Dar es Salaam

I've been whisked out of Mtwara and plopped down in Dar Es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania.  Kansas, this ain't.  Population 2,500,000, it was devasted by flooding not six months ago, leaving over 5000 homeless.  After an interesting hour of trying to track down the driver that was to meet me coming off the plane, not at the terminal mind you, but on the general aviation side as I flew in via charter, I was standing in the shade of a nearby palm tree to hide my pale Canadian skin from the African sun, when some serious looking dude on a small old motorcycle rides up, stops, and stares at me with mouth agape. I can only imagine he's trying his best to figure out how to seperate me from my luggage.  Then he dials a number and shoves his phone into his helmet, having a heated discussion in swahilli, which once again my imagination translates as "there's a stupid looking white guy with lots of stuff just standing here, come help".  When I see a large group sauntering down the narrow road, I make my way back into view of airport security and brave the sunburn.
Once firmly entombed in the air conditioned land cruiser with the driver, a sign reading "Lock All Doors Before Driving" in big letters across the dash, swahilli rap blaring over the radio, we start making our way across greater Dar es Salaam to my hotel.  I am amazed.  There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to the traffic laws, as cars push their way into the gridlock, horns going steady, police waving their arms in frustration, motorcyles with three or four kids on the back riding in the opposite direction, weaving between the oncoming vehicles.  In the middle of all this are walking markets.  Kids mostly, some young men, carrying a dizzying array of towels and cel phone car chargers and weightlifting equipment, kids toys and cd cleaning kits, a single shirt on a hangar, tire irons, wash basins, men's and lady's brand name perfumes, rubber tie down straps and screwdrivers, utensile trays and batteries, a single windshield wiper, software and produce, walking amongst the traffic, selling their wares to whomever opens their window, running after vehicles if the traffic should suddenly open up mid-sale.  It was Africa.

In Dar es Salaam, if you are white, you have a good chance of being called "Muzungu", which meant, in the early days of explorers and missionaries, "those who wander around lost in an annoying way".  I prefer the Masai name for the pale man walking around in pants, iloridaa enjeka, or "those who confine their farts".  Many who visit are picked up at the airport terminal and whisked off to safari or to see, and even climb, Kilamanjaro.  I prefer a little more exposure, get a feel for the place, so the driver drops me in town and I hit a few shops in the crowded streets in search of odds and ends I can't get in Mtwara.  I decide I need to replace the cheap Chinese acoustic guitar I broke in Turkey (that's another story that had me swear an oath to never again drink vodka with Finns), and finding a guitar dealer in the streets of Dar es Salaam involved phone calls to East Indian "connections", and eventually I find the shop, and "the guy", and I start playing my way through his collection to find something suitable, but cheap enough I can leave it behind.  Back in the landcruiser, using the guitar's cardboard box and some twine as it's case, we head back into the traffic.

As we near the hotel, the wheel eating potholes and narrow, dusty, crowded roads give way to manicured lawns and green, spacious compounds enfenced with heavy barbwire, embassies and fancy resorts, and there again is that wonderful Indian Ocean.  The hotel I walk into is culture shock all over again.  It is simply the most beautiful place I have ever walked into, and I feel a little James Bondish walking up to the large wood desk (despite the twine and cardboard guitar case) and give my name, and even more Bondish swimming in the huge oceanside pool overlooking palm trees and cabanas.  It is a very far cry from Mtwara, and farther still from the mahem just up the road.

Meat on the table

Travelling so much can be challenging.  Yes, you get to see and do some very amazing things, and I wouldn't trade any of the experiences I've had, good and bad, for anything, but I've seriously complicated my life in the process.  Passports and work visas and international tax laws and maintaining immunizations, which differ greatly from country to country, take a great deal of your time.  Different countries have different rules, different procedures, different languages and customs, all that you should strive to learn if you are going to spend any length of time there.  I'm sure it's all old hat to the guys who have been doing this international touring year in and year out, but the novelty of it all hasn't worn off on me yet.  The multitide of challenges becomes addictive, and the nomadic lifestyle tweaks something in one's soul.  I do believe I'm getting better at the packing, but I still take far too much.  Every job is different and you don't wish to be caught short.  Some places you can pick up anything you could possibly need locally. Turkey has malls to rival Toronto, and others, Mtwara comes to mind, you had better come well prepared.  Typically if a base is already running, you can find some sympathetic soul that'll offer advice on what to bring.  Advice for Mtwara ranged from "don't worry about it, they'll put you in a pot and cook you anyway" to "bring all your own food for an entire tour", with the next guy telling me eating locally was fine, which turned out to be the case.  No invites to over-heated hot tubs yet, but I'm only two weeks in.

