November 28, 2010

All Things Flying

There is only 5mm of plastic between me and certain death. Then why am I so calm? I should be panicking. The others seem very tense and keep asking silly questions to keep their minds busy, to push the fear away. They look pale, almost green even, as I should too but I don't. I look closely at the door, it is an assembly of strips of transparent plastic, bolted together with rubber joints so you can roll it up. Clearly a handyman's work, not by a company with safety procedures and strict rules to adhere to. It makes me wonder how many safety systems it has, as I expect would be required for airplanes flying at 6000 feet (2000m).
I look at the back of the airplane and can see the cables leading from the levers in the cockpit to the rudder and flaps. Again not a reassuring thought that I can touch the cables, pull them even
and thus steer the little aircraft. I look through the oval windows and enjoy the stunning view. From this side - Tableview - you have an amazing view of Table Mountain, Signal Hill and Devil's Peak, with the city cradled between them and sprowling out. I see the new stadium and robben island, all under a clear blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
My partner gives me instructions and urges me to come closer. I have to manoever around which is very difficult in the confined space of the one propellor aircraft. We shuffle on the floor, as there are no seats, just one open space. Oks are signalled back and forth. Someone rolls up the door and air comes thundering in. The first pair goes, then it is me. I can feel a change in my
body and oddly enough I think about how my pancreas secretes adrenaline, heightens my senses. I think of how it dilates my pupils, sharpens my hearing, gives me more strength if I should need it. In the mean time I do as instructed, sit in the doorway, feet over the edge, legs folded under the belly of the plane. Head backwards, tilted sideways so I wouldn't knock out my tandem instructor.
For a brief moment we sit there, and I see the absurdity of the idea. I'm looking down two kilometers, to fields, dunes, ocean, cars, houses. I am strapped to a man I met one hour ago,
about to jump out of an aircraft. One minute of free fall, speed increasing every second up to around 300kms/hr, then pull out a piece of cloth tied to our backs with ropes so it would slow - not stop- us falling and allow a certain amount of control over the descend.
I decide not to scream. There is a tumble head first, and we fall. I hear myself screaming, of course. My mouth is dry within a second, from all the air flowing through it. Imagine stretching
your lips around a hair drier and switching it on, same effect. As we are falling, arms and legs open, looking around, a strange thing happened. I felt in control, at ease, really enjoying
the view. I would have wanted to stay up there, I felt perfectly safe. Reality was different of course.
There was a big tug and our body positions changed upright. The noise of wind diminished and we circled down. After an easy landing, I was back on the ground. I had done my first skydive.









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A couple of weeks ago, a big fair on military equipment was held in Ysterplaat, a military air base 30 minutes drive from Cape Town. Different heads of state, army officials and security companies from all over Africa came to admire the latest in military equipment, ranging from tanks and heavy duty vehicules over ammunition and weapons to armor and soldier's gear.
It was combined with a two day airshow of different types of helicopters and airplanes. My knowledge of aircrafts and military equipment is limited to the type of sound they make. Planes go swoosh, helicopters go dugdugdug and guns pow pow (and variations). I am also capable of distinguishing a helicopter from a plane. By locating the propellor(s) I can fairly confidently say if it is a helicopter - when the propellor is on the roof - or a plane - when it is on the side or front. It became a bit difficult with the jet plane concept where there is no propellor at all, and I almost
confused a tank with a fighter jet.
So with no knowledge of the war toys on display, and frankly no interest in acquiring knowledge on them, I just stuck to ushering ooohs and aaaahs. A perfect spring day, with the sun stinging and a cooling breeze, my friend Thomas and I admired the butch vehicules. There were stunt pilots flying in difficult formations, making loops, and helicopters showing how they pick up and displace jeeps, military men parachuting and abseiling out ouf helicopters. Big fat airplanes showing how manoeverable they are. One such carrier aircraft of the US army needed only 300m or so to stop after touching ground. Truely amazing.
In all, a very enjoyable afternoon. I left with reddened skin and the confirmation that I'm not into mechanical stuff.



















