Ben Wilhelmi

lake Eyasi, another flight

round trip to Shinyanga, middle of nowhere. Only positive aspect about this flight is to fly overhead lake Eyasi, located just south of Ngorongoro crater. This is another salt lake like Natron, Manyara, Bogoria…all more or less in line in the Rift Valley.

 

 

western shoreline, the parallel salt lines are very visible here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

except for the colors, the patterns are quite similar to lake Natron, salt being pushed by the wind here and there, leaving artistic marks.

 

 

dry river coming from the cliff.

 

 

 

like all the salt lakes I know in Tanzania, this one is shallow, very shallow. So as soon as the dry season sets in, the water evaporates at an apparent quick rate and leaves salt islands behind.

 

underneath the clouds, the Ngorongoro mountains. In the foreground, that escarpment is where the Serengeti, spreading to the left, stops in this area. More dry rivers where trees have a better chance to grow alongside.

another flight- Kenya Air Force

other flying days can be a bit less interesting than the Kilimanjaro flight posted a few days ago but still…

 

 

Mt Meru around 6h30, waiting for the passengers as usual. At least this scenery is quite interesting to watch early morning. Changing light, changing clouds…

 

watching the cloud layers on the way.

 

 

in Nairobi, Wilson airport, apparently the Kenya Air Force found some money for a bit of flying exercise. I still haven’t any of their jet fighters either. I had never seen those helicopters in 10 years. Puma, made in France.

 

and below the flight back from Nairobi. All this variety on one hour of flight.

 

pastel clouds.

 

sunset setting in, bits of bright light between dark clouds.

 

 

area called West Kilimanjaro.

 

sunset.

Rolleiflex and Zorki! finally…

 

finally my new photographic toys have arrived, brought from Europe with love by Karine.

The superb Rolleiflex 3.5 F is in perfect condition, built in 1960 more or less. The technical name is TLR, aka Twin Lens Reflex.I had to choose between the early ones made in 1929,  abit risky to buy for a regular use, till 1993 for this kind of TLR. Rollei company still exists. It was an old dream to shoot in medium format, that is 6x6 cm on film 120, which is indeed square pictures. The F series was the last model to be fully mechanical, full of cogs and springs. The models have quite changed in more than 60 years but the body is still roughly the same. After this one, electronic shutters and so on jumped in. Less attractive to me. I can’t wait to use this camera, mostly in black’n’white as I can develop that here myself. Nevertheless it is an old mechanical camera, I’m impressed by all the little subtleties and options. But the handbook only contains 20 pages or so. A dream as opposed to the actual digital camera hand books which contain hundreds of pages. I’ll shoot slides too (Kodachrome maybe?) but rather just before my next return to Europe for swift processing. Mom has offered me this camera as a gift for my 40th birthday! That’s her 3rd set of camera she gave me. Thanks Mom!

 

 

 

 

all wrapped up in leather casing, including filters and other little things. Out of fashion for sure but as Karine said when she bought it and tested it for me in Paris, she got more people looking at her than with her digital Nikon! The same when she was using her monstrous Polaroid 600 SE, the thing is as big as a soccer ball.

 

   

  

with the visor opened up. To shoot a standard picture forces you to place the camera on your chest or belly and look down through the visor. Notice the silver crank half spread out on the left, that is to move the film and cock the shutter.

 

 

 

 

 

this how it looks like when looking down on the view finder. Quite a large picture. The focus ring with solar light meter is the big knob on the left.

 

and for my 40th birthday, Karine offered me this other beauty. Thanks too! I’ve mentioned these Russian Zorki cameras in a some previous posts. This one is a Zorki 2, an exact copy labeled Zorki so not a fake I insist, of the famous Leica II with its collapsible lens. Originally built in the 30’s, the Leica II has evolved a lot but remains a logical camera, was a state-of-the-art camera by then. The lenses were so good that Leica allows them to be used with an adapter on actual Leica M like the one I’ve got. Even the new digital Leica M8 would accept such a lens too. As I said earlier too, I’ll get a real Leica II one day but I don’t want to use such a real vintage camera in African conditions.

 

 

that’s a Leica M6 with its collapsible lens out, see the family pattern?

 

With Leica, in a different format, Rollei has offered most of the best and famous pictures from last century. The philosophy is quite different than digital. Each picture costs you something, the camera doesn’t do anything automatically for you, all the settings have to be thought carefully before shooting. You have to think and tell the camera what to do. And having used this technology myself already, it made me respect these ancient photographers even more!

Ok, time to go for fun and shoot now.

Kilimanjaro, in one flight…

 

I could have given the same title as the previous posts about the interesting sides of bush flying…

there are flying days like that, when the moment is just magic, and it is then worth the rest of the occasional bad day. The rainy season is the best for that magic moment, for aerial pictures. The dust has gone, the visibility is perfect, the clouds are incredible, the colors explode..;well for those who can look and enjoy that is. Today was a typical dry day, like flying in fog but it was only dust made shiny by the sun. Nothing great. But the pictures below were taken in one round trip to Nairobi last week. It shows perfectly the evolution of light or clouds during the day. Just before sunset, the golden glow as it is called amongst photographers and probably others doesn’t happen that often because different parameters are required in the recipe to get it. But when it appears, it creates a visual orgasm.

 

in the afternoon, around 3pm. Lots of clouds but the star is visible, including the secondary peak on the left, rarely covered by snow. Already nice feeling to see it like this.

