Turbulence in Congo
(continued) At Goma, Cindy cautions a local Air Serv worker to hold off filing our flight plan and manifest until we return to the airport. No sense giving the officials any more notice than necessary of our plans, or who we’ll have on board. Just in case. An hour and a half later we return with the two pilots and load up to go. But somehow, there’s been a miscommunication or cross-cultural broadside to Cindy’s instructions. Our flight plan was filed as soon as we left the airport.
“What do we DO?” I ask Cindy in dismay. The airport is crawling with armed government soldiers. Stopping us is going to be easy. Cindy shrugs.
“Well, we’ll just see how far we get,” she says.
We climb into the Caravan’s cockpit and call for permission to start the engine, glancing uneasily at each other while we await the answer. We’re cleared to start. That’s one hurdle crossed. Two minutes later, we call for permission to taxi, sweating through another interminable silence before approval is granted. That’s two. We taxi with trepidation between airplanes and soldiers, passing right under the control tower’s windows en route to the runway. At the hold short point, we call for clearance to take off. Again, the wait. My heart is pounding. Any second, I expect to hear the shouts, see the soldiers running and hear the order to cut the engine. Cindy and I shoot each other another look. After what seems like an eternity, the radio crackles. We have permission to leave. “Let’s get out of here,” Cindy says as she puts the throttle forward.
Now all we have to do is navigate through the volcanoes—on instruments. But suddenly that doesn’t seem so bad.
A few days later, I’m at the international airport in Accra, Ghana, looking at a beautiful Delta Airlines 767 whose next stop is John F. Kennedy airport in New York. It’s been a long time since I’ve appreciated seeing a piece of America—or the prospect of a direct, nonstop airline flight—quite so much. The mere fact that Delta now offers direct service to Ghana, Senegal and South Africa—the first American carrier to provide direct service to Africa since the days of Pan Am—says a lot about how far Africa has developed as a business and tourist destination. But taken as a whole, it’s still an untamed continent, with vast stretches of inaccessible land and a paucity of reliable roads and infrastructure. Not to mention a breathtaking amount of conflict, violence and poverty.
And yet … I understand why pilots love flying in Africa. Yes, there’s danger, discomfort and risk, and the poverty and violence can be exhausting to even witness, let alone confront. We have no idea how safe and comfortable we truly are here. Even in the course of a month, I found myself newly appreciative of things I should be grateful for every day but too often take for granted. And while most of those items involve basics like safety, money, running water, health, civil rights and peace, they also include the simple luxuries of paved, straight runways more than 1,500 feet long and the wonders of weather forecasting and flight service support a mere reliable phone line away.
But to fly in places where people’s survival depends on your actions is profoundly rewarding. And in terms of educational adventure, Africa is hard to top. Even as difficult as some of my time there was, I’d still go back. For there are few untamed places left in the world. And Africa is like all wild and untamed things—vivid, stark, beautiful, dangerous, challenging, unpredictable, uncomfortable, breathtaking … and utterly unforgettable.
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