November 22, 2010

...and off again



Before I start this new post a confession, or rather an observation, for when you confess you need to have sinned and I don’t think I have.

I noticed that my drive to write new blog posts fell away completely shortly after my birthday. My birthday must have been the least noticed one since I was born. I received few birthday wishes and almost no gifts. I know I like my share of attention, yet I still don’t see myself as someone who really craves it. However, I was noticeably upset not getting the calls and cards I had secretly hoped for.
Now, of course I rationalized all of this. I know how birthdays in general are hard to keep track of. I myself rely on the birthday calendar in Facebook to keep track of most people’s special day. And I know all of us are submerged in our own lives, doing daily routines, and that with me being away, there is a lack of stimuli to help one remind my birthday.
But in spite me being able to consciously put the feelings of dissapointment in perspective (there is a root in vanity in them, and I don’t subscribe that attitude) I have to confess – there it is- that I did not feel like writing any more. Did I want to punish? Did I seek vindication? Not deliberatly, but it seems like once more the subconscious prevails.

But let’s consider it water under the bridge. I was pleasantly surprised to hear how many people actually seemed to read the scribblings on this blog. You might argue that there is vanity in me writing more to get attention, but then I would stick out my (perfeclty shaped) tongue to you, turn around and walk away, acting like you’re just a whiff of a bad air and stroking my golden blond manes.

Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’ll give you some updates, still in chronological order. Let’s see how many I can post in the coming weeks…

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Cote d'Ivoire, my new experience with traveling in Africa. And what a pleasant experience it was, once i managed to get there...

I had to be in the capital, Abidjan, for two days worth of meetings. With the flight network offering limited possibilities, I had to fly all over the African continent to get there. You might want to have a map of Africa next to you if I describe you my route: From Cape Town to Johannesburg, to Nairobi (Kenya) to Accra (Ghana) to Abidjan. All fun and games, and not too big of an issue if it weren't for the flight from Nairobi to Accra departing with a delay of one hour. One hour delay and I only had 50 minutes to catch my connection to Abidjan, and since basic math applies pretty much all over the globe, I had to find a way to make the plane fly super fast, or would be bound to miss my connecting flight. My hijacking skills are yet to be developed, and the captain wasn't available for discussions (something to do with him busy flying a plane) so I touched ground in Accra too late and had to stay there for the night.

The flight operator arranged a nice hotel, transportation and food. The staff and all people I met were very professional and helpful. I did not need a fixer, like I had in the DRC. I did not need to bribe anyone, and only had to ask or explain everything once. So all in all not a bad experience, I just needed damage control so I would not arrive too late in Abidjan. But first I tried to catch a glimpse of Accra.

Accra was definitely in a different league than the DRC, based on what I saw there. I have noticed you can gauge the (economic) state of a country by things you see in the street:
- the type of cars: a lot of new and/or expensive cars mean there are people with money. A lot of 4x4 vehicles means the roads are in bad condition overall. Vans and trucks mean there is room for large scale economic activity.
- How many people are selling in the street, and what they sell. If they only sell bare necessities- food, drinks, alcohol-, it means either people have no money to purchase other items, or it is too expensive to trade in them. If they sell other items – jewelry, gadgets, books, toys- it means small time entrepreneurs can find the means and the consumers to run a shop.
- The presence of big supermarket chains. They do there homework before they enter the market. Especially the international chains. You could look at them as the flowers of the economy: if the soil is rich enough (consumers) and the climate accommodating (government policies) they will bloom. If one of the two is lacking, they won’t sprout.
- Billboards in the street: are they advertising products or mainly glorifying the ruling president. - The buildings and public infrastructure: how many skyscrapers, how big are the houses, in what state are the houses and roads, …

Measuring Accra on these criteria, they scored the highest of the few cities I have seen in Africa. Hawkers were all around selling all kinds of things from food to phone cards over toiletries to clothes. A traffic jam looked like a moving supermarket almost. There are quite a few international supermarkets, and you can see their advertisements on big bill boards all around (side note: there is a brand called “Uncle Sam” complete with the American symbol and all, selling halaal food. I would love to serve a nice plate of that to some of the hard liner anti-muslim US citizens). Cars are new and sleek, no 4x4s needed here and the houses looked nice and big in the (upmarket) area I walked through.

