Yellow Card and Its Persistence

Yellow Card and Its Persistence: India Trip Notes

Mohammed Dahiru Aminu

In retrospect I see my 2012 trip to India as a damp squib. Anytime I was to go to a place for the first time, I had always harboured certain fervour; that festal feeling of excitement when one finds a new atmosphere, and that placatory sensation of encountering, even if by happenstance, that refreshingly novel society emblazoned in its peculiar customs and ways of life. India, absolutely, is a place to hanker for. Its overly populated principal cities, its rich and diverse ethnic and cultural groups, its peculiar religions, its more than a hundred languages and more than two hundred dialects, its social issues, its literature, arts and architecture, music and dance, theatres and films, and museums, are all enough to regard India as heaven for any inquisitorial mind.

But perhaps I was mentally unready to visit and feel the ambiance of this incredible South Asian country. Back at the Indian High Commission in Abuja, while going about the visa process, I was unmindfully relenting so much so that I forgot a sacred, yet elemental document required for the visa to be granted. I had reported at the High Commission with my evergreen Nigerian passport, some passport photographs, as well a bank statement. I, however, forgot to bring along the pretext for my trip; the invitation letter from India justifying my reason for the trip. Realising my goof, I rushed to a nearby cybercafé to print a copy of the invitation letter saved in my email.

That was it. I returned the next day to see that I was granted a visa. Even though I now had the visa in my hand, come rain or shine, I still didn’t feel the brisk gusto to travel. May be I was homesick, or imaginably wistful about leaving Nigeria at this time. May be my Nigerian moral fibre was at its best, and so needed no agitation. But with a little prodding from my inner self, I felt the desire to grab a return ticket with the Ethiopian Airlines.

It was a little past the hour of 1pm that we set forth for Addis Ababa from Abuja. The aircraft was a Boeing 777, having a rather bolstering economy seats. After being airborne for about five hours, we touched down in Addis Ababa’s Bole Airport. The transit experience in Addis Ababa was unsettling. Before leaving Abuja, I was only issued a single boarding pass that would allow me board the Addis Ababa flight—thanks to Abuja airport’s perpetual lassitude cautiously masked as “system failure.” Abuja’s system failure would cost me a slow, prolonged wait for a boarding pass to New Delhi while laying over in Addis Ababa. As I stood there in the unmoving queue waiting for my turn to get to the man at the counter, I started getting apoplectic, for the reason that the men at the counter seem not to know what computer key to punch so that we can get our boarding passes. The queues seem to be increasing, passengers were getting livid and enraged, and all that the men at the counter would tell us to do is to be patient.

While I was still on the boil, incensed with the attitude of the airline staff that stood at the counters, I got a reason for a small mirth. A big long-tailed rodent suddenly appeared from the blue, and before anyone could get a word in edgewise, the rat had found its way down the stairs. I thought I was the only one that saw it, but moments later, a guy who stood by my side carrying an American passport, asked in America-speak inflection, if what he saw was a rat. After I nodded to answer him in the affirmative, he loudly expressed: oh shit!

It was finally my turn to get the boarding pass. I proceeded for security check prior to boarding, and after that, as tradition demands, I found a place to sit and wait for boarding. The aircraft we boarded was bound for Guangzhou, China, with a stopover in Delhi, India. Five hours plus on air, we arrived at the Indira Ghandi International Airport in Delhi. It was on a bright early morning with a clear sky. I found my way to the Immigrations, and it was there that my Indian irritations, vexations and exasperations began.

Yes, I carried a valid Nigerian passport. Yes, I had a valid Indian visa. Yes, I carried the International Certificate of Vaccination or Yellow Card. No, the Yellow Card was not dated! When were you vaccinated for Yellow Fever, asked the Immigration official. I couldn’t remember the date I was vaccinated, I emotionally entreated. But it has to be sometimes in 2009 when I was travelling to Saudi Arabia, I added. But his face remained frantic as if my answer didn’t make sense. He stood up and went to the airport clinic and later returned to tell me that he would imprint the entry stamp on my visa but I would be required to see the health workers in the clinic. He sealed on my visa and asked me to follow him to the clinic where he finally handed me over to some brutish, unfeeling healthcare personnel.

