Wild Flights and Hard Landings over Africa

One of the very first flights I took as a journalist was from Wonderboom just outside Pretoria to Jamba, the secret headquarters of UNITA in southern Angola. UNITA had kidnapped a group of foreign mine workers and was going to release them in front of the world’s TV cameras. Most of the country was very much an active war zone. It was my first trip to a combat area, so I was nervous, excited and curious.

Everything went off fine, though. The hostages were released. We got our shots and Jonas Savimbi laid on a big party that night at which not one of us dared refuse the invitation of the female rebel soldiers when they requested a dance. There was something weird and ominous about the whole event and we were glad to be flying out on our Dakota DC-3 early the next morning. I remember sitting on the uncomfortable military seats staring out of the old-fashioned square porthole as we swooped over the bush of southern Angola.  We were flying so low to avoid the possibility of being picked up by the East German radar operated by the Cubans that we were only just clearing the tops of the acacia trees. We were so close to the ground that a pair of kudu were startled by our plane and went careering through the bush. We were going home, and for the first time in my life, I was experiencing that mingled sense of adventure and relief at leaving a war zone safely.

Suddenly a strange juddering filled the plane. Everybody sat up as the adrenaline shot through them. There was something wrong. The pilots were terse and said little. ‘We have to land,’ one of them told us. The plane did a U-turn in the sky and began looking for a patch of empty grassland big enough to act as a runway. I really was scared as the plane thumped and bounced over the rough veld. Finally, the plane came to a halt. The pilots leaped out and began tinkering, Biggles-style, with the engines. Finally, they announced that we were ready to fly again. We all filed back into the plane, and they began take-off procedures. The engines kicked into life – dust flew up from the ground, but we didn’t move. The engines roared again. Nothing happened. The pilots got out. One of our wheels was stuck in an ant-bear hole. The journalists poured off the plane and all lifted up the wing while the pilot revved the engine. It was funny but scary at the same time. There was a real possibility that we could have been stranded in southern Angola in the middle of a civil war with no food or water.  Being one of the shorter members of the fraternity, I was delegated to taking the memorial photograph while the others shoved and heaved the wing above their heads. Finally, the wheel popped out of the hole and the ‘Dak’ moved forward. We were going home. This time for real.

The adventure of flying in these kinds of situations is that everything depends on that area of life that exists within the delicate balance of luck and skill. The smaller the plane, the more uncertain the circumstances, the more you are aware of just how much you are in the hands of fate. It is a moment when you have to look yourself in the mirror of your own choices and know that the consequences lie in your hands.

Comfort and even sometimes strict safety all too often come second to the desire simply to get there. During the Mozambican civil war I made arrangements to fly into the Renamo base camp. Again, it was a perilous undertaking to visit a notorious rebel group who had kidnapped journalists before. This was in the days before cell phones. After a series of crackling phone calls between New York and Rome and Johannesburg on dodgy intercontinental lines including special code words to prove our contacts were good, I finally met Rodney the pilot in Blantyre.

Rodney was not much of a talker – and I couldn’t blame him. He was about to make an illegal flight into rebel-held territory. If any of us got caught the implications were likely to include some time in jail.

Still, standing there rather uncomfortably on the tarmac watching him organise the loading of our luggage, sacks of rice, sugar and petrol into the plane, I thought we should at least try to make some small talk.

‘What kind of plane is it?’ I asked.

Rodney was checking something underneath the wing. He stood up and pushed his 1970s-John-Denver style glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

‘Piper. Aztec.’ He bent down again to continue whatever it was he had been doing before.

I tried again.  ‘And how old is it?’

Rodney looked up from underneath the shadow of the wing. He crooked his lips into a half-smile.

‘About 25 years old.’

He straightened up and clambered up onto the wing; his worn blue plastic flip-flops squishing out from underneath his heels as he found his balance again. He opened the door of the scratched and yellowed perspex cockpit and looked down at me. He smiled again, more broadly this time: ‘Wanna see the bullet hole in the floor?’ Then he relented when he saw my expression. ‘Don’t worry, if they try to shoot at us, unless they actually hit you, you don’t even know it has happened.’

Rodney was right. We made it in and out again, and if anybody shot at us, I never knew. At the time I was building a career and I couldn’t wait to get there. The plane trip in was an inescapable part of the deal. It was a risk I had to take – or rather, a risk I wanted to take. Don’t ask me if I would do it again.

