The theme of my short time spent in Africa so far is very clear cut: British Airways sucks.

I hope the entire company dies a slow, painful death and burns in the hottest corner of hell. The way they handle losing someone's baggage is bloody ridiculous.

Meghann, Hunter and I checked a total of, I don't know, about eight bags. Roughly. And a guitar. Only one of those eight was for me. Naturally, that was the one that is probably being used as an extremely heavy paper weight in some London BA warehouse at the moment, the sticker informing its handlers to route it to Nairobi being duly ignored for the fourth day in a row.

I've tried filing a report; I've tried calling hotlines. Asking for managers and asking for the people who fill in for managers when the manager "isn't in town" and mysteriously has no set return date. In 8,936,224 total phone calls -- only 4,223,899 of which have actually rang, and 2,388,121 have been answered -- I've fluctuated from pleasant to stern to complete asshole in my approach. And none of it has gotten me one iota closer to getting my bag back to me.

The good thing is that my laptop and my camera were in my carry on. And my toothbrush. And the book that I happened to be reading on the plane. That's where the good things end.

The bad things are plentiful. I lost -- err, threw away with the thought that "I never actually need this" -- my baggage serial number, so there is no way of tracking it. I had to leave Nairobi last night, making it ten times more expensive to call the worst airport of all time for help in locating it -- and way harder for BA to get it to me now that I'm in Tanzania. My malaria medicine was checked, so I've got a target drawn on my back for mosquitoes of death. About a billion dollars worth of other stuff was in there. I've been wearing the same pair of underwear since June 30. I've been wearing the same everything since June 30, actually. And I am getting less and less optimistic about the prospect of ever seeing the greatest bag I've ever had and ever will have ever again.

The optimist in me listens to Meghann, whose boyfriend had his bag lost by BA a few years back, only to be returned to him 10 days later on an island off of Zanzibar. The pessimist in me listens to the pessimist in me.

Time will tell the fate of my bag, and it will tell the fate of British Airways, as well.