The man on desk offered me a seat, and as I sat down I asked what the problem was. He said my Yellow Card was invalid and that he was going to quarantine me for six days! What the heck is quarantine, I asked. What do they do to people under quarantine? Am I going to be vaccinated or something? As I sat there motionless, my mind was stock-still; I didn’t know what to think. I waited for a moment or two and abruptly I remembered that a while ago in Nigeria, we heard of the news of the deportation of about 125 Nigerian citizens from the Oliver Tambo International Airport in South Africa because those Nigerians couldn’t provide Yellow Cards! Could it be that Nigerians all over the world’s airports are besieged until they show a Yellow Card? Has the South Africa – Nigeria Yellow Card enmeshment spilled over to India?

But then a few months ago, I was in London, the British imperial capital, and no one asked me to show a Yellow Card. If Yellow Card was vital, why was I not asked to show it in London’s Heathrow Airport? Why India? Why, why, why, kept resounding in my mind! Who knows, maybe I was welcomed in England without a Yellow Card because like all Nigerians, I was after all a child (or is it orphan?) of the British Empire. It makes sense to me that the Empire would neither hound nor harass one of its own; its child and/or its orphan. But here I am, baffled in a perplexing puzzlement. India is not a country that can be defined in the superlative. It is a poor country that can be allied with everything inconspicuous. It is a country found on the bottom deck—struggling with—among other things, the demerits of population explosion. In a country of more than a billion people, it is not improbable that among its populace, you will find quite a lot of its people living with every disease known to man, Yellow Fever inclusive. Is there any disease in this world that one can’t find its prevalence in a given 1 billion people, the population of India? What is the percentage likelihood that an average Nigerian (remember that Yellow Fever was last heard of in Nigeria in 1995) would be infested with Yellow Fever, and what is the probability that any Nigerian will infect Indians with Yellow Fever? In short, does Yellow Card really matter? These and many thoughts ran through my mind as I sat in the airport clinic.

As I was there dug in within my thoughts, more and more Nigerians with Yellow Card problems began to fill the room. Concerned with niggles, the slightest inaccuracy on the Yellow Card would provoke the ever-wrathful healthcare officials. Some cards were not carrying the names of its holders, others weren’t stamped, still others, like mine weren’t dated. But we all had Yellow Cards! While one of them continued to threaten us with a six-day quarantine, I decided that I would let them know that Yellow Fever haven’t been heard of in Nigeria since 1995, and that it is safe to say that Nigeria is free of the disease, little wonder why the World Health Organizations of the United Nations delisted Nigeria from countries susceptible to Yellow Fever. Apparently and as far as one can tell, the man never wanted to listen to my anecdotes. Before our hearing range, a shameless airport female official standing beside him uttered in not-too-impressive English that Nigerians are dangerous people and so the issue of forgiving the “guilty” party does not arise.

I would never beg them, I said to myself; at best I could be deported back to the good old Nigeria on grounds of an invalid Yellow Card, at worst I would be quarantined for six days and be left to go about my business. Either way is OK by me, I thought. As the heebie-jeebies continued, a Nigerian woman who goes by the name Mrs Chuks (not real name) got too edgy and was scared out of her wits as she fell on the floor rolling and crying, pleading for mercy, remorseful about her pang of guilt and begging not to be deported. What is wrong with her, I asked. So what if she’s deported from India? When did India become a seventh heaven that a Nigerian would swallow her pride as to lie lachrymose on the floor, begging to stay?

Finally, the stony-faced Indian health worker gave Mrs Chuks a tongue-lash, frightened her to stop crying lest they call the police to take her into custody. Trust Nigerians, everyone knows the police and their skulduggery. At once, the teary-eyed Mrs Chuks became dry-eyed. Soon the poker-faced Indian health worker did the paperwork and asked that we be taken to the Yellow Fever Hospital and Quarantine Centre not too far from the airport. At one fell swoop, we were driven to the Quarantine Centre in what looked like an airport ambulance. At the Quarantine Centre, we were put at the second floor of the facility; no one is allowed to go past the second floor until after six days.

We were given comfortable self-contained rooms, fully air-conditioned, with television sets and good bathrooms and toilets. There was ceaseless electricity, what was lacking, however, was an internet connection. We found two other Nigerians there, serving their six-day sequestration. There was Mrs Kanu (not real name), a lawyer, who works with the Nigerian presidency; there was Mr Samuel (not real name), a local politician from Benue. Both Mrs Kanu and Mr Samuel completed their sixth day stay on our second day stay at the facility. The Nigerian Ambassador in India also visited the place to give some consolatory piece of advice, and beguilingly told us to see the six-day incarceration of sorts as nothing but a period of rest after weeks of work.

