Airplanes – Reflecting on the African Transect

 The hotel Karibu was an amazing place.  Out in the northern suburbs of Dar,  on the Msasani Peninsula, the kind of twee, manicured and spacious neighbourhood that you find in any African city where colonists made their enclave, this hotel was nestled away.  Not on the coast, it was in amongst the residential district with no outlook to mention.  It was thirty minutes commute from the centre of town.  It should never have existed, but it survived quite well.  What was more bizarre was that it had a splendid entrance that would suit any five star hotel, a grand lobby with antiques adorning every part, a huge gleaming marble desk next to a gushing water feature, and alongside a marvellous restaurant with great food (but the AC was always too cold).  But once you were checked in, you rose up to the next level and found yourself in the squalid conditions of so many big African city hotels; dingy corridors with carpets that smelt of twenty years of abuse (their was cat crap on the stairs for two days), rooms with ancient TV’s that hardly worked, light switches that were lethal and bathrooms that had been plumbed by a mate’s uncle who had once read a book on the subject.

 I was starving, but the restaurant was only serving heavy stodgy dinners, so I wandered outside, ignoring the Tss..tss of the taxi drivers.  I set off down a quiet road towards the coast and came across the Oysterbay Hotel with a small shopping centre next door.  In amongst the shady squares here, I bought a few postcards and settled in a bright new café, had the most enormous hamburger and watched two white women discuss their quaint little social life on the peninsula while a small girl played with her food, her drink straw, her doll.

 It was then I reflected on the trip I had just taken.  From the throb of the electricity generator across from the Aqualodge, down the rutted sandy track to Kigoma Airport, past the refugee camps of Kibondo, the manic disorganisation of Mwanza, the tourist chic of Kili and the heat, dirt and mess of the centre of Dar, I was now in a modern shopping centre, enjoying a hamburger listening to idle European chit chat.  All in one day, all in one country.

Lake Tanganyika Sunset

Airplanes – Leg One

He handed me a small Tupperware box with several Cadbury Eclair sweets inside.  I passed them back into the cabin and everyone took one. “Breakfast” said the pilot.  He looked around the aircraft one more time and pulled the throttle right back.  We accelerated away and within a few seconds were airborne and the bounce of travelling in a different medium shocked us all, and the ground was left far behind.  To the right the sprawling suburbs of Kigoma and Ujiji diminished and the row of low hills to the west gradually revealed the lake.  We travelled for a short distance southeast, almost tracing the lake’s shoreline before swinging northeastwards still climbing.   The GPS told me we had 40 minutes to Kibondo, wherever that was.  The wonderful sight of thick African bush was below us, river valleys cut into soft rock and meandered between lines of hills.  Small groups of people scratched out a living on slopes of dubious soil quality,

The prospect of a 180 degree view was tempered by the fact we were heading directly into the rising sun, and a yellow haze and wispy clouds spoiled the vista in front.  I cursed the fact that I had left my sunglasses in my hold-all, now at the back of the plane. To the right of us, though, the land was crystal clear and I could make out the long straight dust tracks of the major roads, forested areas, huge vlei, probably part of the great Malagarasi Swamp. To the west, the mountains on the border with Burundi rose high, almost to meet us at eye level.  We were flying at around 8000 ft, and the ground below was over 3000.  The mountains to the west, bordering the western rift, are among the highest in Africa.

 Despite the awe inspiring views, and the once in–a-lifetime opportunity that this was, several things conspired to make me tire quickly of the experience.  Firstly there was the incredible noise of the engines.  The pilot has his earphones on, so was probably oblivious to the pain it was causing me.  A loud, badly pitched whine and shivering vibration that just continued, never changed for the forty minutes in the air.  Secondly, the view was not all that stunning.  The old adage of MMBA was holding out.  All I could see was Miles and Miles of Bloody Africa.  The bush was all the same, the rivers still meandered, and the people still scratched out a living on slopes of dubious soil quality.  The third thing was that it was still only 8 o clock in the morning and I had already been on the go since 5:30 , after not getting to bed till after midnight the night before (the American running the Nyanza project had kept me talking all night).

 I started to nod off and even I could tell I was snoring in time with the vibration of the plane (Ncrrr crr crrr crr crr).  I tried and tried to take a look out of the window, but each time I did the view that was obscured by the haze soon was also obscured by eye moisture and then eyelid.  I was almost asleep when we were bumped three hundred feet up into the sky.  I looked out and saw a long ridge, almost the same shape as the North Downs.  We had hit the already rigorous thermals that rose up from these bumps and the little plane had been tossed upwards viciously.  The pilot smiled at me and said “A good job we didn’t have too much breakfast” and went on to explain how you learnt to look for these features.

Airplanes – A very important job

I said goodbye to the driver, who had been a good ally over the last few days, and wandered as nonchalantly as I could manage around the nose of the plane.  I couldn’t suppress the wide eyed grin currently on my face but tried to make this feel like I commonly took my place next to a pilot on a plane when I fly around Africa.

