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Day 5
1.11.2001
NAIROBI
Kilometres travelled since Dar es Salaam 1100
"Dear Raf,
This is an urgent message from Stuart Catling about his arrival.
Stuart says he will definitely miss his connection at Amsterdam and says that he will have to overnight there . He will send you more information as he gets it.
Sorry to give bad news
Ali "
It was 0645 hours in Nairobi Aerodrome and it was bitterly cold. I swore quietly to myself, wrapped my fleece tighter around me and stomped off to find some coffee. I glanced above me at the arrivals board. I had left a warm tent to drive through the mist to Embakasi to pick up Stuart. The Amsterdam flight was marked as delayed. When I combined this with the fact that I had heard nothing from Stuart himself, I decided that he probably had caught his flight and that I should wait. Once I had procured some coffee I stood in the most conspicuous position possible and waited. Within minutes Stuart appeared, cast me a cheery and somewhat relived wave and went off to collect his baggage.
Half an hour later the imposing bulk of Stuart emerged with the teeniest weeniest of day packs and a slip of paper. He had made the flight, but his luggage had not.
"Well you told me to bring only one bag!" He bawled as he emerged from baggage claim.
We bought more coffee and drove back in the early morning sunshine to town. At last the crew was complete if somewhat lacking in baggage.
Two days previously Cisca and I had driven North, and Penny and Narinder had driven south to rendezvous in Nairobi. The Weasel crossed the Tanzanian border in record time, Once they heard our basic Swahili , Tanzanian immigration were the epitomy of friendliness. They called us to the front of the queue stamped our passports, stamped our carnet and bade us fare well.
The Weasel rolled down the slight hill through the gate and into Kenya. Although I am no stranger to Kenya it had been three years since the Weasel had last crossed the Namanga frontier. In 1998 I had headed South into Tanzania in tears, vowing never to return to Kenya. Since then I had returned by air and formed a great respect for the beauty and peoples of this diverse country
I may love Kenya, but the Weasel had a long memory. As if to display her displeasure at being back in the Nation where she was rammed by a taxi she stopped dead and shut down. We were 10 kilometres south of Athi River . I checked the electrics and found a destroyed distributor cap and a burned condenser wire. I replaced both and the points. All went well until I tried to re-start the truck. The weasel flatly refused to move! It seemed I had forgotten how to gap the points. Luckily we were assisted by an extremely friendly bunch of Kenyans who patiently explained to me, the intricacies of this process.
The Weasel fired up and we chuntered off to Nairobi, the "the place of cool water". The scenery was beautiful brown grassland littered with classic African thorn trees. I felt good to be out of Tanzania the country of my residence and I felt as though I was travelling at last.
In the meantime Penny and Narinder had been bird watching in Naivasha. They had driven up onto the rift valley escarpment and camped by the side of crater lake. They awoke to find giraffes, Zebra and hairy brown baboons wandering aimlessly by. After looking at these peculiar animals they trundled off to Lake Naivasha. This had once been Nairobi's international airport when Imperial Airways had flown shorts Solent flying boats to dar es Salaam from London. (via every patch of fresh water in the Empire.) In this beautiful setting Penny photographed fish eagles, pelicans, colobus monkeys and the famous hippos. Narinder spent most of the time filing spring washers, fitting lights and wiring. This was setting a trend for the days to come. Penny looked at Africa, Narinder looked after the truck. As the time came to rendez vous, they packed up, and retuned to Upper hill campsite in Nairobi.
The reunion was not complete until I picked up Stuart, the retired Royal Air Force Corporal. From Nairobi Aerodrome.
"Raf, I worked for Glaxo, BAE and ITN, for years afterwards, why do you always bring the Air Force into it?"
"Because you never stop spinning dits about it, and in 10 years you only made corporal"
"Yes well, I suppose, hitting my Chief technician probably didn't do my career prospects that much good"
This brings us back to Stuart sitting in the bar of the campsite waiting for his luggage, We watched the torrential rain pour off the straw roofs. When the downpour subsided , we headed into town, e-mailed, went to spare parts shops, re-stocked up on food, and did the mundane city chores that are so easy in a nation's capital. That night Stuart jumped into a taxi and zoomed out to Embakasi Aerodrome. Two hours later he stomped back into the bar with no bags.
"Beer" He said. As I handed him a freezing "Tusker" the converted garage went silent. Fifteen people looked at Stuart to find out what had happened.
"When they get the Entebbe flight off the runway, I'll get my bags" Stuart stated matter of factly.
"What do you mean?" Someone asked.
"Well I walked into the baggage hall, and some African walked up to the lost bags desk and said: 'I'm off the Entebbe flight, thank God I'm alive, I'll collect my F*cking bags tomorrow'
Now I know that Africans don't swear, so I thought something must be up. All the staff radios started squawking and no-one would answer questions. Then they finally admitted that there might have been a minor mishap and that the KLM flight had diverted to Mombasa but it might have been Dar es Salaam. So they told me to come back tomorrow. In fact they assured me that my bags would be here tomorrow. As we drove back here I saw this Jet sideways on the runway, and a load of orange flashing lights"
"That'll take ages to shift" someone remarked.
"Stuff that I'll get out there and do it myself, I've shifted bigger things than 737's in a worse state than that before"
"What, where?" a disbelieving voice chanted.
"TACA Airways Boeing 757, Belize Airport camp 1988"
The room roared with laughter, but this was Africa, and the strangest people meet the most interesting people in the strangest of places. If someone says they shifted a Boeing with a fuel bowser, the story is accepted until disproved. In Africa, you are what you do and did, not what you say.
As the night went on Enormous ribbing took place of anyone flying the next day. I could not resist reeling out my numerous Indian air crash stories which were only topped by Buzz, the well travelled and polite American who had actually crashed three times in commercial jets and walked away… But that is another story…. Until the next update…. Still awaiting Stu's bags..
For more technical bumf hit the Status Reports page.
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