 

 

 

then on the way back from Nairobi to Kilimanjaro airport, around 6pm, the clouds have dropped a bit. The light comes at a low angle, creating nice shades in the cumulus clouds.

 

 

 

it must be much darker below.

 

 

then the golden glow makes a shy approach, the colors get warmer as the sun gets lower and lower.

 

as I come closer to the Tanzanian border around 6h15pm, the glow sets in for sure. This is going to be a great moment!

 

 

I must have taken 60 or more pictures, swapping lenses, equivalent 50 and 180mm in 24x36 format, to vary composures between changing lights and clouds.

 

similar picture as above but different clouds: in the shade or in the sun, blue or orange!

 

 

at some point I had to go down through the clouds for landing, unfortunately. For a few seconds, that purple or pink tone showed up to finish the scene…

 

last view at 6h25, the sunset is at 6h31 these days.

sad news in the world of photography

well sad…that’s why I said ‘photography’ in the title. No way to compare this to what happens in Iran for instance!

after Polaroid last year, another film is dead: the famous Kodachrome… it was the first color film ever. It came out in 1935. It is still the color film mostly used in archives. National Geographic switched to color thanks to this film. I hardly used that film because it was expensive when I started photography. And it was not convenient at all to use here. Now I wish I had made the effort there too. For those who are interested visit  Kodachrome Project. Or http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=15398&pq-locale=en_GB&_requestid=763, OK it’s an awful address but just click on it for 43 nice Kodachrome pictures from the past.

I’m a bit upset with Kodak initially to look for good profit and shut down this film because it represents now only 1% of their film sales. But at the same time Kodak has just released some new films or updates of older films… and thanks a lot to the old Kodak guys who have produced great films, have taken many commercial risks. The Kodachrome would have been 75 years old next year with little change in its specifications! Quite a feat.

Karine is busy with her Polaroid cameras (3 so far!) to stay tuned with the golden days of photography, or her twin reflex lens Mamiya C220 amongst various oldies.

as for me, on top of my leica, my old Nikons, my Russians antiques, I’m impatient to receive my Rolleiflex this Thursday! Using good old films in medium format. Our bits to help the film industry. No doubt I’ll post a picture of this beauty soon.

in the meantime, the Mamiya…

a beauty uh? Quite similar to the Rolleiflex.

 

and 2 pictures shot with this C220. I had to beg Karine to let me use for one film between 2 of her films. That was in Ndutu in dec 08.

nothing special about the pictures but it is quite an exercise! The framing is quite a feat: as opposed to regular cameras, the mechanism is such that the viewfinder offers an inverted image, that is the photographer has to move the opposite direction of what he wants to frame, left instead of right, up instead of down. And even worse to use in a diagonal movement. Sometimes the subject was fed up of waiting and had left. Of course there was first the viewfinder to open up, the focus, the aperture, the shutter speed to sort out, the film to advance and the shutter to arm…

 

cheetah yawning, looking at food but not tempted, the bastard! We waited for long, in vain.

why flying the bush …part X

  

wildebeests crossing the airstrip, Grumeti, Serengeti.

 

a Cessna Caravan on a soaked Seronera airstrip, Serengeti

 

same location, a Twin Otter.

 

another type of flying, paragliding….getting ready early morning, facing Mt Meru.

 

in the hills near Arusha, I’m in the middle ready for take off, not for a dance lesson as it might look on this picture.

 

and I’m flying! Great fun! Except when I landed on a acacia tree…

 

 

an “airevac”, the patient is brought to the aircraft on a stretcher. This stretcher is way too big for the aircraft, so the patient has to be transferred inside and be seated. But we had our own  tailored stretchers that could fit in the plane. The seats had to be removed so the patient could stay on.

 

volcanic eruption, volcano Oldoinyo Lengai. In other countries, such an activity would have imposed the area to be closed within 200 miles, that would have included Arusha and all the Serengeti, Ngorongoro. “Competent” authorities were asleep, the regional companies happily kept on flying…and subsequently lost 3 engines as I’ve said earlier. Costs could go up to 350.000$ for a new turbine engine…I certainly didn’t complain as I could shoot wild, got to see incredible spectacles like this day with a 55.000ft or 17km high plume of smoke with an electric thunderstorm inside! Too bad the lightning were too short to be caught on picture. One such show in a lifetime probably.

 

 

one of the planes I’ve flown, a Chieftain PA31. Quite a bitch but a good experience. A turbo pipe kept on splitting apart for instance. I had to fix it myself before many take-offs, which was not very difficult. But try to convince passengers that it is normal for the pilot to fiddle in the engine with a Swiss army knife…

 

Caravan landing in Mahale, lake Tanganyika. A bit unusual to land from the lake as the hills on the other side are too steep for a safe go-around. But if the wind is too strong, no choice but come from the lake.

 

those hills look like nothing but, trust me, they’re potentially nasty. Quite some dust as the pilot applies heavy braking, including the reverse power.

why flying the bush …part IX

 

“escorting” a colleague for landing…Ikuu, katavi nat’l park.

 

now this is NOT my picture. But the story is interesting. This Russian Antonov 12 had carried some rhinos to a reserve in Tanzania from abroad. Tanzania doesn’t have much of its own original rhinos, unfortunately. Luckily things are moving slowly and South Africa can provide rhinos, at some price though.