 I worked my way up the steps into the front, one on the wing, one on the body of the aircraft and settled into the seat.  I could hear a few strange comments from the rest of the passengers about my being there (Jealous people, I thought) and tried to work out the seatbelt.  I couldn’t.  The pilot got in a moment later and buckled me in like a two-year-old.  (Ha ha, just out of practice….I haven’t seen one of these before in my many years of being up front in a aircraft….).

 This was awkward.  I had this thing between my legs.  A joystick I mean, which was connected to his side as well.  I had two foot pedals where I wanted to rest my feet, so I couldn’t relax in this position.

 The pilot got in and coolly started up the engines, using the big knob in the centre of the cockpit.  He then gave a final wave and moved off, no hands, turning the plane by the use of the foot pedals, which also raised and lowered themselves on my side of the plane.  While doing this, he set all his instruments on, including the GPS. Rather than Mwanza, which is where I thought I was going, he clicked on to Kibondo, and I realized this was going to be another up down, up down job.

 He turned to me as we were going to the end of the runway and said, “the co-pilot has a very important job”

 “Yes, yes” I said

 “Oh, yes”  He grinned at me, “You get to hand out the chocolate eclairs.”

Important Job

Airplanes- Weighing up the passengers

The pilot walked immediately off, and everyone took that as their cue to offload the bags and march behind him up to the plane on the hard.  The pilot went straight into the business of preparing the plane.  He took off the guards on the propellers and gave them a gentle twist.  Then he lifted and dropped the flaps on both wings and the tail.  He gently kicked the tyre.

 While this was going on, the ground staff were sorting out the baggage.  One guy was going round with an old fashioned spring balance and read out weights to the stripy shirted man, who wrote it down on his list.  He took all our tickets, and just like the best stewardess, ripped the appropriate portion off and told us to enjoy our flight.  He then asked who the large grey heavy suitcase was.  I said it was mine. He went back to his clipboard.  “Mr. Mills, you are overweight”.  OK, so I was a bit podgy round the midriff but it wasn’t the time to bring this up.  I suddenly realized he wasn’t necessarily insulting me, just drawing attention to the fact that my bags were over the 15kg limit.  This was to be expected as I was supposed to be allowed 20 kg on other flights.

 Lots of nasty thoughts started passing through my mind,.  That I would have to unpack my bag and leave it for the driver to organise a DHL to Dar es Salaam of all my dirty shirts and underwear.  The man tut-tutted for a few moments, and then said “We’ll have to get Basuti to pay the excess”.  Basuti was the administration assistant for my project in Kigoma and another fantastic fixer that oiled the machinery of international projects.  The bags were duly loaded with a few bunches of mangoes, a lot of paper and several envelopes.  The purpose of these flights is not to give hitchhikers like me a way across the interior, but to ensure fast communication between the different UNHCR encampments in western Tanzania.  Most of the important post and paperwork is carried this way, as well as relief officers and essential equipment that cannot travel by road.  The priority goes to UNHCR business, but if there are other passengers out there who are willing to pay passage, then they are welcome revenue.  I was lucky, the busy season for the UNHCR is the deep dry season, which was about to get under way soon.  I was probably the last of the non-UNHCR workers to get a lift for quite a while.

 The bags were still being wedged in.  Most of the small bags went in the separate hold at the back ,but the larger ones would not fit and had to be squashed in at the back of the main space of the craft.  While the ground staff struggled to work the entire luggage in, the pilot was doing a subtle job.  He eyed us all up and down very carefully, and then decided on where to place us in the aircraft.  He placed a large gentleman on the left hand side and balanced him out with the two women.  A UNHCR lady who had just turned up at the last minute (also overweight so I didn’t feel too bad now if we came down in the bush because we didn’t have enough fuel. At least now I knew it would not be entirely my fault.) was also placed on the far side.

 I was left on the tarmac.  The pilot, who was a really cool dude, looked me up and down for a few seconds (long enough for me to think that I was going to be left behind all together) and said “Have you ever been a co-pilot?”

 “No” I said, trying not to sound too eager,.

 “Do you want to be a co-pilot”

 “Yes”, not entirely sure exactly what he meant.

 “OK, go round the other side and hop in and I’ll be in in a moment”

Airplanes – Waking up the Airport

 We arrived first and when the noise of the engine stopped the deathly quiet was disturbing.  Then it was immensely pleasurable as I remembered a sequence of beautiful mornings in Zimbabwe several years before.  This is a feeling only an African morning can truly give.  Peace and quiet.  Yesterday’s heat has been dispersed into the sky, the nighttime insects have all headed for home with the impending light, the daytime ones are too groggy to make a difference.  Most people are still asleep.  You have the wide open landscape to yourself.  I often think that the African Sunsets are the most dramatic in the world, but the rare sunrises I have seen surpass even those.  Whereas the sun drops quickly at night, you have a long lead in for the sunrise.  The light increases Oh so gradually.  Deep purples give way to roaring reds which are reflected by duck shell blue in the west.  The starry sky lightens and only the strongest remain as the daylight advances.  The ground reveals itself; first its form, then its texture, finally its colour.

 Then noise echoes around.  A hundred cockerels greet the sun, children start to cry, galvanized buckets are clashed as people start to wash.

