"Caravan" to Africa

Home again..

.. in time for Christmas eve!



-the end.

Medevac flight.

I need to catch my flight home this evening, but I wanted to visit Masai territory (in western Kenya) today, to see how mission work is going there. I had an invitation from the Russell and Johnson families of Master's Mission, and an offer from Matt Olson to fly me out there in a 210, and was really looking forward to it. But events intervened to change plans.

Late Saturday night, in a village near Aru in northeast Congo, a man was shot by soldiers. He did not die, but was seriously injured. There are no mission or relief flights into Congo from Uganda now because they have been forbidden by the Ugandans (that's too long a story to address here). Friends of the wounded man sought to send out an appeal for help. By Monday evening they had reached Arua, Uganda, having crossed the Congo/Uganda border by road, and gained access to a two-way radio. They sent an appeal for help to AIM-AIR, which was immediately received in Nairobi.

The man's name was Obtwega. He was a nurse at a small church-run clinic. He had been hit three times, once in each leg, and once in the left forearm. The arm injury, in particular, involved shattered bones, and had no hope of recovery without attention from an orthopedic surgeon. In Obtwega's area, he himself was the only available medically-trained person.

His church was appealing to AIM-AIR to airlift him to the Kijabe Medical Center in Kenya for the necessary orthopedic surgery, and treatment of his other wounds. Neither he nor they had any money to offer for re-imbursement of expenses.

The central theme of life in sub-Saharan Africa is, abundance of need and scarcity of resources. It's no different for AIM-AIR than for anyone else. They could not possibly hope to save every life in East and Central Africa that needs saving in ways like this, so the stewards of the scarce resources are routinely faced with agonizing triage decisions about when to say "no", in order to be able to continue to say "yes" as often as possible.

I listened to Andy Keller and Matt Olson discussing this one, late Monday night upon receiving the appeal. Matt decided he was willing to commit AIM-AIR resources to responding positively to this request, without knowing whether or when any money would become available to pay for the costs. It would require cancelling our planned flight to Masai territory today. Matt asked if that was alright with me. I said, of course, and offered to help with the rescue flight in any way possible. A plan was made in which Ron Pontier, who lives at Entebbe, Uganda, and has an AIM-AIR 206 there, would pick up the patient in Arua and bring him to Entebbe, while Matt and I would fly to Entebbe from Nairobi, in order to pick him up and bring him the rest of the way to Kenya.

Many flight requests, like this one, are requests for service of a "one-way" nature: someone needs either to be picked up, or dropped off. Such a request by itself creates an empty leg, but at AIM-AIR such legs rarely stay empty. There is almost always something or someone ready to take advantage of any flight to or from anywhere. This case was no different.

Yesterday, the DC-3..



..flown by Brian Stoltzfus, made an extensive tour with multiple stops in Sudan and Uganda (including Entebbe) before returning to Nairobi. It carried a lot of stuff, but would probably have had room for more, and it turned out that there were things here that Ron needed in Entebbe, which were left off the DC-3 by an oversight. This kind of thing used to happen to Jennilu and I all the time while we were living in the C.A.R., entirely dependent on Nairobi for logistical support. Space on a flight to CAR was one of the most precious of all our scarce resources, and to see it wasted was agonizing. This apparently happens much less frequently now, but of course there will always be some mistakes. And there will often be opportunities to make up for them, as in this case where we suddenly and unexpectedly had an airplane about to fly from Nairobi to Entebbe empty. Checking for anything that might need to go, we found all this:



It includes aircraft engine oil, oil filters, a spare tire, empty jerry cans, aircraft parts, and about a cubic yard of mail. This mail is not all for Ron and Donna, it's for missionaries and church workers throughout Uganda, eastern Congo, and C.A.R., for which the best chance or the only chance of delivery might be for it to be carried on one of Ron's flights. So we stuffed it all into the 210, strapped it down, and took off. Departing Wilson Airport on runway 14, we passed over herds of zebra and gazelle grazing just on the other side of the airport perimeter fence.

Flying over the northeast corner of Lake Victoria we saw dozens of small or medium sized islands in the lake inhabited by fishermen living in small villages.



