Hola...from the Sudan

It’s been quite some time since last I sent word of my comings and goings – much to report…

Shortly after my return from Dubai I was off to Mwanza, Tanzania’s second largest city, to fly for a small charter company on the Piper Seneca, a light twin I had been flying as an instructor in Florida. Though only a short stop, it was a productive one. Flying off of Lake Victoria was a treat, striking surroundings, granite rocks and boulders pepper the landscape. Mwanza itself is filthy and unremarkable, but its streets are lined with mango trees, laden with fruit – 10 cents a pop. The lake also was teeming with Tilapia and Nile Perch. Sustenance I was content with.

I was flying for Tanzania Interlink about six weeks. In early December the French management had finished pilfering what was left of the operation, and the big Kenyan parent company swept in and shut the doors. Oh well. I did get the chance to recover my multi-engine stick skills, and flew to some remote areas of western Tanzania, such as Ngara, close to the Rwanda/Burundi border and home to one of the largest refugee camps in the world. At one point there were over a million living within its walls, having fled unrest at home.

With Interlink history, I was unsure as to what I was going to do. When in doubt, head to the big city – Dar es Salaam. But first I had to get there. Traveling from Lake Victoria to the midpoint hub of Arusha/Kilimanjaro can be a bit tricky when in a rush and on a shoestring. Lady luck finally gave me the time of day and I was able to patch together the two principle legs.

A Belgian buddy of mine from Bahrain, had room on his Cessna 206 to Arusha. Just before we shut the door, he warned me that it was going to be an ‘interesting’ flight. From West to East we crossed the entire Serengeti at 50 ft off the deck, buzzing Elephant, Giraffe, before climbing up over the volcanoes and the Crater Highlands.

From Arusha, a mutual friend in Dar needed someone to ferry his Seneca back home. I waited about a week while ‘mechanics’ furiously scrambled to bring this aged and punch-drunk twin back to life. Finally with the green light, I tossed all my luggage into the back and strapped in. After a long and protracted battle with the right engine, she relented, and woke up. A quick wave to my Arusha mates and I rolled out onto the active runway to blast off for Dar.

Things were going swimmingly; climbing through 10,000 ft I had the chance to admire Mt. Kilimanjaro off to my left, completely unobscured. Then the left engine started to stutter and cough. With each of the larger ‘burps’ the aircraft would swerve towards the sick engine. Great. With the security of a big international runway (Kili) directly below me, and both engines still pulling, I decided to stick to the status quo and maintain heading and pitch, level off at cruise, retract the throttles and take a gander from there. Though terminally ill, when I powered down the engines at 11,500 ft, you could feel the sense of relief. By then, Kili was behind me, so I set my sights for Dar.

The Seneca I had been flying (5H-ARP) in Mwanza was exceptionally well-equipped and maintained – an anomaly here in Africa. The owner of ARP had pulled the aircraft out and sold it once he noticed the company was in its death spiral. The new owners - Coastal Travels of Dar es Salaam – dropped me a line and offered me my bird back.

The next three months saw me blanket the region. From Sumba Wanga to Singida, Mtwara to Mombassa. The bulk of my time was spent doing laps to Dodoma, ferrying
Minister’s enroute to the capitol, or picking up the slack for the scheduled flights to Zanzibar.

I did get the chance to do another ‘game flight’ across the Serengeti in ARP after I did an overnight charter to Mwanza. Luka, a friend and fellow pilot at Coastal, was headed from Mwanza back to Arusha so was on board with me for the flight. Fortuitous was our timing, to say the least, the Wildebeest migration had arrived on the Serengeti Plain only recently. Hard to describe. Like a long undulating seam of black. One of the more moving sights I have ever seen. In an aircraft, at 50 ft overhead, they split in two, something like a lava lamp. But don’t let anyone convince you that such disruptions affect their breeding habits – nothing, absolutely nothing, gets in the way of Wildebeest lovin’. The Serengeti is ruled by the hoof, not the paw.