Still in confinement were two young men from Congo-Kinshasa, who were in India to start undergraduate studies; a Nigerian banker who was on a medical trip and being accompanied by his brother; an undergraduate student from Nigeria who was in India to visit his elder brother. And not to forget, the one of a kind Mrs Chuks! To my amazement, one of the inmates at the Quarantine Centre was an Indian woman, supposedly in her mid-30s. She was Mrs Singh (not real name), a native of the northern Indian town of Chandigarh, and the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana states. She’s got a Master’s degree in Education and works as a teacher in a community college in Chandigarh. Her story was that she attended a family wedding in Kenya, spent over a month in Nairobi, and on return to India she was asked to show a Yellow Card which she didn’t have, so she was sent to the Quarantine. Seeing Mrs Singh as an inmate at the Quarantine Centre goes a little to mollify our previously outstretched minds. It sends a little message that the Indian Immigration might not be targeting Nigerians; they also are sequestering one of their own.

A typical day at the quarantine centre is as you would guess, mind-numbing, dull and dreary. Uninteresting in the sense that one is restricted to the four corners of the rooms and corridors of the second floor of the Quarantine Centre. Unexciting in the sense that one is excised from the outdoor. Tiring in the sense that it was weary and annoying. Lacklustre in the sense that it was scarce of enthusiasm. Monotonous in the sense that it was repetitive and unvaried. All these are what a six-day quarantine confinement might seem like.

While I accepted the challenge to stay for six days in the penal facility, on my first day at the centre, a young lady named Ene, a native of Benue but raised in Kaduna, and an undergraduate student in India, came to see the guys from Congo. Ene, together with her friend, Marveille (French for ‘Marvellous’, as she told me) were exceedingly caring. Marvellous, a post graduate student is Congolese, and it happened that one of the guys being quarantined was her relation. Ene and Marvelous would always buy foods and drinks for me and brought it along with them whenever they came to see the Congolese guy. When I offered to reimburse them for their expenses, they refrained from allowing me do so. Beyond foods and drinks, they also bought utility items for me, and always reminded me that in case I have any problem or needed anything they are always there for me.

I usually ordered for foods and drinks from a nearby fast food restaurant through the landline telephone that was available to us at the centre. Unlike Egyptian food that I ate for three weeks period when I visited Egypt the previous year, it didn’t give me much trouble getting accustomed to the Indian kitchenette. Occasionally, the hot chilli peppers in the mutton biryani and chicken plus fried rice gave me some stomach kerfuffle. Aside from rice, I found chapatti or roti and chicken tandoori highly attuned to my tongue’s sensory receptors. I got refreshed with coca cola, apple juices, and some milk. For six days I have heard no news, read no newspaper or a tabloid. Equally I didn’t have the luxury of an internet connection.

Finally on the morning of my sixth day in solitary confinement I regained my freedom. I would spend the next few days moving round Delhi and its neighbouring areas. There seemed to be so much to see in incredible India, though incredible it never was, at least for me after what I had been through in my first six days. I caught glimpses of the many parks that abound in Delhi all of them adorned with beautiful flowers and other plants. I visited the markets and some major places including the INA market; Greater Kailash; South Extension; Connaught Place; Nehru Place and its computer market; the historic Delhi Gate; Sarita Vihar; Vasant Kunj; Vasant Vihar; Babu market; Jawaharlal Nehru University; Indian Institute of Technology; etc. I also visited Gurgaon, a very close city to Delhi but geographically located in the Indian state of Haryana.

My visit to India couldn’t be complete if I hadn’t taken a trip to Agra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh where I saw the magnificent marble mausoleum that stood by the Yamuna river—the Taj Mahal—built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beautiful wife, Mumtaz Mahal. While going through the Taj Mahal and appreciating its magnificence and extraordinary beauty, I couldn’t help but recall the utterance of President Bill Clinton of the USA who, after visiting the Taj Mahal, said that there are two kinds of people in the world: Those who have seen the Taj Mahal and love it and those who have not seen the Taj and love it.

Back in Delhi, my hotel receptionist asked if I would love to eat Nigerian food. When I answered in the affirmative, the hotel contacted a local Nigerian restaurant that frequently brought me local dishes in the hotel whenever I requested for it. Because of the little time in my hands while I was in Delhi, I couldn’t make out time to visit Hyderabad, the largest city and capital of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where I was told is India’s IT capital and home to its “Silicon Valley.”

Back in Nigeria, and the land I love, my advice to everyone travelling to India is that they carry a valid International Certificate of Vaccination or risk being quarantined by some mean, I mean very mean authorities!

February 24, 2013