 

 

 

 

nice little flight, all good conditions for decent shots with Mt Kilimanjaro in the back. Big money was saved for that former company as it was the plan to get such a picture anyway. And luckily this double flight took place one day under regular business. Imagine renting a photographer, the costs of 2 aircraft up there for at least one hour since Kili had to be included in the picture… A few thousand $ for sure. Here, all for free, one picture is on their website, I hardly got a thanks and no payment of course…let’s be zen attitude.

 

the Boeing taking off is Air Force One. I wish I had had a rocket launcher. Oh let me precise, it was before Obama’s time of course. But then, with a launcher in hand, I might have aimed at the first plane too…see just above  ;-)

 

from a notorious company here. Spot the missing bit around the landing gear. While in the air the lower part that covers the wheel retracts under the belly, leaving this gap even bigger. According to one pilot and his handbook, this plane could only fly at slow speed to the next facility for repairs, not on regular flights with passengers on board! Which it did for a while.

 

 

 

a superb vintage Dakota DC 3, designed in ‘35, visiting the Serengeti from South Africa.

 

landing after a storm in Seronera. I had been the first one to land, jump out of the plane with the camera ready. The shiny parts are wheel tracks

 

 

…but the strip is in hardly better condition.

why flying the bush …part VIII

 

being helped to fix a puncture (puncha in swahili, just read it loud  it and you’ll hear the similarity)

 

 

flying that lovely Chieftain PA31. One engine stopped, the propeller feathered, the Kilimajaro on the horizon.

 

same engine with a superb oil leak.

 

 

Caravan landing in lake Manyara. Some little hills out there, pilots to be cautious in bad weather.

 

stupid wildebeest (gnou) crossing in front of us. Cherry on the cake for this image: the hot-air balloon in the background.

 

 

a F406 being fixed again after a belly landing. Some pilots or companies are regular with this kind of mishap. Some planes have even crashed twice…and are back in the air.

 

Serengeti South airstrip,no comment.

 

 

Grumeti, a Twin Otter landing, birds in the tree, completely used to it.

 

2007 and 2008, the volcano Lengai was seriously active with smoke and ashes sometimes up to 50000ft, 15km high. It looked like a Hiroshima mushroom. Here is ash deposit on my aircraft. Often the ash was invisible in the air though. 3 turbine engines died in different companies because of ash intakes. It happened one of these engines agonized on me. Luckily I could finish the flight, but I didn’t like the feeling to see the engine temperature in the red and fly on reduced power…

 

Seronera in the Serengeti after a storm. Soaked airstrip.

 

storm on mount Meru.

 

look at that passenger, we were taking a picture of each other.

why flying the bush …part VII

 

 

a bit of a storm ahead of me…

 

 

flying formation with Luca, a flamboyant Italian pilot on a Cessna 404. I was on autopilot so I could shoot pictures easily. I could hear all the passengers laughing and happy. Well, minus one…I just had asked Luca to come to my left side when I got hit on the head from behind!! the only time (and last I hope) in my life. I turned around, still on autopilot, and saw a big wild woman yelling at me. Wild for a 2nd reasons: she was wearing a styling leopard blouse! large beach mop of hair, too much make up. Her eyes were nearly out of sockets. She said that she hated aeroplanes, was dead scared to fly, that I was the most stupid and dangerous pilot she had ever seen blabla….all of that without breathing. Finally she went back to her seat and I told Luca to keep his distances…when he heard the magic word “woman” in my explanations, that serial womanizer thought he could “handle” her, for he was afraid to lose his job. As for me, I had already been given a notice anyway, with poor manners from that company. That’s why I started to fly in shorts for the whole notice period. I would arrive at the airport by bicycle, all dusty and sweaty, just changing the Tshirt for a white shirt and ready to fly… back to Luca, when I described her more in details, he had a second thought about his job and just said with his beautiful Italian accent: “hmm, then forget it, hay?”. The woman still had a go at me after landing, wailing and gesturing. Man, I made an impression on her. She was about to sue me etc. When I said I’d sue her too, making the trial interesting, she finally went quiet, puzzled. Being hit for once was good reason but I made myself clear as well by saying that hitting while flying was probably the most dangerous thing to do in one lifetime. She finally left, mumbling and didn’t take the phone numbers I wanted to give her…I agree i was quite wrong initially, but seriously don’t hit a pilot on duty, OK?

 

 

 

this plane had hit a giraffe on the neck on take off, the wing was ripped off right away. The plane fell on its side within a second, the engine roaring at full power, no matter what the liar of a pilot said, and trashing the 3 blades of the propeller. Nobody was hurt but the poor giraffe. The lodge employees were happy with that extra meat though…

 

so the 2nd wing was removed, as the tail, all put on a truck and ferried to a facility.

 

melted battery terminal. No wonder I couldn’t start the engine.

 

landing in Mahale, lake Tanganyika, people hardly bothered while doing the washing so close.

 

Kuro airstrip in Tarangire nat’l park.

 

Arusha airport, a pilot who superbly fucked up his take off on this Cessna F406…he raised the landing gear a bit too early then got slammed down on the runway again but a drop of wind, sliding on a few hundreds meters, nearly hitting the plane you can see behind, stopping a few meters from the fuel station and from another airplane starting his engines with 50 passengers on board. Close call for a disaster. The 2nd plane he crashed that year.

 

both propellers looked like pieces of abstract art. Now this plane is the same model as the one below. Notice the extended fat belly pod? Well it is full of luggage…and all of it has been scrapped off, pulverized during the crash, destroying everything inside. Happy passengers! Mt Meru in the background.