 I was told to bring something to keep myself entertained as there is very little flying, so I brought my guitar.  I've maybe picked it up once.  I'm very glad I brought a mask, snorkel and fins though!  Trying to narrow down everything you need to function, plus work related items like headset and uniforms and work shoes, for a six week stretch, and fit everything into a package that make all the transits manageable, has been a chore.  It's easier if you are posted to the same base and keep returning, as you can leave items behind, and know exactly what you need, but that hasn't been my situation at all.  Not yet anyway.  And good luck trying to find an underwater camera in Mtwara!

Last night was a treat.  In hasn't rained in I don't know how long, and the volleyball court is getting very dusty, but the counter-piracy dudes joined in and everyone had a great laugh.   The flying has been spectacular as well, as there is little doubt as you look down at the dense bush, sand roads and white landrovers, and huts and palm trees, that you are seriously in Africa, but I'd give anything to see an elephant walking through the brush.  A kudu, an impala, some water buffalo, wildebeast, zebra, giraffe, anything! One place we go for lunch is said to have monkeys in the trees from time to time, and despite hanging out there a great deal, so far all I've seen are numerous dogs and one snake, and that was at the hotel I live in. I want to see a monkey. 

The social aspect of touring is a suprising benefit as well.  Here you are, in the foreign place, with very little English spoken by the locals, with crew members with very similar experiences, all dealing with the issues of being away from home for months at a time, all dealing with living in an enviroment quite different than their homes, but the backgrounds vary enough to provide some very entertaining conversations.  You are working with people from France and Finland and South Africa and Ireland and Uzbekistan and Australia, guys and gals who have flown Search and Rescue in the high artic and hearded cattle with helicopters in the outback and who have fought in Iraq and Afghanastan and guys who have toured the far reaches of this wonderful blue ball of ours for decades.  The stories and conversations are stimulating and enlightening, and one cannot imagine the personalities this lifestyle brings to the table.

For all the adventures, I still feel a little like an imposter, because I would rather be home.  Perhaps Livingstone just wanted to be home as well, just another bloke putting meat on the table, whatever it took, and for him, that meant putting one foot in front of the other across unexplored Africa.  I doubt he played volleyball, but no doubt he enjoyed the evening conversations around the campfire as much as I do now.

Twenty degrees

Twenty degrees.  That's the secret I'm told.  Keep your room at twenty degrees or cooler, air con on full, and you'll have no problems with the mozzies.   I just went through the customer's base safety brief. They told me about the twenty degrees, but I'm now concerned about all sorts of stuff I didn't have the common sense to be worried about.  Those safety briefs are meant to enlighten and inform, but they just scare me.  Sounds like the locals still light people on fire from time to time, so travel in convoys and don't leave the hotel and eat at the company kitchen.....don't think so mate, I'm walking by my lonesome to the beach.  It's hard to believe these happy smiling people can be dangerous, but those that know Africa will tell you, it can turn on you in a heartbeat.  I don't watch the news for the same reason, better to be ignorant and happy than informed and stressed. 

Caught a Mtwara cab back to the hotel this evening....

I had ran into the pirate hunters again, or as I've been corrected, Counter-Piracy Dudes.  After snorkelling, I found they were up at the resort seaside, and well into the Kilamanjaros.  The snorkelling was amazing once again, I have to get my hands on an underwater camera!  I found this huge anemone way out in the channel with a pair of the biggest clownfish I had ever seen nestled into it's tentacles.  Brave little guys.  As I approached their home, they darted at me and stared me down, not backing down for an instant.  Pugnacious little buggers.  I hope to pay them another visit tomorrow.  Then I plunk down with the pirate hunters, or counter-piracy dudes, and with the beer flowing, the stories just keep getting better.  There was a big shoot out with pirates in the harbour here just before Christmas.  These guys live for the action.  We've got a big base BBQ planned for tonight, I think I'll extend an invitation.  Everyone appreciates a fresh perspective.

