Wayfinding

The humidity hits you the instant you walk into the underground parking garage. It is the rainy season in Durban and water is pooled on the exit ramps. The extensive carpeting doesn't help. Hundreds of 18 inch black and grey carpet squares have been laid side by side in every direction. Large concrete columns , conveniently colour coded to tell you where you left your car, are unconvincingly disguised by a sole potted plant leaning against each one. Cement curbs interrupt the chessboard carpet, and I find myself weaving around them, habitually following the rules of the road.

I turn left at a ficus-benjamina, and walk through the stop sign half hidden by a chifera, its five fingered leaves looking unhappy about the lack of natural light. I am looking for Canada. I pass England, Germany, the IPCC, Argentina, and the United States. No Canada. The entire parking garage has been transformed into a warren of wet offices. White plastic dividers have been erected and limp pieces of paper desultorily announce whose office is whose.

An incredibly bored security guard is standing against the far wall. I still haven't found Canada. She opens her map, looks around and points in exactly the direction I just came from. “There”, she says. I follow her advice, but still no Canada, just a copy centre where I can only imagine the headaches awaiting delegates tasked with endless late-night revisions of commas and sub-clauses, stymied by copiers jammed with mountains of damp paper.

I return to the security guard and we look again. Sure enough. The map was upside down, and she had assumed that the colours on the map matched the parking garage columns. But no. Canada is purple, but it is in the pink zone, hidden just around the corner from Indonesia.

I finally stumble across a white plastic room dominated by a white plastic oval table adorned with two tiny Canada flags. A lone woman sits working on a laptop. I ask her when the Canadian briefings are. She looks at me in confusion, “do you mean the stakeholder meetings?” I assume I mean yes, and if not I want to be there anyway, so I confidently reply in the affirmative. “8 am”, she says, “but don't worry, they are upstairs”.

Mission accomplished I turn around to find my way out of the parking garage. Half-way out I run into a flustered woman frantically looking for the IPCC. Feeling rather smug I direct her to turn at the pink columns, go straight past the WTO, and stop before she hits Finland.