30,000 feet over the Sahara - Flying in Africa & Central Asia

Across Africa and Central Asia international flights are by and large uneventful, with  regional hubs such as Abidjan and Nairobi perfectly OK.   However, mention old favourites such as N’djili and Murtala Muhammed and hardened field workers will wilt at the memory.

In fairness many of the truly awful anecdotes hark back to darker times.

Murtala used to be nothing more than an organised crime shakedown from the plane to and including the taxi outside.  No one who knew would go anywhere near the place. You either flew to Kano or over to Togo and drove back across the border.

These days it is a revelation in comparison. This was certainly helped by a shoot to kill policy, to deter the habit of blocking international aircraft taxiing on the ramp and then robbing the cargo hold as passengers looked on through the plane windows.

N’djili in DRC certainly has seen better days. Today it is OK getting in if you retain a steady nerve, though more of a challenge getting out. 

International flights from the better organised hubs can still be interesting.

Two from memory are a hard landing at night in Jomo Kenyatta. The pilot of the twin prop came on the tannoy to announce that whilst we may have considered it a hard landing he thought it was excellent, as the airport had just had a total power failure including the landing lights.

Having found our way into the customs hall by a set of stairs (it was pitch black), I spent the next hour  standing over the customs officer with my torch whilst he stamped everyone’s passports.

At Dushambe the plane was wildly overloaded.   The standing passengers forced off through the front exit, promptly ran to the back and returned through the rear exit. This continued in suffocating heat until the guards finally closed the front exit and stood with pointed rifles at the rear.

A vivid memory was an airbus flight from Abidjan on a European airline that thankfully no longer exists. Suffice to say it was the national carrier for a country created in 1831.

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Somewhere over the Sahara on a beautiful moonlit night one of the engines made the sort of noise you really do not want to hear at 30,000 ft, on a two engine plane.

Then slowly and inexorably we began to descend.

Absolutely nothing was heard from the flight desk as crowds began forming at the windows pointing excitedly. Time passed the dunes grew larger, and ground speed increased.  By now the passengers was really excited, some were kneeling and praying.

The sound of the landing gear going down caused even more panic as belly landings are not performed well with wheels extended. Looking out the windows there was absolutely nothing to see apart from high moonlit dunes, speeding past just below us. Then suddenly we flared and with a loud bang we were down.

All was still and calm. There was no communication from the deck. Time passed until an exit door slowly opened and a head appeared in the darkness. We were all marched down a set of steps and into a small passenger holding area. The crew disembarked separately and vanished forever.

It turned out that we were in the Algerian Sahara. Our onward journey to Europe was finally accomplished in one of the decrepit Russian planes that abound Africa.  After the fall of communism, they just never went home.

Somalia

Somalia is not just a country, it is a state of mind. No one who travels here leaves untouched. Like the climate it is a place of extremes invoking passions unlike anywhere else.  Many leave promising that nothing on earth will ever make them return, or like me you are hooked.

I love Somalia. Once long ago, a Somali friend and I walked four camels from Kismayo up to Hargeisa, travelling mostly at night. It was an unforgettable journey. Then the dictator Siad Barre was overthrown and Somalia descended into a long nightmare.

I returned in 1991 to set up a relief programme for one of the British NGO's and ended up staying a year through some of the worst fighting. The bravery of the Pakistani soldiers in an impossible situation  and the eventual arrival of the Americans and Operation Restore Hope are not scenes easily forgotten.

It was like a tower of Babel. So many nations had soldiers there. From America to Zimbabwe with just about every letter in between. The French Foreign Legion had their first base on the roof of my compound. Then despite a huge effort we had Black Hawk Down and the rest is history.

Now there is finally  tangible progress. Somaliland has a vibrant economy and Puntland has  seen a sharp reduction in attempted piracy from its coastline. The changes down south are also making a real difference. The diaspora are slowly returning as are the refugees from Kenya.

 For those of us who have had the privilege of living there, Gerald Hanley's 'Warriors and Strangers'  encapsulates Somalia's magnetic appeal.

Northern Kenya

For what now seems a  long time ago I was fortunate to live with pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

I worked on  on a stock substitution programme to introduce camels to their traditionally cattle based society.  Cattle are more than livestock in this part of the world. They are financial banks on the hoof and for many  societies the bedrock of the curse of lobola (the bride price) which is an endless source of grief across Africa.

Occasionally Wilfred Thesiger used to wander up from his base at Maralal for conversation and just to ensure I was still alive. He was a great man and an outstanding writer, but  could never be persuaded to pack his own camels.

Camels and sand dams are two of my passions. In the right context they are both environmental superstars for arid lands. The more familiar boreholes for watering livestock do work, but more often open a pandora's box of conflict over ownership and access rights.

In those days local news travelled slowly and the endless cycle of cattle theft between the Turkana, Pokot and everyone else was fought out with spears.

Camel scraping out a seasonal dam

Today the land is drier and competition for resources has increased, with automatic weapons replacing spears as the weapon of choice.

This however remains a unique land that  shape's perspective on your own life.  The sense of light and space  is immense and the people are of a special quality to both survive here and enjoy this wonderful place.

Beginnings - Kipling, Thesiger and Bouvier

Where do you begin after thirty years in remote places with amazing peoples?

The reasons are numerous but in the end it boils down to Kipling who as in many ways hit the nail on the head  'There are two types of men in this world: those who stay home, and those who do not' and as Nicolas Bouvier observed ' You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you'.

Africa  has changed out of all recognition from when I lived in isolation  years ago with the Pokot with only the occasional visit from Wilfred Thesiger  to see if I was still a going concern.

That world  has now long gone, replaced by mobile phones and the internet.  Once it was an ocean of wildlife with islands of people and now the reverse is true.

I remain grateful for the opportunity to have lived with a unique people content in their marginal existence and to have met some truly outstanding individuals along the way.

This blog is really my take on how so much has changed  in a few short decades for so many peoples in the remoter parts of the world.