It's nice to get out swimming regularly once again.  I was on this job for a mapping company, subcontracting to Hydro-Quebec, for one of their major dam project in the North.  We were staying in this camp of Arco trailers, airborne everyday at dawn and just getting back for a late supper.  As we were mapping the rivers, most of the time I'd plop my Longranger helo down on the side somewhere, and as they went about their business, I'd strip down and jump in.  Then after I'd given the fish all a good fright, I'd get out the fishing rod.  They'd bite whatever I offered nevertheless.  I liked to think that alot of these trout had never been fished before, but once in a remote corner of Northern Quebec, far inland from Hudson Bay, feeling like Doctor Livingtone himself (wrong continent I know, but heh, it's my imagination), I was quite disenchanted to come across a number of picnic tables on the shore of this stream.  Not quite as exclusive as my imagination had led me to believe.  What a world it would be if your imagination and reality coincided more often! .......Nah, it'd probally mess everything up.

I've swam in rivers and lakes all over Northern Ontario and Quebec, and I surf in the Atlantic quite regularly.  I used to live for surfing but aging moved it farther back in the priorities list, but I still get out from time to time.  It's quite relaxing to sit on the ocean, waiting for the next swell, there's something meditative about it that is quite addictive.  I've swam in the Caspian Sea, and I swam in the Black Sea almost daily while in Turkey, as the beach was right outside my hotel balcony.  If I'm not in the water myself, I'm flying guys over it, out to their rigs far offshore.  The romantic in me likes to think that the sea calls.  Even the hardiest souls will admit that there is an inexplicable draw.  As Captain Jack says...."Bring me that horizon". 

No flying tomorrow, snorkelling kit by the door, ready to go.  Room freezing, but no mozzies!  Life is good.

Pirates

Well, it turned into a large day after all.  On my walk down to the beach, I ran into two lost looking white guys.  There aren't too many of us and we really stand out.  Turns out they are two ex-military guys providing security for a large ship that just tied into the Mtwara port, real live pirate hunters with some very cool guns, looking for a bar.  Who better to ask than a pilot?

Pirates are a very serious concern for ship traffic along this coast, generally coming out of Somalia with AK47s and some serious boats, and these security guys have their hands full.  I had heard the risk of pirates is why we aren't staying at the oceanside resort where I'm headed to swim.  Damn pirates.

So off we go to the resort, and I watch wistfully as they drain a couple of Kilamanjaro beers, as I'm on night standby later and drinking tea, and listen to stories of pirates.  It's actually quite abit cooler than helicopter stories.

On the hike back to the hotel, I drop into a dark hut with some very cool carvings.  I find one I'm impressed with, turning it upside down to find a price tag of 15,000 Tanzanian shillings.  The lady shakes her head as she takes it from me, crosses out the 15,000 and writes 100,000.  I smile and walk out.

I direct the pirate hunters to the liquor store, and head back to the hotel.  It's volleyball night!  I had somehow forgotten.  So off we go, to this dusty field with wild dogs running about, and ex-pats from Germany and South Africa and France drift in to join the game.  Doctors and engineers and teachers, it's good fun.  The Germans take it far more seriously than anyone else on the dirt court, but they were relatively subdued this time around.  It's good to burn off some steam and a highlight everyone looks forward to.

Jumping back to our move, we weren't very far into the unpacking in our new home on the East Coast, and they asked if I'd mind dropping into Baku, Azerbaijan for a quick tour.  I was kind of hoping to get settled, but what the heck?  I'd never been to Azerbaijan before.  Besides kicking around France with my wife, abit of Cuba, and simulator sessons in Norway (I was to get very intimate with Norway over the years), this was an exciting bit of travelling!  I was flying very old S61 helicopters.  Sikorsky took their venerable Sea King helicopter, cleaned it up abit, stretched it out a fair chunk, and sicked their sales guys on the offshore oil exploration market.  S61 means a Sikorsky that was certified in 1961.  This was 2001. 

