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They herded us into the aircraft like cattle (also known as #TravelWhileBlack)

8 February Feb 2016 1113 08 February 2016
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Traveling while African is a new series of commentaries, articles, and artwork about the vicissitudes of carrying an African passport—inside and outside Africa. Our hashtag is #TravelAfrican.

I thought I’d become immune to the indignities of traveling with an African passport, but an encounter last month proved me wrong.

After a series of meetings in Dakar, I travelled back to London via Madrid on a red-eye Iberia Airlines flight. Disembarking from the plane in Madrid in the early morning hours, I got separated from my white male European colleagues—an Austrian and Brit—and was directed by a stern-looking Spanish security agent to the “RSU” section of the airport to await a connecting flight to the UK. The flashing information screens designated “HJK” as the lounge area for my departure, however, so I resolved to go there.

In the surprisingly empty “All Other Passports/Non-EU Citizens” line, I approached two immigration officials dressed in dark uniforms wearing looks of disapproval. One of the officers, a bearded man with a cropped haircut, directed me to the “RSU” section of the airport. It was way too early in the morning for mishaps, so I tried to explain in my very broken, secondary school Spanish that according to the departure screens mounted in the air like flying saucers, I was supposed to be at the “HJK” gates instead.

Visibly annoyed, the bearded man flipped through the pages of my passport and informed me that I was clearly in the wrong place. He scribbled “RSU” at the bottom of my boarding pass and motioned for me to go back from whence I’d come.

Confused, I felt like a child who had been unfairly scolded. This man had no doubt seen the blue Schengen visa in my passport, which was valid for another seven months. By law, I was not only authorized to transit through Madrid but I could have gallivanted around Spain if I so chose. Nothing should have stopped me from passing through that immigration threshold undeterred.

Yet bigotry did.

I walked through the winding airport corridors to “RSU”, found an information counter and asked the cheerful woman at the booth which gates generally served London flights. She directed me to S48, but I was still unconvinced. When I received an e-mail alert from Iberia announcing H8 as my departure gate, I finally felt vindicated.

Moments later, however, the gate changed to S48, where I observed that the dozen or so passengers milling around were all black, all African. Suddenly, a petite woman barked at us aggressively, “Hurry, because you are going to delay our flight!!!” We had been sitting patiently for at least 15 minutes waiting to board the plane, so her outburst seemed misplaced. We were led down a nondescript stairwell to a bus, and the driver meandered through the airport tarmac with a succession of sharp turns. The whole thing felt eerie and clandestine at the crack of dawn, as if we were smuggled contraband.

Continue reading on Africa is a country

Photo credits: Getty Images

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