So Accra was nice, granted, but I needed to be in Abidjan, and as fast as possible actually. The replacing flight would leave the following day in the afternoon, thus making it impossible to do any of the work planned for most of the day.
I moved out to investigate other options. There was an other flight leaving in the morning, from an other flight operator. I decided to spend extra money for this ticket so I could arrive before noon.
The next day, I was on my plane, a standard boeing 737, with luggage all checked in and safely on board, ready for the 45 min flight. When we were airborne for about 15 mins, the pilot came on the radio and mumbled some French words about a defect and that we had to return. There are only a few messages that are unsettling when you are flying, but this was definitely one of them. Even more so for the Ghanaian passengers, who speak English and couldn’t understand the pilot but did see the unrest with their Ivorian fellow passengers.
Back on the ground in Accra, the pilot announced that two electrical generators failed in mid air. Two. I am no plane mechanic or engineer, but two generators failing sounds like a whole lot. Especially considering that I am used to taking flights where a total number of zero generators fail, zero failing generators therefore also being the average per flight. Oddly enough I did not panic at all, I kept reading my book. I figured that I could not do anything myself anyway, and that I could only make the pilot’s job more difficult by panicking.

As we were safely on the ground, it was time to observe a big difference in culture. The passengers on board did not start asking questions to the flight attendands. They had a chat on the situation, yes, and they did not like it. But they remained quite calm. No one started shouting, and there was no individual getting angry with the pilots or anything similar. That would be behavior that could be expected if this were to happen in Europe. Or people getting scared maybe, and nauseous with anxiety. I think the crowd, being almost exclusively African, was accustomed to these type of challenges and therefore able to handle it calmly. They knew something would come up eventually.
But I had bought this ticket to get to Abidjan earlier than my original back up flight, which was still set to leave a couple of hours later.
So I politely asked a stewardess when she thought there would be clarity on the back up plan. She reassured me there were two planes contacted to take the people of this flight. One was secured already, the second plane they were contacting now. But she couldn’t tell me when it would all happen earliest, so I asked the senior flight attendant. Yes, he said, the first plane was confirmed and the other looked like would be secured any time soon. But it still had to land in Accra. A slightly puzzled look from my side. Still to land? Yes, it is leaving Abidjan now and flying this direction, we expect it to land in three hours. I thought about all the hassle and the time it would take before that plane would actually take off. The first plane would be my best bet. So how many people can board that first plane, I inquired. Oh, about six or seven probably. A very puzzled look from my side. Six or seven? Yes sir. And the other plane, how many people would that take? That plane is not confirmed yet, sir. Yes, I understand, but how many people would it take? Around sixty maybe. The puzzlement changed to disbelief. I turned around to the crowd of passengers behind me in the Boeing 737 and quickly estimated around 120 people present. I smiled and thanked him, he did not seem to notice I questioned his contingency plan.

Some other passengers saw me asking questions, and watched me as I calmly stepped out of the plane. I asked for my luggage, and set course to the agency that sold me the ticket. I had 1 hour and a half to sort things out and catch my original plane: get a refund for my ticket, get my luggage, and check in again for the other flight. Much to my surprise, it all went smoothly. I had expected at least some shrewd villains to want to take advantage of my vulnerable state by asking for a bribe or wanting to keep the money for the ticket. That would most definitely have happened in India, I ll take poison on that. But none of that, some of the luggage attendants even scolded a colleague for not being professional because he was slow.

When I boarded that plane, I saw my previous passengers sitting in the hall. Still sweating and puffing and not certain of their options. I wonder how long they remained there.

I finally made it to Abidjan, and was able to do all the things I had to do. But they were very worried there as I hadn't been able to update them on the delays. It's the last time I'll decide to leave my cell phone at home "because I have never needed it before, what could possibly happen"...