I can't say I was overly enamoured with Baku.  I wasn't flying much at all, and the guys were well ensconed into their own activities, so I was stuck with exploring on my own.  Most of the crew changed out a few weeks in and the worse job I'd been on immediately turned into one of the best!  Next thing I knew I was flying more, drinking local beer in the back of a huge black Mercedes heading out to resorts on the Caspian Sea, and keeping relatively busy.  We were at a local ex-pat bar playing pool, with CNN on in the background, when that first plane flew into the twin towers.  We sat and watched and wondered what changes would be coming about.  The base manager called and told us to get back to our apartments and lay low (we didn't), and an evacuation plan was put together to get us to the American embassy if things went South, but life went on as normal in Baku, and we flew the helicopters the next day.  I had to extend my tour as most air travel was put on hold, and when I finally did fly through London Heathrow homebound, I couldn't believe how quiet it was.   The resulting increases in security have made international travel quite unpleasant, and it isn't getting any better.

Kilamanjaro beer has a big stage set up just up from the hotel, and African music is blasting into my room as if the speakers were two feet from my head.  Last time they went until after midnight.  Lots of swahilli between the songs, interspersed with the word "Kilamanjaro" every few seconds.  No Kilamanjaro for me, I'm on night standby.

Where ever you go

Where ever you go, well....there you are.  You got to be somewhere.  Might as well be East Africa.
 
I've never really been sure if I'm just incredibly lucky, or if my perspective is skewed so much that everything just seems amazing.  I figure, if you're not happy with where you are, what you have, what you are doing, changing any of the above is probally not going to help.  It's still you.  Outlook and perspective is everything.  It's the only thing you have any semblance of control over.  I'm telling myself this as I sit bored to tears in my tiny room.  Mosquitoes are still getting under my net every night, and there's these little flea things crawling around in the bed that often wake me.  Everything doesn't seem so amazing today.  But tomorrow I fly again.

This touring gig is great for rejigging one's perspective.  When I first got settled into a job in Northern Turkey, along the Black Sea Coast, it was an eye opener.  These people are not rich by any North American standard, but I have yet to meet friendlier, happier people.  I thought Canada's East Coast was friendly.  Not anymore.  At least not by Turkey's standard.  It was so nice seeing entire families out for a seaside walk; Moms, Dads, grandparents, kids, the teenagers as well, walking and socializing, and hours upon hours of backgammon over tea.  Nobody wanted anything from you, they were just happy to see you, happy to help you in whatever it was that you happened to be doing, sporting a warm, honest smile all the while. I absolutely loved Turkey.  I spent a year on that coast.  My priorities got abit of a shift.  Africa is shifting it again.

When the family first plunked everything down on Canada's East Coast, it was a new beginning.  Everyone we had ever met that had ever called Canada's East Coast home were a special breed.  Easy going, never taking themselves too seriously, down to earth, they were just relaxed, and we were not disappointed when we finally arrived.  It's still home, and it'll probally be home until I stop breathing.  The flying?  Absolutley amazing!  In Northwestern Ontario flying emergency medical flights, I'd been an IFR rated pilot for a decade, which basically means I was flying larger twin engine helicopters in a two crew, Captain/Co-pilot enviroment, in pretty much any weather, day or night.  You didn't need to see where you were going, you used the instruments.   But the weather wasn't all that bad, and the majority of your real IFR flying was at night, just because there were no lights in the far North to provide any visual references.  But Canada's East Coast?  They had real "weather".  We're talking fog.  Thick fog.  1/8 of a mile visibilty in forty-five knots of wind fog.  Now we're talking!  There's a challenge to get you out of bed in the morning.