…only in Africa

Sanchez, my big deviant Aussie mate, was flying for Air Excel (owned by Mike the Greek), and was chartered by some European production company that was in Africa filming a reality TV show. They picked up the group in Tanga, I believe, and were to deliver them in Seronera, a strip in the middle of the Serengeti. Along with the ‘contestants’ there were a few scrawny chickens and a couple of anxious goats. Stage props, I suppose. Before departure, Mike the Greek, as anxious as the goats, wouldn’t let them on board until a couple of makeshift nappies were fashioned out of those ubiquitous blue plastic bags (the bane of Africa). With their hindquarters tended to, everyone piled in.

Just prior to engine start, the producer approached Sanchez for a discreet chat. He had given him the green light to make the flight as miserable as possible. So, with a wink from the producer, and the camera’s rolling, they took off.

Suffice it to say, their journey was anarchic. Aerobatic essentially. I can only imagine the producers were well pleased with their footage – images of airborne and hysterical chicken; blood curdling screams from passengers gripped in terror; blue-nappied goats gliding through the air with each forward thrust of the control column.

After they landed in Seronera, it was obvious that despite their precautions, they made a muck of the aircraft: there was an inch of chicken feathers, human hair, and goat pellets (turds) across the cabin floor.

After scrambling out of the aircraft and collecting their bags, they blew a collective sigh of relief, finally rid of the diabolical Sanchez. Almost. Thinking they hadn’t taken enough abuse, and knowing the camera’s were still rolling, Sanchez lifted off the runway, banked to the right, then pitched down and put the group in his gun sights. He set the power to ‘bat out of hell’ and screamed past a scant few feet above. He said the look on their faces as they dove out of the way was priceless.

…life in Africa

Translated from the Arabic, ‘Dar es Salaam’ means ‘Haven of Peace’. Generally, it lives up to this description. However, from time to time, one is reminded that Tanzania sits outside of the developed world.

Luka, that lively and animated Italian mate of mine, picked up friends Pete (known as ‘Ocean Spray’, due to his propensity to spit when he talks) and Simon (‘Skidmark’, for his unfortunate flatulatory situation) for a Friday night beer. They crammed into Luka’s 1978 Fiat super mirafiori (looks like Lada, sounds like Fiat) and were headed out to the Msasani Peninsula when they eased to a stop at a red, just prior to leaving the city centre.

While waiting, a Tanzanian police car (a junkyard Hyundai) pulled in front of them, so the two cars were nose to nose at the intersection. Four cops pile out with their Kalashnikov’s and casually surround the car... Yes, it is possible to convince yourself that it is nothing to worry about. But believe you me, when unarmed and a long way from home, it ain’t the best feeling in the world… Leaning into the car, they started with some innocuous questions, cigarettes? chewing gum?... Luka feigned a search for a smoke, while quietly slipping the stick into first. Unbeknownst to Ocean Spray and Skidmark, Luka was going to pull a ‘Dukes of Hazard’…

Luka also knew two more relevant pieces of information where Ocean Spray and Skidmark were out of the loop. First, the coppers in Tanzania only had enough money for one round in each gun – no matter how big those cartridges were. Second, Hyundai’s of that vintage loaded down with four fat cops with fat guns can’t keep up with the 1978 super mirafiori. He guessed.

So Luka hammered the pedal, and with their unwitting heads thrown back, the boys were off.

Ocean Spray and Skidmark instinctively crouched forward into the crash position, anticipating a wave of bullets sprayed all over the backend of the car – just like in Miami Vice. But unlike Miami Vice, the bullets never came. In fact, it took Crockett and Tubbs, so long to get in their Hyundai, rope-tie the doors shut, turn the car around, and get on with the chase that it was over before it started. I’m sure that Luka was mildly disappointed; the boys however, were in shock.

Only in Africa can you begin a night out on the piss, with a story like that.

…flying in Africa

The highest volume air route in Tanzania is the 15 minute flight from Dar to the island Zanzibar. You can find a dozen aircraft at any given time during the daylight hours, shooting past each other at 1000 ft above or below. There are a number of different operators shuttling passengers to and fro, the dodgiest, above all, is Tropical Air of Stone Town. A Swiss friend, Gabriel, was flying their Cessna 172 Skyhawk between Zanzibar and the mainland, as well as between Zanzibar and the nearby islands of Pemba and Mafia.

