Jody Foster starred in a 2005 movie about a mother and young daughter on a transcontinental night flight when both fell asleep. When the mother awoke, she discovered her daughter was missing. The panicked mother spent the rest of the movie finding and rescuing her daughter.
Jody Foster’s movie was a fictional story. When it happened in real life to the Switter family on a night flight from Lilongwe, Malawi to Amsterdam, I panicked, at least somewhat. After all, a 747 isn’t all that big. And 3 1/2 year old Switterina couldn’t get that lost, could she?
The story began at Kumuzu International Airport in Lilongwe, Malawi. Mr. and Mrs. Switter finally made the hard decision to return to Idaho after almost a decade of living in Africa. It was a difficult decision. After so many years in a part of the world we loved and called home, for many reasons it would have been easier to stay.
We spent the previous weeks selling everything except for what fit into four U-Haul heavy duty boxes (“Adventures in Moving” each box loudly proclaimed) that weighed 59.99 pounds each. We had enough disposable diapers, a luxury item we reserved exclusively for air travel, for two little kids x three travel days. It was our fourth or fifth international move, so we knew the drill, but it was still exhausting. Saying goodbye to friends was especially difficult and we were emotionally exhausted as well.
When we boarded to big KLM Royal Dutch Airlines 747, we were relieved to find we had exit row seats with all the room we needed for two kids, all the necessary impedimentia small kids require, including the precious diaper bag. Switterina had her own seat, and Mrs. Switter and I took turns holding Switter Jr., our three month old son (10.9 pounds at birth, and I swear he seemed like 40 pounds when hauling him around at three months). We switched when he made our legs go numb from holding that much weight.
We managed to stay awake until after the meal service, when we all fell asleep. When my legs finally went numb from holding Switter Jr., I woke up and started to make the transfer to my dearly beloved when I discovered that Switterina was missing. That’s when I panicked, not so much from fear that someone had kidnapped her (an old guy told me this week that he would rather steal a shovel than a kid) but because I had no idea if 747s were childproofed and knowing from experience that she had a special gift for finding and breaking the one mission critical part necessary to keep the plane flying.
I jumped up and began a child hunt. I checked the toilets first. All were empty. I went fore and aft up each aisle looking for any clue. At the front galley, near the top deck staircase, I asked a flight attendant if a little girl passed by recently and maybe even went up the stairs. She said she didn’t see a rogue child, but I was welcome to check the top deck. The flight attendant on the top deck assured me there were no extra children in her area.
I decided to make another search down the starboard side of the aircraft and again found no clues. The only place I didn’t check on my first sweep through the aircraft was the aft galley because, I reasoned, if she showed up there, someone who would rather steal a shovel than a child would return her immediately to where she belonged.
When I walked past the rear toilet area and into the galley, I heard laughter. Then l saw Switterina in the arms of a flight attendant having the time of her life from all the attention she was getting from the men and women of KLM. I suppose I had the dad looking for a lost kid look, because a flight attendant ask me if I was looking for the child she was holding. I said yes, and they thanked me for sharing her with them. I asked them how they ended up with her, and was told that while we were sleeping, Switterina decided to explore the jumpseat area across the exit aisle from us. She found the intercom handset and decided to make a call. Whoever she reached (the captain?) sent a scouting party to find the culprit. When they found her, they saw that mom, dad, and large infant son were soundly sleeping, so they graciously took her with them and became inflight babysitters. I offered to pay them for their services, but instead they thanked me for sharing her and making the flight a little less monotonous for them.
This was not the first time we benefited from the Dutch/Afrikaans love for children. Whenever we stopped at little family-owned restaurants in rural South Africa, an old ooma (grandmother) would volunteer to take her so we could enjoy our meal, and off Switterina would go to the kitchen in the arms of her newly found ooma where Switterina would be the center of attention for the kitchen staff. Once, during a three day stopover in Amsterdam, we took a sightseeing bus out into the countryside. One of the places we stopped at was a touristy cheese and wooden shoe factory. As soon as we walked through the entrance door, a tall blond employee stepped up and offered to entertain Switterina. For the next 45 minutes, we caught glimpses of the young woman throughly enjoying her chat with Switterina.
In these United States, such experiences too often end up with child protective services involved, but not everywhere in the world is like American. Children are beloved and cherished in African cultures, and even during our last posting in Central Asia, our kids were safe traveling around town unsupervised in their packs. Our son was elevenish when we first arrived in Baku, and it was only a matter of weeks before he befriended the security guards at the presidential dacha around the corner from us. During Nowrus, the ancient Persian celebration of spring, Switter Jr. would hang out in the evening with the guards to build a traditional fire they would jump over for some traditional reason involving burning away the old bad spirits and starting out a fresh new year with a different set of bad spirits. All the local police and shopkeepers knew him by name as he rollerbladed his way around the neighborhood on errands.
It’s a wonderful educational experience for a child to grow up in different cultures and learning to cherish their own as well.
Perhaps when education is boiled down to its essence, it is learning how to live among and appreciate whatever cultural setting one find themselves living in. It’s learning to understand the world and one’s special place in it while understanding the special place in it for all other people. That is a good thing to learn.
“Large infant son”