Good Trip Frustrated by Farting

The five hours and 40 minutes flight from Johannesburg to Lagos would have been great but something happened shortly after take-off. The man in front of my seat released a ballistic missile in the form of fart. It hit our nostrils like terror attack. The white man who sat beside him could not take it. He jerked up his huge frame and moved to the overhead locker and grabbed his hand luggage and moved towards the end of the cabin.

The aircraft was almost full, over 85 per cent load factor. But the white man was able to get one of the few seats that remained at the back of the cabin. He never attempted to come back to his seat; no did the kill joy relent in unleashing his missiles on the innocent passengers.

The smell of his fart was rancid. It smelt like a rotten shakky left over the sink for three days. When he farted the second time and the pressurised air served my nose with the smell, I became enraged! I rose from my seat and glared at his head. The tired scalp told me this was an old man. He was past caring, almost insulated from the cacophony his fart was causing; unless he was pretending to be sleeping. Everything about him seemed calm. And he may be a gentleman with such decay wafting from his arse!

His bald head was dry, wrinkled like the asphalt laid on a well-constructed old road. But at the edge of his head were tufts of grey hair that stubbornly clung on a reluctant scalp, like recalcitrant shrub growing on dry land.

I was literally in purgatory because he never gave up making the trip a misery for me. I didn’t have any right to challenge him. Farting is one of the bad things human beings do and pretend as if nothing happened. The bad smell always spread the possible culprits among the people in the area where it is emanating from. Friends complain among themselves when unpardonable fart is released. But in a mixed grill like passengers in a flight, everybody pretends as if nothing happened, while they seethed with rage.

By the time we were halfway to Nigeria, he released a dangerous one that caused turbulence of the aircraft as it sliced through the cloud in over 290 miles per hour. That particular farting poisoned the food that was served in the flight!

I moved to another seat. The lady in the seat beside mine didn’t want a company. She enjoyed it while she was alone, and when I came to take the seat she felt her monopoly had ended. I didn’t like her attitude. Perhaps she thought she was in her sitting room. Not liking the subtle hostility of the lady, I went back to my seat. And I endured the bad smell till the end of the flight, telling myself that I would go for comprehensive body test the following day.

When we arrived a younger man came to welcome the farting man at the arrival before Immigration. How did this aide come this far? Who allowed him to pass through central search?  The younger man clung on him in ecstasy, welcoming the kill joy with wide, open arms. He must be a highly placed person. How I wished the man knew how his boss or possibly his elder brother made our trip miserable. I did not share in their happiness; rather, I wished the old man could bring his head for a heavy knock. That is what we do to persons who fouled the air to our discomfort.