This is a really big lake. Flying several miles away from any shoreline looks like flying over the ocean: there is sometimes no land visible in any direction out there. All these islands are destinations that are now within AIM-AIR's reach thanks to the availability since last winter of the floatplane.

We used runway 35 at Entebbe. The approach is over the water, and the runway threshold, right on the shoreline, is a long way away from the tower. This was the approach used by the Israelis, at night and without lights, for their 1976 rescue of hostages held in the terminal building. Today there was a cloud of lake flies also using that approach, but we were faster than them, and they splattered all over the wings and the windshield.

A while later Ron showed up in his 206 with Obtwega.



Matt had asked me to try to find a wheelchair. In the course of this task I noticed that the airport staff seemed reluctant to converse with me in Swahili, even though they clearly understood it, but I did manage to get a wheelchair.

Ron spoke bilingually to Obtwega in Swahili and Lingala (a widely-used intertribal language in Congo). He also gave me an explanation about the non-use of Swahili.
"Swahili is out of fashion here these days."
"Why?"
"For some reason, people associate it with the Idi Amin era."
So by using it at Entebbe I had been demonstrating myself to be a relic of that era - even though I was of course no fan of Mr. Amin's.
"So, what do you use now?"
"I'm learning Luganda."
"Is it like other languages?"
"No, it's completely different. There is no vocabulary overlap at all with anything else I know."
Ron speaks French and Lingala (for Congo), Zande and Sango (for C.A.R.), Arabic (for Sudan), Swahili (for East Africa), and a couple of others.

Obtwega had no objection to Swahili. I asked him how his injuries had happened. He said that, in the middle of the night, soldiers had come banging on the door of his house. He asked what they wanted. They said, money. He said he had none. They broke in anyway, shot him, and took everything from his house, including the furniture and the bed. Apparently the only reason for their attack was that there is now in eastern Congo no governing authority willing or able to prevent them from doing so as they please. This is a consequence of rebellion and counterrebellion continuing and disintegrating into lawless chaos featuring unrestrained rampages by any and all militia groups that can buy or steal guns and ammunition. The same kind of thing has also been happening recently in Somalia.

Facing a need for international travel, Obtwega had no passport. Even if there were a clear answer to the question of which government has authority over him -which there isn't - it would have been logistically impossible for him to get one. Fortunately there are local ways of dealling with situations like this, which come up routinely. Local officials, on their own authority, generate letters that are called, in French-speaking Africa, "laissez-passers" which state that the named bearer is known to the official, and is a resident and citizen of his own country. These are generally accepted in lieu of passports throughout central Africa, and are stamped and signed by receiving authorities in lieu of visas, but are less common in East Africa. Obtwega's wife and child had only a hand-written addendum on his laissez-passer, saying "accompanied by a woman and a child". This seemed a bit thin to us, but it was found acceptable by Ugandan authorities for transit through Uganda, and by Kenya authorities for entry into Kenya. Probably, Obtwega's blood-soaked bandages were more compelling than any paperwork. However that detail introduced questions of its own. The Kenyan immigration officer asked, "Was he a combatant in the Congo conflict?" We assured him that he was not.

The people of Congo seem to me to be incredibly tough and tolerant of suffering. A patient in Obtwega's condition by all rights ought to be transported on a stretcher with his injured limbs supported by splints. But all we could offer was a small, ordinary upright seat in the 210, into which Obtwega had to be lifted. Although his pain while being moved was clearly excruciating, he never uttered a sound or a complaint. Even when seated comfortably, there was pain visible around the edges of his eyes, but no complaints. His wife appeared greatly relieved to be on the way to help and safety, and a friend he had brought along to help him move appeared concerned.



These folks were about to become destitute foreigners in a strange country. Matt asked them whether they had any money at all, even though we really already knew the answer. They had nothing. Matt called Andy in Nairobi on the HF radio and told him to withdraw the equivalent of $150.00 in Kenya shillings from AIM-AIR's account, to be added to the bill which might never be paid, and handed to Obtwega so that he would not arrive at Kijabe totally destitute. Only just now while writing this, have I noticed the various points of analogy between Matt's job today and the parable of the Good Samaritan as told by Jesus. Good job, Matt. I'm confident that under your management, and "in spite of" your generosity, AIM-AIR is not going to go broke.