 

same exploded engine, left and right side views. Lorne White did a good job by gliding safely to the Ikuu airstrip in the Katavi nat’l park. The passengers, a honeymoon couple, were quite cool or rather really stupid: they asked if it could have been dangerous an aircraft without an engine! I don’t how Lorne managed to stay serious…

why flying …partVI

 

when I get a puncture, it is always about a nail or an acacia thorn. Except for that example….pretty worn out right? Well I had asked to change our tyres because they were worn out. The maintenance company, tanzanair, was short of spares so it gave us this one on a friendly loan. I still fail to understand why they gave us tyres that were in worse conditions than the ones to replace…. With friends like this, you don’t need enemies anymore.

 

Flying Medical Service, the secret for nice airstrips…

the day of the miracle: a strip being cleared up!

 

up and below, a dusty airstrip, Kiba in the Selous game reserve.

bush fixing…rocks in tyres to be dragged to smoothen the surface

 

 

quite an oil leak but manageable. It became expensive to run at some point though: 3 lt of oil every hour. Not to mention the concerned passengers.

 

variation on the same theme: another leak but not as bad.

 

 

Ikuu, Katavi nat’l park, refuelling in the bush. Though we were careful with extra fuel filters, I experienced once an engine failure. Luckily there was an airstrip not too far so I could glide down there without damage. The 3 built-in fuel filters  were clogged with dirt.

 

Ikuu, planes ready for the night. The branches are from acacia trees. the thorns should prevent bloody hyenas to come close and chew the tyre, which they love to do!

 

 

I knew something was wrong in the air: the vibrations were really shaking the airplane. A quick inspection revealed this cracked bit on the propeller section. The white spinner or cone had been rotating out of balance and even damaged the blue bit on the nose.

so I removed that spinner and flew like this for a while, not a big deal. The black arc is where the spinner has been rubbing the nose.

why flying the bush might be interesting , partV

 

shit hole places, not much happens, so an aircraft become an attraction. I loved the registration of that plane, APE, since one the main attractions of that company was the chimpanzee viewing. Some nasty tongues said that the name perfectly described our ways of flying…tsstss.

 

a Tanzanian Air Force HS748 which had a problem on landing, in lake Manyara.

spare parts like the engines were then removed or salvaged.

 

sad or funny story, you decide…these are the engines and the wheels of a cargo Boeing 707. That plane had come at night to land in Mwanza, on the shore of lake Victoria. The captain decided to give some extra training to the copilot and perform touch’n’goes, a good night time exercise. After a while, there was a power cut in town. The pilots decide to circle for a while. Sure the emergency airport generator was going to kick in any time right? Well it didn’t! Tanzania, always full of surprises…. By then it was too late for a diversion apparently, the pilots had burnt too much fuel instead of leaving right away. So in pitch black night, no lights, no beacons on the ground…they had to land with the help of the GPS, which are not always meant to be used for that type of flying. Anyway the poor guys missed the runway just by a few dozens meters and landed in the lake. All the crew survived! This was not the end: it was decided after the inquiry to pull the plane out of the lake. Some incompetent contractors were called it. They used cables and trucks in the wrong way and managed to rip apart the plane in 3 bits!

2 Russian Ilyushin 76 in the back.

 

airstrip nearly flooded, Olaika, northern Serengeti.

 

this is what happens when lazy people don’t maintain THEIR airstrip, blaming each other, the bad moon or the evil eye, whatever. The blades look like grass cutters.

 

and the rest of the aircraft is no better…

wet grass, chopped, pulverized by the propeller… it got very sticky and hard to remove.

 

Olpirikata, one the narrowest strips I know.

 

 

Njurlan, Rift Valley. Some high grass again but not too bad.

 

a bit of a sandy strip wedged between trees, Pininyi, Rift Valley

 

strip spared by wild fires. i didn’t need the map or the GPS to find it!

 

elevator damaged by rocks from rough strips.

 

 

a friend visiting his chick, my colleague. Now the Masai have a monster in their legends to scare the kids, a mix of a bat and a man who kidnap naughty boys. Imagine when they saw that microlight coming in! No kids to be seen around, within miles. They must have been shit scared, even hiding in burrows I bet.

 

I think that by now, you start to get the idea on why I love to fly here, right?

why flying the bush …partIV

flying formation is an exercise I really enjoy…since I was the only pilot on board, I had to fly myself and while taking the pictures, I’d keep some distance. Otherwise we were much closer.

 

above the vast empty African expanses…the airplane is a great Cessna C206.

 

 

this one is a Czech airplane, a Let 410. This plane was flying faster than me, just overtaking me. We wouldn’t be allowed to come that close to each other in the West. Well here neither normally but …

 

 

this Let 410 made a belly landing, that is the landing gear was not put down. The pilots, 2 of them, forgot…they must have been picking their nose before landing or what? Since it happened a few times within a year or so, all aircraft involving the same notorious company, the beliefs were that it was a scam to the insurance…specially that they never replaced these aircraft by the same models but by bigger planes…

 

this idiot running towards me was a self proclaimed ‘chief in charge’ trying to seize my pictures. He couldn’t even tell me his position or job on the airport. The janitor probably… that was my first ‘fuck you’ in Tanzania. And I still own the pictures….

 

 

waste of time but how can I refuse a poor smiling kid to pose in the driver’s seat…

 

  

this C206 had been delivered to us across the Atlantic Ocean. Extra fuel tank is required for the 16h flight in one go! poor pilots, must be boring and inconvenient. The 500 lt tank is seen here being removed from the inside of the aircraft.

