 |
 |
|
|||||
|
Issue 00435 |
September 9 - 15, 2006 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
||||
|
|||||||||||
|
Off Topic |
| Better Reach Alive than in a Coffin by lute wa lutengano During my short period of life on this earth I have had my fair share of air travel snags or say hiccups. I have crisscrossed the entire globe which we call our home. Sometimes I wonder how a native son of Benaland in Njombe could find himself in places like Anchorage in Alaska, or lying on a beach in Batumi, in the Georgian Republic of the then Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. I have also found myself strolling on the beaches of Copa Cabana in Rio de Janeiro; drinking tequila in Santa Fe in New Mexico; shopping in Shinjuku-ku Prefecture in Tokyo, tasting wine in Adelaide, Australia, dancing to music by Youssondo in his own Club in Dakar, Senegal and doing several other things in several other places. Naturally, my main mode of travel on such sojourns has been by air. And this is where the trouble begins. First one has to travel in some pressurised container for several hours. This is not good for one's health. But more serious is the fact that an accident in the air results in imminent death of passengers. Deep back in the brain of every passenger there is this sword dangling over his life whenever one is on flight. I remember it was sometimes in the late 70s when our twin engine seven-seater charter plane was hurtled down for about 50 meters due to storms over the Uluguru Mountains. We were flying from Tabora back to Dar es Salaam with some senior Home Affairs Ministry and UNHCR officials when this happened. Our adrenaline was activated and when we landed at Dar in heavy rain we all literally sprinted to the toilets and relieved our tension. What suprised me most was the fact that we were all outran by the then Minister of Home Affairs, under these sordid conditions and notwithstanding his most generous body. Then there came a time in the 80s when I overslept in an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Dar es Salaam to Addis Ababa. Due to serious flight problems then the airline's management had gone all out of its way, bended some regulations and offered me a lift to KIA. Naturally I went celebrating to the wee hours of the morning when I rushed to the airport in time for the 5 am. flight. Big mistake! Opening my eyes I found myself landing at the Addis Ababa airport. I had no money, no passport and no ticket. Well to cut the whole story short I am still alive. Then sometimes in late 80s I was inside a New Zealand bound plane from Melbourne, Australia, when one of its engines caught fire. The plane began to dangerously vibrate and firefighting jets were scrambled and flew above our plane swathing it with some foam. The lady I was seated with wrote down her will on some rough papers and handed them to me saying in the most unlikely event of me surviving I should ensure they reach the beneficiaries. I calmly received them and ordered a whole bottle of Scotch whisky which I went on devour like my body was on a scorching Sahara desert. The evening Australian TV news was splattered by pictures of my comatose body being hauled off the plane. Being that I was the only other black in that stricken plane I became a celebrity at the down-town five star hotel we were sheltered for a week or so to 'recover.' Then came the 9/11 plane bombings in the United States. Soon after that tragedy I landed at the Amsterdam Schippol airport on my way to Stockholm. Naturally the security was a nightmare. It took me more than an hour to check into the connecting flight which was only five minutes away from taking off. I was not amused that my traveling colleague, Jenerali Ulimwengu used 15 minutes to check in. Then he had the (un)fortunate punitive action of being de-nationalised by Tanzania. He was now traveling using a European passport. And the fact that once inside the plane I sat next to some two passengers with Osama Bin Laden-like attire, complexion, and beards, did not help. Then last week I found myself boarding a Tanzania-bound flight at Jomo Kenyatta International airport in Nairobi. This was immediately after the British authorities had uncovered a serious terrorist threat to the aviation industry and detained some 23 suspects. We were forced to queue outside the airport for luggage and body security check before entering the checking-in lounge. This took more than an hour of standing under the scorching Nairobi sun. I was again not amused. But just like an Israel El-Al security lady, who once thoroughly interviewed and checked every little item in one's accompanied and non-accompanied luggage at the same Nairobi airport, when I was flying to Brazil via Johannesburg some years ago replied to our complaints, "Our airline makes sure our passengers reach their destinations alive and not in coffins!" I can not agree more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Webmaster: WDJMallya |