Whether it is landing in southern Sudan or soaring over the Nile at dawn with the sun just creeping over the horizon, flying in the skies of Africa has left me with so many indelible memories – I once even had to navigate while getting out of the blazing heat of Djibouti. On my 39th birthday, I was part of a crew trying to get into Sierra Leone. It was no easy task in those days and we found ourselves stranded in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. There were no flights for days, if at all, but we wanted to get in. Somehow, we met the crew of the President of Ivory Coast’s plane.  They were on their way to another African capital to pick him up. The plane was empty now, on the inbound flight. A price was agreed, some few thousand US dollars, in cash. A freelance charter – no mention was made of a flight plan, but they dropped us off in Free Town. It was one of the best birthday treats I ever had.

What we feel about flying tells us something of what we feel about ourselves and our place in the world. A few years later I found myself sitting in somewhat different circumstances – in business class in a 747 on the tarmac in Lagos, Nigeria. Rain lashed the tarmac in the darkness of a tropical night. Thunder rolled across the sky and the palm trees swayed crazily in the wind.

The pilot came on over the intercom. ‘We must take off. It’ll be bumpy, but I don’t want to stay on the ground any longer.’  My fellow passengers were nervous too. In most countries, nobody would risk taking off, but the week before a plane was held up on this same tarmac. A gang put logs across the runway and pointed AK-47 rifles up at the cockpit. The pilot was forced to open the hold while the gang ransacked the luggage.

The pilot accelerated and we climbed into the thunderstorm. My palms were sweaty, and I could see the navigation lights reflecting off the thick cloud. As we climbed we were thrown about in our seats. Up and down, side to side, until I felt sick. There was an awful crash and the plane seesawed as lightning exploded outside the cabin. The plane shuddered and groaned as the heavy weather battered the fuselage.

And then, as suddenly as we had entered the storm, we were through it. We all breathed a sigh of relief. The sky outside was quiet and still, and a full moon glimmered on the edge of the wing. The lightning flashes deep inside the clouds below were like fluorescent explosions under water. The stars gleamed in a clear dark sky above, and ahead of us, as far as the eye could see, the clouds stretched across the night horizon like a vast silvery desert swathed in moonlight. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen – a moment of fear transformed into an enchanted vision; a view of our continent that I have never seen before or since.

I think of when we covered the war in Eritrea. We landed in Djibouti to refuel.  A former French colony, it is a tiny republic on the east coast of Africa next to Somalia.  It is little more than a peninsula of white dunes and desert scrub jutting out into a sapphire sea. We have no permission to land in Eritrea. But all the land borders are shut.

The hours tick away as we wait for clearance. French Foreign Legion troops stand guard in the heat waves rising off the tarmac. The Somali customs police are chewing qat, a narcotic leaf. They spit frequently on the hot concrete. When they smile their teeth are splattered with green.

Outside the terminal building two or three taxi drivers lounge in the heat. One of them agrees to take me to the Eritrean ambassador. There is an argument about who got the business. Somebody grabs at my door handle. My driver punches him through the window and we hurtle off towards town.

The ambassador’s wife comes to the door in a pink gown. It is siesta, she says. It is urgent, I reply. She calls the ambassador. We enter the coolness of his office. ‘You must report the war,’ he says. ‘The world must hear about it.’ He picks up the phone. A few short phrases and he writes on a pad. He hands the paper to me. We rush back to the airport. Minutes later we take off into a blue sky heading towards the war.

Midnight in Cairo. The African diplomat is sweating in his dark suit. He is short-tempered, but it is late and he tells the check-in clerk he has an important mission. We take off in the middle of the night. The Nile is a black ribbon flowing through the city lights spiralling below. We follow the great river south towards the heart of the continent. The diplomat is sitting across from me, staring for long sombre moments out of the window.

The morning star rises over the river, then the sun follows – a single line of crimson against the horizon. As the light turns golden over the empty desert we approach the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. We come down to land in the morning mist. With a swoop the pilot aborts the landing and climbs rapidly back into the sky. A sudden sandstorm has swept out of the morning desert. We circle in the air. Below us the sand swirls in reddish layers over the city, obliterating the airport from view.

Finally, it blows over and we land. Soldiers in camouflage and sunglasses carrying assault rifles surround the plane. The diplomat beside me gets up. I watch him as he walks alone across the runway, the remnants of the sandstorm ruffling his suit. I wonder where he comes from and who he is coming to see.

Is it a state visit? A secret assignment? I will never know. It is just one tiny intersection of lives in the extraordinary network of air connections that cover this vast continent.