 

 

a mini twister called here dust devils. They can be way higher than this one. Harmless but they can rock the airplane and surprise the pilot, me for instance, on take off.

 

notice the little ravine behind the airstrip. Better be concentrated on landing.

 

  

another bush fix: the oleo strut was flat, oil leakage, no more shock absorber. So to keep going without damaging the metal parts, we had put these pieces of rubber on the chrome part to avoid friction. The nose is tilted up for the time being fixed. Once lowered, the chrome part will be hidden.

 

why flying the bush…part III

just a bit different than the airstrips I know in Belgium….the active volcano Oldoinyo Lengai in the distance.

 

grasshopper scheme.

 

LSD effect? Nope just a super wide lens. A 15or 16 mm Nikon lens I had borrowed.

 

Barabaig woman. She kept on touching, stroking the metal of the aircraft. It looks like she never seen smooth surfaces like that.

 

 

friend of mine who trashed this plane by flying (by mistake) between power lines! he got sooooo lucky and so skilful to bring that plane back. He ripped off a big chunk of the wing…

 

…and an appreciable bit of the rudder

 

  

the rudder has been compressed vertically too! The antennas on the belly have been ripped off too. No doubt he really flew between cables. Since that company owes me money, i congratulated that pilot for the ‘good’ job.

 

we had received a new airplane, so we went up for some fun, 2 planes together, filming, flying in formation…

 

 

bush repair…the main contact switch had died. I couldn’t start the engine. Luckily we had a solar engineer with us. He got an Xray machine switch in the hospital and ‘voilà’, an elegant fixture that held for 2 weeks while waiting for a spare part. Very stylish as the cables went outside the aircraft, from this picture to the engine compartment, glued with bandage tape.

 

a narrow wet and short airstrip (the brown bit) and brakes that were useless on that slippery mud…so i applied the emergency way: kick one pedal to force the plane to spin left in this case, play with the power to control the U turn and full power in the end to push the plane the other way and stop. As you can see, this was not quite perfect, but at least I stopped before the end of the airstrip. Few pilots have performed that maneuver, which is not in the books. Only hearsay, no training. The next one was much better.

that mud would be called black cotton. La traduction en français semble difficile et varie selon les sites, ‘sol argileux lourd’ ou ‘terre noire à coton’…? Thick, soft, extremely slippery…the worst kind. But potentially fun.

why flying the bush…part II

 

I can smell, feel, guess, foresee some night stops coming. Plane is stuck in Nairobi waiting some paperwork to be stamped. My company believes the plane will be cleared tomorrow…I don’t. But I’m going anyway, so I’m posting a few stuff in advance.

 

so flying the bush…I was just hoping for nice pictures, a bit of dust, a nice landscape in the background (the Rift Valley at a place called Ngaresero, 600 meter cliffs), a touch of color with the red aeroplane…i got more than expected: a tricky airstrip, quite soft and sandy and rocky. The pilot got a bit rough on the controls to enter the airstrip, kicked the pedals a bit too hard and jammed the nose wheel in the sand.

 

 

just starting to move and turning to align with the airstrip heading…

the propeller is still rotating here….the 300 HP engine still roaring, still creating a lot of noise.

 

 

then the engine stops, see the dead propeller, and the total silence sets in…impressive moment.

 

  

nobody was hurt but the pilot’s pride. Two propeller blades are pretty twisted.

 

show time for the Masai!

 

on take off in a dusty area, Olpirikata, near the Serengeti. The power of a propeller!

 

  

Nairobi Wilson airport. A bombed airplane! Mafia style. The story was never cleared up…

 

 

the plane stayed there, like this, visible by everyone for months! Parked on the main parking lot, nice impression for the tourists who have just arrived in the country…nice marketing.

 

 

you’ve got long hair? Blonde? Or worse, red haired? You’re in to feel like a circus animal amongst the remote tribes who have never or rarely seen this kind of hair.

 

some incredible airstrips. Some pilots have refused to use this one again after the first training visit. Ngoveroni, one way in one way out no matter the wind, altitude 6500 ft or 2000m, on the flank of a crater (Empakai), 400 m long but luckily quite steep. No going around once you’re committed to land  because the crater slope is too steep for the aircraft capability. For the pilots, 600 ft on the VSI during take off, aspirated engine…

 

so steep that once I got booby trapped: heavy mamas were in the back of the plane, and as soon as I got out, the plane sat on her tail. Not proud of myself even if the conditions were unusual. The mamas were yelling at me while I was shooting instead of getting them out. Maybe they were angry that there would a long lasting proof of their big weight…you know there is no television out there. little stories like this are gold for people, not for the victims of course, and they stay for long.

 

here, the steepness is quite visible, and also the airstrip banks to the right as well. Quite challenging airstrip.

why flying the bush can be interesting, to say the least.