After persuading Kenya immigration officials at Wilson airport to admit Obtwega into Kenya rather than detain him or send him back, we transfered him to a van for a ride to Kijabe. As Michael Steeves pointed out, the airstrip up there is marginal, really suitable only for a lightly-loaded 206, and even then the landing is a very rough ride. Obtwega needed to go by road from Nairobi to Kijabe. After the transfer to the van our part of the rescue was complete.



I had time left in the day to shower, change, pack, and go out for Chinese food at the Hong Kong with Jim and Bev Streit before catching the evening British Airways 747 to London, on the way to PA, wondering when I'll next have an opportunity to come "home" (according to the sign in the hangar).

Things to do in Nairobi..

..if you don't have time for game reserve tours or other tourist attractions:

1. Make Christmas music at the Streit's house:



2. Study the aerial root system of the climbing split-leaf plant:



3. Make sure you have all your stuff out of the plane:



4. Watch John Mosby and Ken Stoltzfus Jr. lay out an AIM-AIR logo on the new plane:



5. Snap another pic of the floatplane because Bruce Wilton asked for it in a comment, and talk to Lydia about the progress of the floatplane inspection.



6. Pose for a pic with Andy, Lydia, and Waldo. No, I haven't shrunk, it's just that Andy is 6' 8".



7. Watch for signs of changing attitudes about HIV/AIDS and government corruption.



8. Snap a pic of Cessna 206 5Y-ALY, because Harold De Souza and I flew it across the ocean in 1974, and it's still flying now (just today.) The paint job is new, with a different design.



9. Snap a pic of the wreckage of Caravan 5Y-BOY, because Michael mentioned it in a comment. Michael, how did you know about that? I thought you were in Canada.



10. In the evening, join an AIM-AIR staff Christmas party. You already know Chad and Mike. The guy in the middle is Dan Spooner, aka "Bwana Kijiko".

Nairobi!

Our neighbor on the Khartoum airport parking ramp was a Red Cross airplane, which (like ours) will be used to bring relief to victims of conflict in Sudan's war zones.



The honest answer to why the Red Cross insignia is so large, is that it's an attempt to make sure that a soldier with a missile launcher or a gun at least knows what kind of airplane it is that he's aiming at. But the sad truth is that the fighting in southern Sudan is so angry and chaotic that the Red Cross, and its Islamic counterpart the Red Crescent, painted on an ambulance or an airplane, are no longer guarantees of immunity against getting shot at. Thinking about that, and noticing during our departure the many anti-aircraft gun installations around the airport perimeter, reminded me that this airplane on some of its missions will be in very dangerous circumstances. AIM-AIR planes are not eligible to display a Red Cross, and must rely on shields of faith and prayer. So I said a prayer for this one, to appeal for angels to fly with it in those moments when it will need protection. That will be more effective than a Red Cross emblem, but it's still no guarantee of safety.

Harold Bowman, my fellow AIM-AIR pilot, and dormitory-room neighbor when we were single guys living in Nairobi, was shot and killed in Juba in Feb. 1977 because he was in a battle zone of the civil war. The Cessna 402 he was flying was seriously damaged. He was at that time doing a flight that was supposed to have been mine. I have been observing and thinking carefully about events in Sudan ever since.

In 1983, AIM-AIR pilot Ron Pontier was held hostage, under threat of death, at Boma. The DC-3 received a bullet hole recently, but was not seriously harmed. Sudan operations remain risky. Many prayers are being offered that the negotiations under way in Kenya will this time bring lasting peace.

Traveling South

Khartoum is on the Nile river. (Actually it's on two Nile rivers, as it is located at the confluence of the Nile and a lesser tributary that flows west from Ethiopia, known as the Blue Nile). Heading south, we followed for a while the main, or "White" Nile river. Here's a photo that clearly shows the "flood-plain" method of agriculture that's used along the edges of the Nile in Egypt and northern Sudan. There's no rain, so the fields must be watered by the seasonal flooding of the river.



