Ben Wilhelmi

Meru and Kili here and there, blog

hi girls,

some views of Mounts Meru or Kilimanjaro.

The white top being Kilimanjaro. Not always! The last picture shows Arusha under a heavy cloud with a white Mount Meru poking out. That thin layer of snow on Meru appears after a thunderstorm and doesn't last very long. Quiet an awesome feeling to live at the foot of such a mountain....

i keep on moaning about my overbusy job but there are some compensations...

i just fell for a blog, well it was offered for my birthday by Karine, I didn't have a say about it really.... . So far it will only contains what you receive on a daily basis. I'll see later how to change a few things like creating some archives for my early essays, maybe some specific categories for exhaustive pictures of the volcano Lengai or for Flying Medical Service... Not enough time with 24h a day. And some people are bored with life!

ciao ben

volcano in a new phase

hello there,

I had just said that the volcano didn't fail to entertain me...well I should have shut up because the monster has been quiet for a few days now!

look at the colors, a beautiful green grass is showing up, and that is the area that looked B/W on some previous pictures, remember? The brownish area arec loser to the volcano and must have suffered a bit more from the ashes, the mudflow maybe from some lava too.

 

it was a crappy day for shooting I thought. And still the last picture is quite interesting nevertheless...never know, always shoot just in case.

cheers ben

20 March 2008

sorry to all of you for not keeping up but that has been 17 days without a day off. I'm lacking time and quite tired I must say. Luckily that country is still beautiful, lots of opportunities for shooting, even more now with the rains coming close.

The volcano doesn't fail to entertain me, but doesn't fail either to piss off the operators either. We were the first ones to lose one turbine engine. I must say that I was a bit concerned when the trouble started on me, so I decided to follow the road, just in case the thing would quit before landing. The engine compressor blades were corroded, eaten by the volcano chemicals! Then 2 other companies experienced the same symptoms. Probably more to come....let's brace ourselves.

The vocano smokes with Mt Kilimanjaro in the background. That was a striking moment.

Look at that plume, it climbs up a few km, then the winds pick up and bring the thing more than 100km to the South, passed Ngorongoro crater. Nearly on a daily basis! 19km up is still the record apparently.

Look carefully, it's not just a decent sunset, it's a sunset with a blowing volcano.

 

Finally one rare day when it was quiet. The mouth has changed so much, grew thick and large, there is no top flat floor anymore.

 

My scientist is quite excited with all those changes, that activity...he submits his PhD his month but will keep an eye even after. And am being published again but in the same volcano magazine. Maybe I should submit my shots somewhere else too, like to the Nat'l Geographic which has opened one monthly page for amateurs...I just need time! Maybe i should resign, take a few months off. I'm really tempted, am not made for hard work, I didn't come in Africa for that.

this morning was quite great: it had been pissing rains all night, with a coupla thunderstorms as well. So this morning, still heavily raining, common sense and professionalism required I'd take my jeep to go to work. But fuck the company, i jumped on my bike with all my bags protected with a poncho and waterproof covers and had a great time pedalling on the muddy tracks and through the puddles to the airport. Calvin, from 'Calvin and Hobbes', said that if your knees are not dirty by the end of the day, you have to reconsider your life. Lovin it, though sadly I can't apply that motto everyday... With a bit of organisation, I quickly look clean before I jump in the plane. Well I mean as clean as if I'd gone by car. I'll never look like an airline pilot. There are always people to complain about my comfy old shirts or trousers...weird.

ciao ben

Natron 4 - 15 March 2008

Here we go the last ones from Natron, till next flight!

   

   

Natron 3 - 14 March 2008

I took about 250 of these pictures in 15 min of flight time, that's it! Not a "Best of Of" after many flights up there. Of course, some were discarded quickly for technical reasons, others were too similar to each other, but these selected ones are in that 15 min window...All that diversity in 15 min. Such a wonderful place nearly anytime of the year...

         

 

Natron bis

being the kind of guy who sees shapes and faces in clouds, this soda lake is also a dream. I see for instance a bird head in #7080.

