I was in Uganda. Lovely people, beautiful scenery, traffic nightmare, airport nightmare.

Entebbe International Airport is 40 km from the capital, Kampala. It takes two hours to travel from Entebbe to Kampala. Departing, your baggage is X-rayed three times and you are metal-detected three times. Your boarding pass is checked three times. Queues, queues. It is all pointless. Our suitcase had four tripods and four sound-level meters, a loudspeaker, two range finders and an audio generator. On the X-ray, they resembled a hand-cranked Gatling gun and a laser death ray with multiple beams forming. The security guard, fully alert for a bottle of scent with more than 100 mℓ of expensive perfume, a deadly nail file or a tube of sun cream, gazed in dull indifference to the screen.

The problem with airports – all of them, to a lesser or greater degree – is that they have the passengers in a place where the security and airport officials call the shots. They can bully you as much as they want. If they say you have to say “I’m a happy passenger” or “she sells sea shells on the sea shore” out aloud to prove that you are not an android terrorist robot . . . they will not let you pass until you comply. All security measures are, by and large, rubbish. One can make (and I have seen this) a quite acceptable bomb out of a laptop bag. You can make the whole laptop out of explosives. There is a substance that looks like water which, if you mix it with another substance, will blow you and your aircraft into small little bits. The fact is that any determined terrorist can easily commit any amount of horrific deeds, security or no security.

Knowing this will not stop the relentless march of the security people – it is big bucks, after all.

What is worrying is that they will keep on thinking up ways in which they can torment passengers further. They did try, once, to make check-in two hours before a domestic flight and four hours before an international flight. This did not work out, since the administration and traffic flows were too cumbersome to manage. Using full-body X-rays (as opposed to metal detection) was proposed but was also shown the door, since they would intrude on the modesty of passengers. Yes, and this after they make you hold your jeans up with one hand as you shuffle to collect your belt, cellphone, jewellery, pen, wallet and so on one-handed.

My two worst security experiences were in Pointe Noise, in the Republic of Congo, and Germany. Arriving at Pointe Noire, Tim and I went through arrivals and, as we came to the entrance to the baggage claim hall, Tim was stopped by an official who demanded his yellow fever vaccination certificate. The official looked at it, said it was not valid. Things got ugly. After ten minutes, we gave the official $10 and thus validated the certificate, Congo style.

In Germany, possibly since I seemed to be dodgy, I was singled out and they searched my hand luggage. They found a can of game paté that I had brought from South Africa. Was is das? It’s paté. Was? Paté. Fur essen. Then, foolishly, I reached for the ring pull and began to open the can. Exactly like pulling the pin of a grenade. To show them. Fur essen. The electrifying sound of automatic weapons being cocked halted me in mid-pull. Later, they helped me off the floor and apologised. They kept the paté.