Ambulance

Going on five days now without running water.  I've got a good wash down to three litres of bottled spring water, a kettle, a large pot, soap and a washcloth.  I'm struggling not to sweat and trying my best to keep the laborious feat down to once or twice a day.  Tanzania in the dry season, I can understand.  Gabon with heavy rains and flooding; why our hotel doesn't have water we really cannot fathom. Crews are getting grumpy.

My first day back flying has already generated some trouble.  We lift from the drillship with a load of oil workers headed home, towards shore and the sun slowly creeping up into the African sky, climbing in search of cooler air, and we eventually level off and complete our cruise checks.  I lament that we are on rescue standby for the rest of the day once we get back to base, and I forgot to put in a lunch order.  The first officer claims he can fix it, and he calls base on the helicopter's satellite phone.  It's a bad connection and I can't really follow his thick Cornwall accent on the best of days, and there's other radio traffic to deal with, so I shut him off and concentrate on the VHF radios.  Call completed, he turns to me with a smile and claims he's ordered me a chicken wrap.  I thank him and we get on with flying.

An hour later at the coast line the base calls us on the VHF; "The ambulance is standing by".

"Ambulance?"

After a few confusing minutes on the radio trying to sort out what is going on, it seems the static, thick fast talking Cornwall accent and "Darcy wants a chicken wrap" was understood to be "Darcy's bad and needs an ambulance".  It seems the base went a little crazy after the first officer's call, with a plan on how to get the ambulance airside to collect me, options if it couldn't, a French speaking engineer to accompany me to the hospital....all for the want of a chicken wrap (swarma).  Everyone seemed happy that I was fine but they were obviously all annoyed that I created so much mayhem.  I'm really thinking it's the First Officer who should be buying the beer.

I'm back in Gabon and happy.  Flying. Days at the beach.  Walks in the heavy humidity.  Dinner out with the guys, engineers complaining about how lazy pilots are, pilots bragging how good we got it compared to the engineers, feeding the fires.....over thirty years of this shit, nothing changes.  Loving every second of it.