 Then, when its entrance has been suitably signposted, the sun emerges from behind the distant hills and rises quickly into the sky.  The beautiful soft air, slightly damp and refreshingly cool begins to evaporate as the heat of the reflected light radiates back into the air.

 I had twenty minutes to appreciate all this as I stood in Kigoma airfield, wandering around, kicking last night’s termite tunnels on the ground, in the vain hope that I might disturb a marching colony.  But these soil warriors had long since moved on.

 Another vehicle’s headlights came out of the bush and a man in a business suit with two lackeys turned up.  They greeted me well enough, but then jabbered in Kiswahili, the lackeys and my driver laughing respectfully at the suited man’s comments.

 I wandered further away.

 Two women arrived in another vehicle, loaded with plastic bags, holdalls and babies.  They sat in the vehicles, were greeted by the others and we all paced expectantly around the building.

I had realized that there was just one plane landed in the airfield, a small biplane some distance off.  I had expected that the UNHCR flight would come in from somewhere else (I couldn’t believe that a pilot would overnight in Kigoma).  But I was wrong.  Another vehicle arrived and several men got out.  One was clearly the pilot, dressed in the standard uniform with the meaningless lapels.  The other two were dressed also in uniform; the standard uniform of a public servant who did his job but no more – a striped shirt and a pair of jeans.  This was the UNHCR agent in Kigoma.

Airplanes – Change of plan

Unfortunately there was one part of the equation that had been omitted; the efficiency of Air Tanzania.  I was disturbed to find out when I reached Bujumbura in Burundi that my Air Tanzania flight had stopped running two weeks before hand, and that there was very little option for getting out of Kigoma.  One option was to take a three day train ride through the centre of the country.  Another was to go back to Bujumbura, on to Nairobi and down to Dar es Salaam.  Expensive.

 The third and final route short of a back breaking drive across the country that would have taken the rest of the year, was to hitch a lift on a small biplane which made the journey across the western Tanzanian refugee camps.

 This was the option I took, courtesy of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).  Unfortunately the plane left at 6 am, and that was why, half an hour beforehand, I was bouncing along the tarmacced road out of Kigoma on the way to the airport.

 Kigoma probably counts as the smallest International Airport I have ever come across.  I had reached it after a forty-minute flight from Bujumbura, down Lake Tanganyika, bumping over the thermals that marked the boundary between the lake and Tanzania and rocking down to a grassy landing.  The taxi took thirty seconds (Heathrow please note) and we had to unload our own bags (Heathrow please do NOT note).  We wandered across the gravel into a small building where a very kind man filled in our immigration cards and stamped the passport, then we lumbered our way to customs where a nice lady prodded at my dirty clothes, smiled and we were on our way.

 On the way out of Kigoma, things were even quieter.  This was an internal flight, so there were no customs or immigration staff.  The airport is not on the main road, and you have to drive down one of the most rutted roads in Africa to reach the terminal.  It involved traversing several ravines, bouncing over many runnels and easing down and up several gullies before reaching the airport.  It had been dark when we left Kigoma, now the first rays of deep red light were glowing in the eastern sky.

Kigoma Airport

Airplanes – Early Morning Call

“Knock Knock”.  I was already up but Leonard wanted another tip.  I struggled to put some trousers on and went to the door.  My half naked self met Leonard’s half naked self.  “Yes”

 “your early morning call, sir”.

 “Thank you”, I said, being as polite as I could at 5:30 in the morning.  At least I had settled the bill the night before.  I didn’t want to have the hassle over the laundry bill when I had a plane to catch.

 I hurriedly washed and got fully dressed, did the usual rigorous routine, Passport, bags, keys, wallet, cheques, passport, cheques, keys, wallet, passport, wallet, hotel room key, passport, wallet, malaria tablets, wallet, keys, airline tickets, passport, wallet.

When I was entirely certain that no matter how many times I was going to check, something was going to be left behind, and at least ensuring that it wasn’t something that would prevent me from getting out of the country and back to the UK, I locked the hotel room door, panicked, went back in and did a final check under the bed, and then lugged the suitcase up the few steps to the lobby.

 Leonard had kindly put on the TV for me while I waited for the driver.  It seems to all Africans that we actually enjoy watching CNN.  Little do they know that I would rather have a large hole drilled into my head while Tammy Winette is being played the background, but they don’t seem to care.  Perhaps they enjoy passing on this sort of torture.  The problem with CNN is that it is so in your face that when there is little else to distract your attention you are irresistibly drawn towards it.  And despite the fact that in the twenty repetitions of the same news story you get in twenty minutes, they manage not to convey any news whatsoever, you still watch hoping that something new might come on.

 It was only a matter of a few moments before the driver arrived at the Aqua Lodge in Kigoma, western Tanzania, where I had been working on the Lake Tanganyika Biodiversity Project.  I had been very efficient and booked an Air Tanzania flight from Kigoma to Dar es Salaam, my next port of call, while I was still in the UK.  It left at a civilized time of day and, via Tabora, reached Dar es Salaam in a couple of hours.