And there was a red running man on a blue background in yesterday batch, #7158. Well it's me....

overnight in a great location tomorrow in Western Serengeti, lunch with the hippos in the river 30 m away....

with a bit of luck, I'll get a thunderstorm too....

      

ciao ben

Natron superstar

Lake Natron superstar...

sorry been busy and lazy lately...

ciao ben

This and that

Hi chicks,

George Wanker Bush came in Tanzania amongst otehr Africa countries. He or his staff whatever just behaved like dictators, changing the airports closure times without notice, stranding passengers for a day in one lousy airport, forcing others to miss their connections...It was such a big chaos. In turn I had to spend the night in Nairobi. Not a big deal in comparison to other people though.

In town all traffic was closed to anything on wheels for the day!! Great for business of course. One lousy road was rebuilt for him to go to a restaurant, where he didn't go in the end. So we all assumed he suffers from haemorrhoids nevertheless being such a perfect asshole...

He left behing a 700 million $ cheque for the country. That's all that mattered to this government.

here he is with 2 Air Force One Boeing, just in case one has a problem.

The clown is the one in the Boeing, not that pilot...

Above, a C117, cargo plane coming before and after to drop/pick materials, like jeeps, the presidential helicopter... 2 of those big planes!

Above, the C206, which I fly again once in a while, with Kilimanjaro in the the background. Since it crashed and has been repaired, it flies better they say....

Above, the F406 zooming past me, 130km/h faster. Not easy to get a picture.

Below, the smoke from Lengai today with Mt Kilimanjaro in the background.

the rest is Lengai, the volcano. Blowing at 50.000 ft (15km) yesterday! I was at some distance luckily, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to frame all of it, even with my 12mm lens!

cheers ben

Kilimanjaro and Lengai

hi guys,

some views of Kilimanjaro, one early morning....

that awesome volcano again.....

Photos below: 3 days ago. Up to 22000 ft (6000m) at time of shooting. But it was dissipating already down from 35000 ft according to a previous report. The plume went all the way south passing Ngorongoro crater. Pilots had to go through big detour to avoid it.

There have been reports from pilots that the plume rhas eached 60000 feet or 19km high! Personally I only saw a 35000 foot smoke, not bad already. Though when looking at the photo below in detail, the volcano itself is a bit visible at 7500 feet above ground. From there it is possible to guess the smoke height at 45000 ft maybe? Regularly it reaches 20000 feet or just above.

there are once in a while some kind of lightning in those volcanic clouds! 3 witnesses told me that. I hope to see the phenomenon soon!

I had said that some Masai tribes live down there through difficult times. They all agree that cows won't eat the grass contaminated with ashes. Can't blame them if you remember the kind of B/W pictures I've sent a few days ago. So most Masai warriors are gone with the herds to find good grass. But a few stubborn guys stay behind with their cows. And to feed them, they sweep the grass with a broom! I got that story from the Flying Medical pilots, they noticed these warriors with awful blisters on their hands coming for treatment at the mobile clinics. That's a feat just for the fact that Masai males hate, really hate to work with tools. No good for their dignity. Cultural thing, they're not lazy at all 'cos they'd do dozens of miles with cows or to pay a visit to a friend. So using a broom means quite some level of desperation....

Hillary Clinton came in Ngorongoro a few years ago. Secret services and other clowns touring the country prior to her visit to organise her trip. Father Ned was enrolled to show her a masai village off the beaten tracks (well a bit beaten still). So here is Ned waiting at the airstrip. She is late and after one hour he left back to the village, not giving a shit. Some time later he sees the secret service guys running to the village all panicked, wondering where he was, why he didn't wait, blahblah. She was now waiting at the airstrip (pissed off probably). Father Ned not impressed just answered that his time was precious too and that he had things to do. Good for him!! Anyway she still visited the village, and at the end, asked the elders if the USA could do something for them. You're all seated? The elders said thanks but no thanks!!!! I love this! As she insisted, one real elder just stood up and said 'Ok then send us more guys like Ned...'. She said USA couldn't really promise that. The old dude just said something like 'ok then nice to see you and bye'. These people, whoever would be visiting, Clinton or Bin Laden or the pope, they couldn't care less. Good for them!

ciao ben