Dealing with ordering fuel, which entails money transfers and setting up tank inspections with certified personnel outfitted with the proper safety gear, and arranging delivery with endless phone calls and emails, hounding the sewage guy to bring his truck with the hangar tank overflowing, local employee issues and payment, and currencies, and tax laws, and civil aviation authorities, and customs officials and importation and exportation, and work visas and entry visas and securing drug testing facilities and schedules, and accommodations issues and crewing issues and natural disasters and riots and vehicle management and telephones and safety reports and quality assurance management and corrective preventative actions and audits and safety audits and billing and base mobilization logistics and calls for more incentive pay and keeping the aviation consultants relatively content, and forever taking out six inch thick stacks of local currency in multiple ATM transactions to pay for air conditioning repair as no one takes plastic......and flying the line? Two years of it was enough and I'm working my way back into the training role I love, on a new type. Years of running training sessions on the Super Puma simulator in Stavanger, Norway will be replaced with just checking our pilots are up to standard as a representative of Transport Canada. I'm looking forward to it. Plus....flying the line.....
But more on Mombasa....
On the Mombasa security issue, we knew going in that there were serious concerns. That didn't deter us in the slightest from frequenting the night clubs though. Something about bouncing to booming Swahili rap with sweaty locals in open air, bamboo and thatched roofed night clubs....gets seriously addictive. But one morning a few weeks into our tour in Kenya, one of our local drivers informed us that someone had just shot a very vocal pro-al shebaab cleric, and the place went nuts. Cars lit afire, grenades thrown, sporadic gunfire, many killed, police included, and with our only access to the airport cut off, we just hunkered down in our nondescript housing complex and ordered out. We were back to the beaches in a few days, but there was concern as it actually ramped up as events progressed. Significantly more violent than the riots I walked through in Bucharest last spring, we were never targeted or directly threatened, so it was more of a cool story to tell than any fearing for one's well being. Some of the local drivers apologized for the behaviour of their countrymen, but I had to tell them Canada has had riots over.....hockey.
I think one of my favourite things about Mombasa was the world class restaurants; always seaside in old colonial style with Portuguese influenced cuisine and quite honestly the height of my culinary experience. The gunfire in the distance just added to the ambiance.
In very stark contrast to the quaint restaurants, there were the crazy, crowded and noisy markets where it was virtually impossible to NOT hire a guide, whether you wanted one or not. The oppressive humidity and heat and densely packed narrow streets of the markets, where you sort of flowed with the river of people as opposed to having any real control over your direction and speed, forever checking you didn't lose track of any of our party, or anything in your pockets. It's something I'm glad I did but would not do again if I didn't have to, but of course, I did.....repeatedly.
The flying in Mombasa was interesting as well, as things work a little differently than one gets used to in the West. The most memorial flight was landing and being surrounded by police and security personal, and as the manager, putting on my big boy pants to try to get to the bottom of whatever misunderstanding that had caused the over-zealous security folk to grind our operations to a halt. Things got sorted over the next few weeks, but not before some bizarre meetings with the airport authority that I still shake my head over. I still remember the poor policemen on either side of me and their embarrassed smiles. Perspective, I kept telling myself. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.
For all Mombasa had to offer, thee most amazing thing of the entire tour was going on safari, but I'm getting ahead of myself......
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