The First Flight

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December 16, 2006

I spent Saturday flying with Jon the entire day. The day began at 5:30 A.M., getting up in the dark with no electricity and feeling my way around the bathroom and grabbing a mug of coffee before leaving for the small dirt airstrip that MAF calls home. The flight plan for the day seemed impossible to complete and Jon was a bit worried as he absolutely must be back before dark or can’t return.

The schedule looks something like this:

Kajjansi (the MAF airstrip near Kampala) – Entebbe (7 min away) (the international airport where passengers must pay a $20 departure tax and get stamped out of the airport. Also needed to refuel here) – Bunia (Congo) – Aru – Bunia (refuel) – Dungu – Isiro – Nebobongo – Bunia (refuel) – Entebbe – Kajjansi. In each place we were dropping off passengers and freight for everything from Medaid to Unicef. If everything went exactly as planned, we’d make it.

Before we started, the rain started. We were running late. At Entebbe International Airport, the workers didn’t want to refuel the plane because it was raining. They said they didn’t want water to get into the tanks which are on the top of the wings. Jon made them do it anyway, but then later noticed them holding the umbrella over their own heads, not the tank. Jon wanted me to look like crew so that hopefully I could get away with leaving Uganda and entering Congo (DRC) without paying exit and entry fees in both which would have totaled as much as $110. He first tried one of his blue pilot shirts on me but it came down to my knees so we settled for a rather large, thick khaki shirt. I managed to get in and out of Entebbe without anyone questioning me and even managed to pick up my suitcase that had come in.

Jon flies a Cessna Caravan, a 10 passenger single prop plane. As we left the ground at Entebbe and the rain started to clear, Jon smiled and said “it’s a great day at the office, isn’t it?” The landscape truly is beautiful. I haven’t seen this much green in long time. We flew over two large lakes: Victoria Lake where the Nile river begins, and Albert Lake on the border of Uganda and DRC. Bunia is just on the other side of the Uganda border. The UN is stationed there because of the political violence there a few years ago. There are enormous Russian helicopters, UN vehicles, camps, personal everywhere. This is a semi-major airstrip – paved with a couple of single level long old buildings. The toilet is a dirt long-drop in a thatched hut. An African woman kept trying to talk to me in French and informed Jon in Swahili that I must go inside to immigration and pay an entry fee. We walked into the dirty old white building to a door with a fading wooden sign saying “Immigration.” A man sat behind a desk in a room the size of a jail cell. Jon smiled that smile, informed him that I was crew and new and there were many new people he would be training (which is true) and he had never had trouble before. The man smiled and kept looking me up and down like he didn’t believe a word of it but didn’t quite know what to say. He finally said OK, shook hands with both of us and we left. Jon said that was the easiest anything has ever been at this airport. I tried to look important after that but had no idea what to do so I took photos.

Aru was a short flight to a small dirt strip with a couple of tiny buildings. Took about seven passengers back to Bunia. I was feeling a little more confident now that I knew I didn’t have to pay fee. I decided to take some shots of the man sitting on the wing refueling the plane with the airport in the background. One of the “officials” who was there the first time came up to me and insisted that I pay him $5 for taking pictures. Jon intervened, telling him we would pay him “next time,” which in African speak, that mean when hell freezes over.

Flying an hour west to Dungu, the terrain changed to thick rain forest – the Ituri Forest, the 2nd largest rain forest in the world. It is endless thick trees, with a few rivers and some rock formations. These flights across the rain forest might take an hour to fly and ten days to drive.

Dungu is a fairly large dirt strip at a town where two rivers converge. Jon said there are old French colonial buildings and even a small “castle” next to the river. From the air, though, it looks like a town with nicely laid out streets with houses…only the streets are dirt and the houses are rondovals (round, mud, thatched-roof houses). We picked up 9 passengers and took them to Isuru, a town south of Dungu.

Isuru airstrip seems to sit by itself in the middle of nowhere, but there is a town somewhere. This airstrip is long and paved and has an extremely weather-beaten, run-down white building announcing that it is a national airport. I was feeling quite hot now wearing this heavy big shirt and decided to take it off here, thinking that it didn’t matter at this point if I wore just my black T-shirt underneath. Jon was busy while I started to take some pictures. I got one shot off when a man, looking rather unofficial except for his bright orange vest, informed me that I could not take pictures without permission. He was small and looking rather stern, so I apologized and asked if I could take pictures. He said no, and told me I had already taken pictures and wasn’t allowed to. Jon came around the plane at that point and we both tried to appease him. I showed him the one picture I had taken and deleted it. He was not satisfied. I took several, he informed me. I said I did not, and showed him. Then he said, “you must give me the camera.” Jon & I immediately brushed him off with an emphatic “NO!” and Jon seemed genuinely irritated (which is unlike him). Jon waved a hand toward the dilapidated building saying, “Is this building important? No! It’s not important.” The man responded with “yes, it is.” Jon retorted, “No, it’s not!” and walked off. I got in the plane and ignored him until we left. Jon said this happened because I took the shirt off. Now I looked just like a muzungu (a white) that they can get money out of, not a pilot.

Nebo is a small grass airstrip. We came to a halt just at the end of the strip with nothing to spare. Within seconds we were surrounded by over 100 curious, excited black faces of children and adults. This must be the top entertainment of the week or month. The crowd pressed in tight around the plane and after the cargo was unloaded, Jon played his disappearing coin trick for the kids that sent them into hysterical laughter and gasps of astonishment. This is my memory of flying with Jon in Zimbabwe –the remote strips and crowds of people.

We flew back to Bunia alone so Jon flew extremely low over the forest, so close I could see the forest floor in the few breaks in the trees. Beautiful! The Bunia official wanted his $5, but Jon brushed him off again. We flew back to Entebbe and got back to the MAF strip just before dark.