Further south, crossing the parts of Sudan where I used to fly, I spent some time remembering Harold, and my brother Virgil, who died in an accident while preparing to move to Kenya in order to fly in Sudan, and my best friend Mike Grennell, whose plane was brought down in the far south either by a missile or a thunderstorm, in the Didinga hills, shown here:



I thought about how much each of them would have loved to see and to fly this airplane.

But enough of sad thoughts. Arriving in Kenya is fun. North of Eldoret, we pass over the western escarpment of the great rift valley, where high ground to the west at 10 to 11 thousand feet elevation drops abruptly to about 5 thousand feet at the valley floor. This photo is taken from 13 thousand.



A little further along, we cross the equator and enter the southern hemisphere. Still further south we see the familiar "tilted crater" profile of Mount Longonot occupying the middle of the valley floor..



..and the Rift Valley Academy on its shelf at Kijabe, at the 8,000 ft. level of the eastern escarpment. I owe Michael Steeves a favor for his donation of this webspace on his kijabe.org server. Michael, here's a contribution to your collection of Kijabe photos: a shot of the airstrip taken during a low pass this afternoon.



To a Nairobi-based pilot, these images mean "almost home". At Wilson airport, all crew members except me had family reunions.





But that's OK, I'll be back in PA on Wed., and meanwhile the folks in the hangar did their part to make me feel "at home" here, which is pretty easy to do in my case.



Recognition and thanks was offered by AIM-AIR manager Matt Olson to Cyndi, Renee, and Jennilu for the loan of their husbands.

BTW, for those of you who know about it, that's floatplane N341EA back in the corner of the hangar.

Anyway, this job is done:



I'll be doing some visiting here in Nairobi tomorrow, and possibly in Masai-land on Tuesday, before catching the Tuesday night British Airways flight to Philadelphia via London. I'll add one or two more entries about that, and then consider this weblog complete.

Khartoum, Sudan

I am delighted beyond words to be able to make this post from Khartoum, a stop which we had not originally planned. Relations between the govt. of Sudan and western relief agencys are much improved. For a Christmas gift to the children of Sudan this year, Samaritan's Purse chartered a giant Russian cargo plane (the AN225, currently the largest airplane in the world, of which only a single example exists), and filled it in New York with 80,000 "Operation Christmas Child" gift and relief bundles. With the cooperation of the govt. of Sudan, these were flown into Khartoum by the AN225, and distributed throughout Sudan by the AIM-AIR / Sam's Purse DC-3, which flew from Nairobi to Khartoum for the occasion. All this has been going on during the past couple of weeks.

Sam's Purse director Franklin Graham was received in Khartoum for a personal visit with Sudanese President Al-Bashir. Click here for a story about this remarkable meeting, as published in the local press here in Sudan.

With this recent history of cordial cooperation, AIM-AIR felt that we might be allowed to land in Khartoum for this flight. Permission was requested and granted, so here we are.

Here are some photos of the flight from Crete, a 1500-mile journey that involves such a dramatic change of scenery that it seems like a flight half-way around the world.

Here's what the port city of Iraklion, Crete looked like at the time of our departure this morning.



Northern Egypt had a scattered cloud layer over desert..



Southern Egypt - a portion of it I had not seen before - is mostly empty desert, but there are patterns in the rocks and sand of remarkable beauty and regularity. Many of the patterns are repeated for many miles, some of them from horizon to horizon, with such perfect uniformity that the images of them could almost be used as wallpaper designs. Several photos follow. My apologies to those of you with dial-up internet; these might take a while, but I was really impressed by them.













Mike is in command of this flight, and he has finally put his uniform on, after flying across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean in blue jeans, etc.



We crossed the Nile River, and the Egypt / Sudan border near Abu Simbel and Wadi Halfa. 23 years ago Dale and I passed this area while flying low and following the Nile river in the course of delivering a 206 to Nairobi. There are two large statues at Abu Simbel: images of seated Pharaohs carved into the face of a cliff, and guarding the entrance to a temple. These date back to around the time of Moses. Dale and I had a good look at them then. Today we were obliged to remain at 11,000 ft., and they were too small to photograph.

We have not yet achieved our goal of landing at a daily destination before dark: it was just after sunset when we touched down here in Khartoum. Insh'allah, we will finally achieve that goal by landing in Nairobi tomorrow afternoon.