I remember that first East Coast flight.  It was still dark, the rain was coming down almost sideways in a forty-five knot gale, and the old S61 was buffetting left and right as we taxied out for take-off.  The visibility might of have been 1/4 mile, and the ceilings were maybe a hundred feet, and I was having a hard time getting my head around the idea of heading to an offshore platform two hundred miles out into the North Atlantic in this shit.  But take-off we did.  We weren't a few seconds in the air and it was straight to the dials, hand flying this twenty thousand pound beast on tiny instruments as we bucked and bounced and rattled and shook, and climbed, and climbed through the driving rain.  We turned left, heading out to sea, watching the temperature and hoping we broke out on top before the ice started to accumulate, but it started to brighten, more and more, and as we neared our cruising altitude we busted out of the cloud tops into the most glorious sunrise I have ever seen.  I'll never forget that sunrise.  That bright morning sun quickly heated the cold cockpit and the ride smoothed out and it was as near to perfect as things have ever been.  Of course nearly two hours later we dropped back into the goo to find the rig, but that was a memorable flight.

This I did for eleven years.

I think I'll walk down to the beach, look at some carvings, maybe buy one today.  There's not a cloud in the sky and there's a fresh breeze keeping the temperatures relatively mild.  It's not a bad gig.

A little more intro...

Strapped that sexy AW139 on this morning and blew off into the oh-so-blue African sky!  The rigs we fly to are after that liquid gold, but for me....I just want to get into the air with this new toy.  Powerful, fast, quiet and smooth, and far more modern than anything I've ever flown, a sexy little Italian sportscar.  Quite abit smaller than the old S61s and Super Pumas I've been on, but destined for popularity, and that means more oppurtunities, more places to see, and quite simply, it's fun!

 I don’t know if I’ll get back to Mtwara for another tour or not. I have five weeks left of this tour, and I was told it’s just a temporary posting to cover someone’s sick leave. I had just finished up a Super Puma job in Romania, where I somehow got roped into being the manager of the operation, and with no new work on the horizon for the old girls, I was lucky to get checked out on a popular new type, the AW139. The course was in Newark, and it was fun, the highlights being catching some wild jazz at the infamous Zebra room in Harlem, and I managed to bring the family down for a week of kicking around Manhattan too. After that, ink still wet with the new endorsement, I was a pilot without a base, but they were looking for someone to cover in Mtwara, Tanzania, and well....here I am!

After decades feeding Canada's Northern hordes, the mosquitoes don't really bother me much, but so far I've smacked three of the little suckers in my room quite full of blood, presumably mine. The mozzies, as the Brits here call them, aren't nearly as bad as I expected for Africa, but a good percentage of them do carry malaria, and apparently one strain that will kill you. Not many bother with the malarone though, the nightmares the antimalarial drug induces are surreal, and realistically, who wants to live for ever?

I remember deciding I wanted to be a helicopter pilot, or at least I remember the thought process that helped me decide my fate, and I wasn't yet a teen. To see the world through a bird’s eye, I dreamed of being a pilot.  I was pretty obsessed by those noisy fling-wing contraptions for as far back as I can remember.  The whole idea of flying planes ran through my head briefly, but I figured the only time you’d really get that bird’s eye view would be on take-off and landing, and I wanted to be free of the world’s bonds yet close enough to taste her.  Low and slow as a bird cruises amongst the tree tops is where I wanted to be.  And birds don’t need a damn runway.  Needing a mile of paved concrete at both ends of a trip seemed silly when helicopters were roaming the earth undeterred by such nonsense.  It was beyond cool for me, and I wanted it badly.

My first job, at the tender age of eighteen, was in Northern Ontario.  There was abit of a lull in the industry and there were guys with years under their belts fighting to find work, but I was cheap to employ, and I had no qualms about dragging logs out of the woods for the more experienced guys to practice slinging, dry-walling the hangar offices, babysitting the boss’s kids or waxing his Suburban.  I just gave it everything I had all the time and before long  I’m ferrying aircraft to and from jobs, and even in that first year, I found myself in bush camps in the North, greasing and oiling my own machine, flying, and of course, wearing the Ray-bans.  Even in the cockiness of my youth, I was concerned about heading off on my first real bush job by myself, but the Chief Pilot gave me some advice that stuck with me to this day; "If there's guys out there doing it, how hard can it be?  Just get on with it." I've found you can apply that logic to everything. 


