The flying began with me shitting myself for the first 6 sector's, figuratively due to the immense challenge of navigating an un-pressurised aircraft between colossal and awe-inspiring mountains and active volcano's. To add to the mix for my first day, some fierce equatorial storms which left me a white knuckled mess and contemplating what the hell I was doing in this god forsaken shithole in the middle of Africa. After my first week, I calmed down and began to enjoy myself and realised that this is definitely the most incredible flying that I will probably ever do. Everything became that little bit more beautiful and I began to notice all the mind blowing scenery out of my office window which I had failed to notice during the blur of my first week. The never ending blue abyss of Lake Edward and Kivu to the all commanding, jagged peaks of Mount Rwenzori. Rwenzori looks down on you with disdain and malice like the great Africa goddess that she is, snow capped and wind beaten. Flying along at 12000ft you look up at this immense feature of the great African rift in fear and feel as though this Mountain is pulling you closer, to smite you like the irritating foreign, buzzing creature that we most certainly were.
Most of the time we moved ICRC staff, food and medical supplies to the various base's from the central hubs of Goma and Bukavu to the Northern and Southern hubs of Bunia and Lumbumbashi. When I say hub, in this context, I mean an area of intense human suffering. It is a sad thing to see but a privilege to be able to use your skill set to help people who are really in need. Be it from severe malnutrition, malaria or medical/psychological attention and treatment after a rebel attack. To see what one human with a false agenda can do to a random and innocent inhabitant of a remote village is to me, the most sad and unnecessary act that I have ever come across. These evil rebel groups who are funded by extremist foreign funds and in places, religious or tribal beliefs perform the most brutal act's on their own countrymen . They ride into a village atop a wobbly old Toyota hilux , music blaring out of giant speakers and firing AK47's skyward to make their presence known. With a scene quite like the one depicted in the movie, Blood Diamond they round up young and old in a random fashion, pull out a large timber axe and start chopping off legs, not arms but legs above or below the knee. The reason for removing a leg or so they believe makes it impossible for that person to become a soldier that might one day fight against them. Short sleeve or long sleeve style, just like the famous film. People don't believe me when they hear this tale. They nod in a false, understanding fashion and then just like the majority of humankind, carry on oblivious to the world around them and the horror being suffered in the darkest hellhole's of the world. Awareness helps all of humankind, ignorance only helps your lonesome self.
My First month in the DRC flew by with around 93hrs in a month and some monumental distances covered. On two or 3 occasions we flew 7.5 hours in a day and one particular flight we managed 430 nautical miles with the nose gear stuck in the down position, no mean feat in the fuel limited LET410 let me tell you. The reason for the nose gear being stuck in the down position was because on landing at this bush strip in the Northern most part of the DRC, wet sand had flung up on landing and wedged itself in the linkage of our mechanical down-lock. For the gear to retract this lock which resembles a hook, simply pivots hydraulically down and to the side allowing extension and retraction or otherwise known as the gear cycle to occur. As one can deduce it is far better to have your landing gear locked down then locked up although the latter situation being almost impossible in the LET due to a myriad of back up and emergency systems. After some furious fuel calculations and the weather god's smiling down upon us we were happy to continue and landed in Bunia with around an hour remaining in the main tanks and alternates near by. I still believe that everything worked out smoothly on this day because we had gone through an immense effort to repatriate a paralysed child soldier to his family on the border with the CAR. The big guy up stairs had parted the cloud's, given us just enough of a very welcome tailwind and guided us safely to our destination. A day that I will never forget and finished off with a well deserved , ice cold beer.
The DRC changed me in many way's, it gave me experiences that I have been dreaming of since I first started flying and challenged me in way's that broke me down and then built me right back up again. It was an incredible opportunity and time of personal growth, I appreciate everything in my life just that little but more each day. I came out of it after all, a better man.
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