About six months ago, he was enroute to Dar on a typical flight when he started to experience engine problems. After a minute or so of gentle wheezing, all was quiet. Gabriel promptly informed his operation and the Dar es Salaam approach control that he was puttin’ into the drink – and, like, help, ‘n stuff… Well, it’s Tanzania, so no help was forthcoming, and his company wasn’t about to spring into action. One of the other pilots, Nicos (another wild Greek expat), offered to jump into Tropical’s other Cessna and go search for any survivors. The management grumbled a curt ‘no’, and then concluded that the treacherous waters of the Zanzibari straight were too perilous to survive, and opted to inform the families and emergency contacts that Gabriel and his three passengers had perished. They were in fact, very much alive.

Even after the families had been informed, and insurance companies notified, Nicos kept up the pressure. They finally relented, but insisted that he wait to search until the next day when there was a ‘revenue flight’.

Gabriel was able to keep the group together in a tight circle as they floated in the Indian Ocean for 21 hours. Late in the morning, the following day, a fisherman sailing past in his dhow, happened upon the exhausted four. Worn out, with eyes burned red from the seawater, they were hauled aboard. A little worse for the wear, but thankfully in one piece. The barracuda and hammerhead sharks that populate the immediate waters, having chosen to let them alone.

After a brief investigation it was discovered that Tropical had been repairing that aircraft with parts stripped from an old abandoned VW in the parking lot.

On a related note, about a month later there was another significant accident. A big Antonov plunged into Lake Victoria a moment after takeoff from Entebbe international in Uganda. Apparently too fat to fly. I had met some of these Russian pilots in Mwanza and had heard how they structure their ‘performance bonuses’. Each crew member receives $1US for every pound over the aircrafts maximum gross weight. The eight Russian crew members on board turned that Antonov into a submarine, and hit the bottom of the lake with their pockets full of cash. We’re all in Africa for different reasons.

…so last Sunday I woke up in Southern Sudan.

After a week of delays (ad a string of wonderful meals) forced me to hang tight in Nairobi, I was able to get on a flight to Rumbek – the United Nations base in Southern Sudan. From there I was scooped up by my new company and flown to our tent camp in Akot, ten minutes away. Since then I have been flying a Czech made LET 410 for the Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), running humanitarian relief into the famine/drought stricken areas of the Sudan. It has made quite an impression on me.

From my room to the mess, I’ve had to walk around a huge bomb crater, about 8 ft deep, and 15 ft across. Throughout each day, a Dinka drum beats loudly. From where and for what reason, no one seems to know for sure.

It is the combination of these two elements that produce an emotion that is greater, and wholly different, than the sum of their two parts.

…Africa and the United Nations

Koffi Annan pulled into Rumbek about 3 or 4 days ago. During my stay here in Africa, I have had the chance to get a more intimate view of the governments and regimes that pin this continent firmly to the bottom. Almost without fail, minus the Mandela presidency, each and every one of them can be defined by three characteristics:

1) Horrific governance, 2) rampant corruption, and most importantly, 3) preservation of power

It is these three characteristics that have come to define the Secretary General’s tenure. I wouldn’t expect Mr. Annan to truly understand the concept of sound government – why should he? But why do we insist on selecting as the world’s de facto leader (outside of the White House) an individual that does not come from a country that ‘gets it’?

It is the incessant bitching and moaning about George W, that frustrates me to no end. If what the world desperately needs is a counter-balance to American hegemony, is Africa the talent pool we should be drawing from to accomplish that objective? Maybe one day, yes… As it stands now we seem more concerned with padding our PC credentials as opposed to the more important task of guiding the world.

Non-U.N. expats, like me, usually groan at the mention of Koffi Annan. I mention this because he showed up the other day in the Sudan, the country where the United Nations has yet again stood idly by, only to watch about a third of million innocent people get butchered.