About A Week: Narrow Escapes
Peter Hinchliffe recalls some nerve-jangling experiences in Kenya.
We were coming in to land at El Wak.
Four of us, including the pilot, in a light aircraft. A Piper something-or-other.
The African plain rolled up to meet us, an endless brown billiard table.
Down,down. Thirty feet, twenty, ten…
The engine suddenly roared. We were climbing again.
“Near miss,” said the pilot laconically. “See there.”
Eight or nine gazelles came high-skipping along the dirt runway as we banked away.
We circled twice, diving low, before they cleared off and allowed us to land.
What a journey that was! From Nairobi to Mandera, some 600 miles over semi-desert in the northwest of Kenya.
Our pilot had flown for the Kenya Police for many years. Now he was the owner of a one-aircraft airline.
We were on an inaugural commercial flight to Mandera, assessing the demand for air travel to one of the most isolated towns in Africa.
Mandera is tucked into the sweltering corner where Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia meet.
We went by way of Garissa, Wajir and El Wak.
We flew over a barren moonscape for hour after hour. Down below thousands of camels wandered the blazing hinterland.
These are regularly rounded up, herded to Mombasa and put on boats bound for the Gulf states.
Kenya is one of the largest exporters of camels.
Eventually, after our adventures in El Wak, which is a walled fortress straight out of a Foreign Legion film, we arrived in Mandera in mid-afternoon.
We taxied along what passed for a main street. The plane was parked outside the building in which we were to spend the night.
The district commissioner invited us to dinner.
We ate roast goat and posho (ground maize meal), accompanied with beer which was so hot it bubbled in the bottle.
“Excuse me,” said I eventually, “whereabouts is the bathroom?”
The commissioner grinned in the lamplight.
He handed me a torch.
“Take this. Go outside. Turn right. Follow the path.”
Stumbling along in equatorial darkness, I arrived at a lean-to and went inside.
I shone the torch down into what seemed like a bottomless pit.
The Independent newspaper once published a letter about this self-same loo.
A loo which “enjoyed a panoramic view to the foothills in Ethiopia across the Daua river which marked the frontier.
“The thunderbox over the long drop was housed in a whitewashed lean-to with a corrugated iron, green-painted roof.
“Parallel lines of whitewashed stones and green euphoria hedges, beloved of snakes, marked the approach.
“I shall never forget the occasion when, while admiring the view, I heard a noise below me.
“As I leapt up, a cobra swayed up out of the box.
“With the minimum of dignity, I beat it by a short head to beyond the hedge.
“Ever after, I inspected the premises with a torch before gingerly ascending the throne.”
Good grief!
I sat on that seat!
Since reading the letter, I have had no shortage of material for nightmares.
There were no gazelles on the El Wak strip on our return journey.
Had there been any, I would probably not have noticed them. I was suffering from the effects of an over-sufficiency of goat meat and bubbly beer.
As the only returning passenger, I had plenty of room to stretch out and sleep.
The pilot sighed with relief when we taxied to a halt in Nairobi.
“I need a drink! A treble!”
“Why? Did we encounter some more wildlife?”
“We have just flown through the worst storm I have seen in all my days as a pilot. It was throwing us around as though we were a piece of paper. Lightning was coming from every quarter of the sky. And you slept through it all!”
Bravo for bubbly beer, thought I.
On another occasion, the pilot flew me to the island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean.
A ;perfect day. The best of lunches. Seafood, eaten on a veranda with a warm breeze blowing and the sound of waves playing on the distant reef.
He invited me on a second flight to Lamu.
“Sorry, can’t go,” said I. “My two-year contract is up. I’m going back to the UK.”
“Will anyone else be writing about tourism for the Daily Nation?”
“Yes, a young chap called Monte Vianna is taking over my column.”
He took Monte to Lamu on a sunny January day.
They had an open-air lunch within sound of the reef.
They were flying back to Nairobi when the plane crashed in Tsavo National Park.
The pilot received minor injuries.
Monte Vianna was killed.