Then came an opportunity that really got things rolling; some pilot’s vacation needed covering so I got promoted to a Jetranger helicopter on this contract in North Eastern Quebec, and the customer requested I stay on the job as opposed to the guy I had temporally replaced.  Perhaps his wearing his flight suit, sunglasses and yes, white scarf, to the bars in the evenings, had something to do with it.  He had taken the expected cockiness a tad too far, and scared more than a few passengers with his antics in and out of the air.  So I lucked into a high flying job, and ended up with over one thousand hours of flying in my logbook before I turned twenty, and I spent the next six years flogging around North-Eastern Quebec, learning French from les bucherons, and met my wife at a club in Sept-Iles.  Pilots and night clubs....a match made in heaven.

Even dreams turn sour at some point, and after years of bush flying, I was finding being away from civilization for months on end more and more difficult to take, and after a brief stint in University tackling an Engineering degree with hopes of becoming a test pilot, I landed an air ambulance job on a Bell 222, think Airwolf without the whisper mode, in North Eastern Ontario.  I was home every night, sleeping in my own bed, flying a twin engine helicopter in pretty much any weather, day or night, and while it never felt overly heroic, we were saving lives.  I ended up managing the entire operation at some point, and there were adventures aplenty, but the schedule and pay and small town mentality eventually wore us down, and I was hungry for new challenges, so we packed everything up and headed East.

Intro

My room smells like shit.  I’ve had the screen windows open for hours, a decent East African breeze fresh off the Indian Ocean, blowing papers about, and I’ve scoured the room for the source of my olfactory discomfort, but to no avail.  It still stinks.

I’ve just finished my first week of a six week posting in Mtwara, Tanzania, just a stone’s throw from the Mozambique border.  It’s the first time I’ve been to Africa.  At forty-five years of age, it’s about time.  My parents would drop me off at Grandma’s for my summer holidays every weekday morning, and I’d kill hours of boredom by scouring through her National Geographics and dream, dream of Africa.  Never did grow up.  Even after thousands of hours flying old Bell 47s and Jetrangers in the Canadian bush, living in pup tents for months, I’d spend the lazy afternoons sitting by the helo on the side of some stream, while the crews I flew in did whatever they had me fly them in to do, and after the fish stopped biting, I’d put the rod aside and read the diaries of Stanley and Burton and Karamojo Bell and pretty much anyone who explored or hunted Africa.  Damn, I’m here and I’m still dreaming.  Doctor Livingstone’s house is just up the road.

Mtwara is not a bad gig.  Why we are sitting in this dive is beyond me, but the resort where most of the ex-pats stay is a short hoof through the village’s dirt roads, and the snorkelling is the best I’ve ever seen.  I’ve been going every day.  It’s friendly enough.  You can walk through the streets in the evenings by your lonesome and not be concerned, although last tour some local witch doctor got a crowd riled up and they attacked our company Landcruiser with rocks.  The pilot driving was able to back out of the melee and they’ve apparently arrested those involved, so I guess it’s safe once again.  We hit up the local night club Saturday night and went hard till 3 am.  Once my nose became accustomed to that very human scent of sweaty Africa, the infectious beat got me out onto the dance floor and I quite enjoyed letting myself go.   I'm quite sure I was as ripe anyone out there.

I’ve been flying helicopters now for over twenty-seven years.  I had always thought helicopters were pretty cool.  Everything about them is cool; they chased and caught bad-guys, picked people off sinking ships, dropped water on fires, built things, filmed things, shot things, moved people, caught and tagged any assortment of animals, it just never ends.  They could fly along like an airplane but could stop in mid-air, and stay there as long as they damn-well-pleased.  And being a pilot?  Honestly, we try our best to be humble, but with the flight suits and sunglasses, helmets and headsets, they impressed us as young boys and we impress ourselves now.  We’re all romantics at heart, and there is nothing that compares, for me at least, and naturally I suppose, my perspective should be the one that matters to me.   I’m still working on the swagger, but damn if I don’t have the ray-bans.