 

sometimes a few pictures tell more than many words…10 years in Tanzania, more than 5000 hours, a few dodgy maintenance companies, some bad airstrips, wild animals on the way, bad weather…

some pictures don’t exist unfortunately. How could I shoot at my full tail section vibrating so hard that I nearly lost it? The bolts were either not tight or missing! see dodgy maintenance companies… I forgot to take a picture of one engine failure, my only engine, I must have been a bit nervous. There is the wildebeest (gnou en français) or the gazelle that I hit on take off, but that happened so quickly  and I was also quite busy trying to avoid them. There are the scary violent thunderstorms. There is the day when the engine got too hot after take off, so hot that i thought it’d stop within seconds  and still flying low over…an acid lake, I wish my passenger had taken a shot of my big sweat drops (but he was too busy shitting his pants, so…). There was the forbidden go-around at high altitude and heavy weight that forced me to fly between trees, which i love to do…in good conditions, chosen by myself, but not at a too slow speed…there are no pictures of the angry Masai warriors throwing spears and arrows at me…but these pictures will also show the positive aspects of bush flying!

and I had promised Mom to be safe when I left Europe for Africa.

 

oops, sorry Mom.

look at this kind of airstrip and landscape! With a Boeing? haha.

 

 

some sense of humor.

 

some planes need repairs.

 

 

typical propeller damaged by sand and rocks from bad airstrips.

 

  

either the pilot forgot to close that cargo pod door or he didn’t do it properly.

 

 

when the wreck is beyond repair, which means something about the crash in Africa, the parts are salvaged for other aircraft.

 

waiting for that piece of bad weather to pass by.

 

bottom of the Rift Valley, my colleague and I at work. Tough life. 2 wings so we didn’t have to fight…

 

no wonder we had many punctures. each of these dots on the tyre is a thorn.

 

and below, not funny at all. I got my first job in Tanzania to replace a pilot who died with 2 passengers in a crash. I had paid a visit to the crash site in the tropical forest where it happened.

 

 

the tail section.

 

the fuselage which had flipped over.

 

   

part of the wing. See the squares in the white bit? Local people came in and cut off some bits of metal for their own purposes. Curious to know which ones though. They had slashed the tyres as well, but in this case, we know why: to make their famous Masai rubber shoes.

Muffin the hedgehog

Karine is away in France for a few weeks. I miss her…and can’t wait for all the goodies she’ll  bring me at the end of the month! Like a long awaited superb vintage camera, a Rolleiflex…I should have gone with her, that was the plan decided when I was a photographer a few months ago. Then this unexpected flying job appeared out of the blue and screwed up that plan. Darn…no real holidays till next year probably.

so I’m in charge of the fort here in Arusha, well mostly in charge of Muffin, that is our baby hedgehog, and the housegirl who I dismiss everyday am home. I hate to have domestics around me…The house could burn down but I wouldn’t get away from Karine’s wrath if one of Muffin’s spike is missing! The world wouldn’t be big enough for me to hide. Anyway so far so good, the beast is alive and kicking, stinking like hell when I come back after 3 days away. A little bath in the sink sorts out all dirt. I also have to cut her claws which tend to grow in curve, an exercise that can be challenging. She doesn’t seem to like the little click noises so she curls up at every click or she doesn’t let her legs be caught. The soft floor doesn’t do the job so welcome the nail clipper, AND a old saffron bottle cap whose flavor seems to drive her mad and distract her…there is also the TLC mission, that is to tickle her belly or her chin. She’d purr if she could. I had to promise Karine that I wouldn’t do anything funny with her, like aerobatic flying lessons. I made her do a double flip once and she fell in the bin: she had bitten me by surprise and I shook my hand a bit too quickly for her to let go…really funny since she was not harmed. But not to be done again said the boss…

WTF a hedgehog could you say? Well I admit that that thing is hilarious, always full of surprises. It’s a big business in Canada for instance. Quite low maintenance, so as a child substitute, it works for me too, heehee.

 

the monster when Karine found her a few years ago. 60g, tiny, a few weeks old according to the charts.

 

that’s the saffron bottle cap, not a fresh one, but it seems to hold the flavor pretty well.

 

 

chin tickling.

 

biscuit, chocolate, ice cream…everything that’s not good for her attracts her, just like humans.

 

 

see, i didn’t lie when I said she bit me!

 

 

 

belly scratching, she loves that too.

 

olive oil, luke warm water, the brush…everything for her shiny and healthy coating.

 

 

grumpy after the bath.

 

that’s the little wood house she uses once in a while, she prefers the small room because she likes to be squeezed…

back from Nairobi or Nairobbery

 

all is said with a nickname like that. My Zippo lighter had been stolen my very first week in Africa, in a public bus. Don’t underestimate Kenyan thieves! After all these are the gifted thieves who stole wallets and weapons from FBI agents while they were investigating their embassy bombing in 1998! Quite a feat.

since then I’ve been watchful and been spared but stories keep on coming. And it’s not only about petty thieves, the nickname applies to the politicians, the police, the army etc. which makes the country well ranked on the Transparency Index.

this week I was there for a few days normally, just to have the plane inspected. Well some problems appeared about the plane papers and she is now stranded for a few days. So I came back yesterday as a passenger. Since I only had a soft bag with me, and that the Kenyan luggage handlers are notoriously dishonest (Nairobbery, remember), I decided to keep my valuables with me, that included my multi tool knife. So for the check-in, I wore my kind of pilot uniform, white shirt and golden bars (galons en français), ID pass, and pretended I was on duty. So I could keep my knife and water with me. Once in a while though, when they spot the knife, not always, I still have to explain that I’m not going to slash my own throat in the air, just to dissipate their doubts about my sanity! Then I forgot to remove my bars. Once on board, a lady (guess where from) asked me if I shouldn’t be seated in the cockpit instead of with the passengers. I had had time to prepare my answers because I had spotted her eyeing me for a while. So I said:

