

  31. Been there, flight to the Asina continent and your the only native amongst 300 passengers, its one of those 10 day holidays like Daishan,Diwali, Holi, and families check in from, Ice land,canada etc…then link up with the ones connecting from jobo in the middle east, the hand luggage…nice one forehead man!!!

  32. Would I hurt your feelings Biko if I said Linda was right? This one was a little below the mark. Not that it is a bad piece – no. But you have set that bar way up there and that is what we look forward to…

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  33. hahaha boom!!! you sat next to the crying baby
    Next time take a travel cover with PACIS INSURANCE.

    do you reply on these comments
    please reply on mine for once….

  34. never been on a flight before but a drunk man once puked on me on a matatu,should travel insurance also check on such incidences

  35. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA…. “I turned around to see which other idiot had sat in someone’s seat. The Asian guy was looking at me. His wife was looking at me. His baby had stopped crying and was now looking at me.”….

    Day made!

  36. huh….so your one of them people ” There is the usual skirmish of someone who sat in the wrong seat, eyes squint at ticket numbers, a flight attendant intervenes. How hard can it be to find seat 23C when it’s written on both your ticket and the bunker overhead?”

  37. I think you are certifiably crazy but these got me laughing so hard by the time I was done, everyone at Java was staring. Now am laughing even harder because I was having an impossibly difficult day and it seems so much brighter considering am not seated next to any crying baby. Loved the letter to my 20’s too, could not have read it at a better time.
    Thanks God for people with your ability to touch so many with the written word, if I could write half as well………………..for now I will just stick to being grateful there is no crying baby anywhere in sight.

  38. Lol. This has made my day. I’d love to know what the crying baby did to you, considering you seemed to be the source of the baby crying coupled with the agitated mom.

  39. The insurance part. Very true. The chances of the things happening are slim to none. And the baby, well, these little creatures are angels and demons at the same time. Depends which side they decide to show you. And so much for judging the blind guys who mismatch seat & ticket numbers…Good One Biko!

  40. please tell me there was some teargas *tumelipa na usuru yetu yawa*
    see what you did for ICEA, their advert is funny though, that dude….

  41. I turned around to see which other idiot had sat in someone’s seat.
    The whole plane seemed to be looking at me.

    i laughed so hard.

  42. oh I’ve been here .with a crying baby.. its one of the worst trips to make
    its terrible on the mother…
    The last time I asked for wine and slept

  43. am in tears as i read this….coz am a mother….but the tears are from the stitches of laughter this article has left me in. Oh my the horror of a crying baby is real and super frightening now i knw why when we walk into a place and my little one is at it, i get wat i need real first coz needless to say hell has no fury like a sleep-deprived-traumatized etc etc…mother of a crying baby hahahahahahhahaha.

  44. I usually save my reading so that I have a few to read during boring times in life especially on this fatherhood category I find you are most entertaining in this category but I am disappointed with this because it is just a plug for travel insurance for ICEA smh

  45. If you have never traveled with babies then you better give it a try. Its annoying but there is nothing you can do.