“ yes, well spotted M’am, normally I do, but the copilot is one of those brat youngsters who think they know it all and don’t listen. I want to teach him a lesson, make him sweat, and call for my help when he is about to screw up….”

and I plunged into my book, keeping a serious face. She was really puzzled for a while. I even thought (and hoped) she was going to call a stewardess and check! But her neurons finally caught up.

nevertheless Nairobi has a bad reputation, I still prefer this city over Dar es Salaam, no doubt. People are different for once, much more relaxed, not so subservient and shy. For instance, I was in a queue, yes a queue, quite a rarity in Tanzania, but in Kenya, a normal thing apparently. Well we were about 10 in that queue. And here is a little punk trying to squeeze in. Suddenly here is that girl, maybe 25 years old, scolding at that idiot! “hey you, where do you think you’re going? Didn’t you notice there is a queue?”. The guy was mortified! I loved that scene for many reasons, first that there is a queue concept, that most people follow it, and that a woman, yes a woman, and young, told off that man! I was also really impressed that she used a sarcastic tone on top. Loved it.

 

if one day, you ever need to escape from a country, it’s worth trying to be disguised as a pilot, pretending you know where you’re going, what you’re doing. Once inside the airport, ask all the small plane pilots or cargo plane pilots you meet if they can give you a lift. Or sneak in the cargo pods. It might work. Look at that movie with Tom Hanks and Leonardo Di Caprio, “catch me if you can”…sometimes I do it on purpose just for fun, I don’t show my ID pass, just wearing a white shirt and golden bars. And I don’t even have a blue hat or blue trousers and jacket. Just a pair of brown or green bush trousers, not shaven sometimes, some comfy shoes and pronto, walking in as if I own the place, greeting the employees as if you know them before they ask a question (if…). It always works in Tanzania, nevertheless they have received a big bunch of money for training and security equipment since Sept 11th. The initial enthusiasm faded quite quickly. Kenyans are a bit more suspicious in the main airports (Nairobbery, remember…), and that’s probably because they’ve tried it all and are more suspicious of any ‘colleagues’…But in Nairobi-Wilson airport, I just go freely as in Tanzania.

dar es Salaam, shipyard and around

this was to be posted yesterday, but that was without the usual power cut, or was it internet problems? Not sure as they happen so often…not good for family planning! Give people a television set and the demography drops, but you need power for that, and with the local fucking randomly power provider Tanesco…. In Italy during last world cup, the maternity wards were a lot more empty 9 months later! Of course that means that there was something interesting to watch. Which puzzles me big time…soccer? sigh…I feel I don’t belong to mankind sometimes.

 

a dhow which could do with a fresh paint.

 

I’d rather think that this one will be used for spare parts. Though is it really a better thought…?

 

this wreck was being restored for sure. Scary.

 

 

by then I thought this wooden wreck was being used for firewood. Later on, some smart people decided to create fancy (and fuckingly expensive) furniture with the ribs and spares. Quite trendy I must admit. Like any great idea, it was copied, middlemen started to scour all the beaches in east Africa to salvage these wooden wrecks. Before long, none were to be found. Problem? Not at all, some other entrepreneurs, maybe the same, who knows, found a way to make fresh wood look old with some chemicals, cement and 2 weeks submerged in the sea! That reminded me of the stonewashed jean’s…

 

 

shantytowns on the beach. I’ve seen worse.

 

 

 

 

not a touristy place obviously, so people can still be happy to pose…

 

graffiti…why Miami, why Montreal? Any dreams to go there?

 

 

 

Dar es Salaam and its old shipyard

 

I remembered some years back that there was an unofficial shipyard on the beach near the center. Workers were welding new steel parts on old junk boats, tramps were sleeping in those wrecks, even a hooker, half naked. How could she feel confident to sleep there amongst men in such an attire? Anyway, it’s all gone. Only a dirty beach with various poor people hanging around. Here are some old pictures. The place was somehow more interesting by then. Now only the trash has survived.

 

 

the hooker with a lot of skin, even one boob, exposed.

 

those boats are called dhows (felouque in French), still built the old way though some might be equipped with an outboard engine.

 

 

here below are the many wrecks to be salvaged or restored. All has disappeared or been moved further.

 

the prow has been cut off. Not sure why, could be that a new nose will be wielded…

 

this wreck is definitely being fixed, the worst damaged parts are cut out here and there, new bits wielded and painted…

 

  

the patchwork is more obvious here.

 

the footbridge is still looking like a mosquito net…

 

 

a bit scary to imagine that these things are going to float again one day. One man confirmed that the 1659 tag meant “to fix”. I’m just wondering if the super oil tankers that sink here and there once in a while don’t come from shipyards like this one. Exxon Valdez, Torrey Canyon, Erika, Amoco Cadiz…

 

 

the back of this boat looked like the previous picture.

surviving Dar es Salaam.

 

bad week…I only spent one short night at home here. All the rest in that bloody hot crap city of Dar es Salaam. Well maybe it’s a bearable city once you live there but to go from one hotel to the next because I couldn’t get full bookings all week spoilt my days. Traffic jams are notoriously awful. The beaches are disgusting. I’ll visit further, much further next time. This is not to say that Arusha is much better: to spend one week in hotels in this town would be awful too.

well there are always ways to survive. I took a new kind of taxi in Tanzania, the Indian tuk tuks have arrived here. 3 wheels, 2 stroke engines, a roof…Much more fresh air than a car, smaller so they can squeeze in and escape more easily in jams than a normal cab. I still hate cab drivers of any kind here: they sit at the strategic spots and wait for victims, preferably white, and pester them as soon as they are in sight. “hey my friend (or boss, or brother), taxi?”. No really? 10 white Toyota saloon cars parked in a row in front of a hotel…I would have never guessed! You make the mistake the pass along those 10 cars, and all of the drivers, till the tenth will still offer the ride nevertheless you declined all the previous one. Years back, I’d once in a while challenge that and ask Mr 10 why I would go with him since I said no to the others? Would he think he was more handsome or more charming than them that I might fall for him, or maybe that his car looked in better condition? Inevitably I got blank stares. I stopped quickly.

Hookers might be a topic too. Some hotel bars are literally invaded like the renowned Qbar, which is also a hotel, quite decent with great music on Fridays. I stayed there this Friday. The girls were all hot, half dressed or half naked, up to your idea of the half glass stuff. Hot but smartly dressed and made up, the kind of chicks you expect to see in our discos in the West I guess. This being Tanzania with a big muslim population, it is a bit more unusual. I’ve seen real vulgarity at other places but not here.  I guess the owner put some conduct codes in place because these chicks behaved and didn’t jump on every male in the place. Of course the game is very clear, no mistake either: stealthy approaches, expressive winks or smiles… the chat can be funny too:

-I had: “oooh you look so strong, are you a bouncer?”. Sure, coming from a 50 kg chick…even Sarkozy or Woody Allen would look like bouncers to her anyway.

another girl: “C’mon, am from Zanzibar!”, “so?”, “well thats a thing to do before you die: sex with a Muslim”, I had never heard of that one!

-“C’mon, try me, once you get Black, you never go back”…

at another hotel, “best deal my dear, you can have or do everything but no culo”. Why culo and not ass? Do I look Italian suddenly? Just teased her and said some other girls would give “culo” so which one would then be the best deal? Blank stare…but quickly she added “you pay a bit more and my friend comes as well”. “I see but still no culo?”. “no, no culo…”….

-“hey sweetie, do you need company tonight?” being a classic.

and this could go on for a long time. They don’t let it go very easily if you chat. Even when you say no, there is no guarantee that they’ll stop there. It depends on how many potential victims hang around. If the balance is not right… but it was only talking. No touching so far. Just a strong negative answer will do the job to send them away.

Nairobi is a different story, I remember the famous Florida 2000 where one man (any kind, any age, any look) has no time to set one foot in that he is drowned (I hardly exaggerate: I have counted once 5 girls holding my arms) under sweet smiling girls. Some men are stupid enough to get hooked and marry one, denying the prostitution aspect. It’s true that for one second, the illusion is great. So the girls are all over the “poor” victim, and there, to get rid of them is difficult, really difficult. At some point, only one will stay around, well on the guy, on his lap, kissing, showing off her deep cleavage, making hot promises. ..they don’t take a no for an answer. My friend JP tried to get rid of his attacker by saying that he shared a room with me. She didn’t even look at me but answered she could handle 2 guys in many ways, no problem…what to say after this? That you’re broke is probably the only answer or being gay.

pictures for Mom…

 

biking somewhere in the savannah, north west of Arusha.

 

my girlfriend was talking so I was listening, paying high attention (had to) and I didn’t see that acacia tree on my way…the braking marks on the ground are visible but too late.

 

 

another example of Masai conception for framing a picture. Sure he thought that his bicycle was more important than me…

 

 

remember when I was a volunteer-pilot, we were flying to remote areas where nearly only missionary hospitals were to be set. Sure the sisters must have loved my Tshirt about Tequila. And just telling a secret here: I was also officially a missionary pilot! Though I didn’t perform religious work. That was the best and easiest way to get a resident permit! You are allowed to laugh loudly…

 

on a little trip to the volcano Lengai in the Rift Valley.

 

 

that was  nice little expedition, camping on top of that active volcano. Most people only spend 2 hours on the top. There were hissing sounds all night from the chimneys, rumbling from deep below, and little squirts of lava the next morning. Fabulous and privileged moments though scary at time. But too tired to move away after the hard climb and all the gear to carry…as shown here, it is very cold up there.

 

 

early morning, lava chimneys behind. Still quite chilly.

 

 

then during the day, heat got up, I got sunburns and decided to disguise with a turban. More chimneys and lava all over the ground.

 

the camping at the base of the volcano, well a few miles away on the footstep of a huge cliff. Cold water running near the camping, most welcome to wash the dirt and soothe some blisters.

 

  

and it is not over after the camping. Still a few hours on a dusty track before reaching the tarmac…

 

and when I say dusty, it means dusty. It’s a crap dirt track from that volcano so one can’t drive too fast, and if the wind catches up with the jeep… I wish I had had some swimming goggles. The piece of green cloth was nice but not enough. I love my Land Rover, she has many qualities but dust proof she’s not, never was even when new. I guess the Land Rover engineers foresaw the hard conditions their jeeps would face and preferred to let everything a bit loose instead of too tight. So the jeep can be bent a bit, stretched, twisted and be fixed with hard panel beatings…who knows.

 

hot springs, really hot, in the Selous Game reserve, wild animals all around but the water was too hot for them I heard (?)

 

lake Tanganyika, Mahale Nat’l Park. The good old days when I was flying little, waiting for and with passengers between their flights between camps/lodges. I had a lot of free time, really a lot, and went on hundreds of safaris. Lucky me.