Guinea - Spring 2001

As I was winding up three weeks of fighting the screwworm fly in Jamaicaduring December I received a call from AirServ, for whom I had flown inMozambique. There was an emergency need for a second King Air 200 to workfor the U N High Commission for Refugees in Guinea - Conakry due to anupsurge of fighting in the region. The contract included ferryingthe aircraft over to Guinea. The experience of a transatlantic crossing isan opportunity most pilots would wish for and so I was quite privileged.Unfortunately as there was an urgent need to get the aircraft to Guinea, wedid not experience anything at most stops other than the refueling andpaperwork.What a delight to be back in Africa, and possibly doing something useful, orat least harmless. Amid the horrors that cause the UNHCR to be working inAfrica there is never ending manifestation of great beauty which can capturethe soul. An earlier pilot came who had never been out of Canada before.The sounds and sights and colors of the crazy auto traffic mixed withpedestrians, along with the noise and chaos of the markets was toooverwhelming for him and he asked to be taken right back to the airport toreturn to Canada, certain that he had made a great mistake. The pilotpicking him up persuaded him to at least spend the day awaiting the returnflight at the house, and then persuaded him to stay on one day at a time.After a few weeks of this he was dispatched on a flight to KanKan toevacuate UN workers. An attack by rebel bandits was anticipated. As soonas the flight touched down and parked the aforementioned gunmen came out ofthe forest and surrounded the airplane. Our friend was sure this was theend of his life and that he had made a big mistake in being persuaded tostay in Guinea. The evacuees had already been captured and stripped of alltheir belongings and clothes down to their underwear. But at the end of theday the airplane was allowed to leave with the passengers - albeit withouttheir clothes. After finishing his contract of several months this Canadianpilot returned to Toronto but soon found that he wanted nothing so much asto go back to Africa and regularly inquires about getting his old positionback. This phenomenon is known in French as "la malade d'Afrique." I haveheard from old folk who spent their childhoods in Africa and have also readelsewhere that the scenes and especially the colors stay with one'simagination for life. What I see will indeed make for pleasant daydreams inmy waning days as I drift into affable senility.I am never far from scenes of past and present evil and misfortune. Bonesfrom a mass grave at the touchdown end of a runway in Monrovia, Liberia,work their way to the surface to greet us as we touch down.But despite everything there is great beauty everywhere. The clothes peoplewear are gorgeous on their even more splendid bodies. There are many typesof fabric dyed with all sort of patterns and then sewn into a wide varietyof African styles - mostly various forms of robes and turbans. Some verydignified outfits are made with patterns that might make them looklike clown outfits in the West. I had a (male!) UN worker from Mali onboard wearing a tunic and trousers suit made entirely of two-inch widestripes in various shades of purple, pink, and orange. I have seen elderlysheikhs wearing robes of hot pink. Alongside the roada vendor woman shakes her colorfully clad butt up and down and back andforth to the sound of excellent music while she rearranges her bananas. Youjust don't see that in a supermarket in the West. And in the States whenI go onto airport property I open gates with magnetized computerizedsecurity cards and move from asphalt to concrete. Here it is areal person who opens the gate, one of many guards, janitors, and otherworkers who have all their wives and children and cousins living on airportground, eating, bathing, praying in an outdoor mosque, and growingvegetables in lovely gardens alongside the runway. In the evening they aresilhouetted against the setting sun returning to their huts in a line withbaskets on their heads. They are graceful, relaxed, and slow as they walkafter a day working the gardens.The great grin can also make Africa fun. After a long day of flying andthen waiting for fuel, only to see the fuel truck serve four other airplanesthat must have been in line ahead of us, we were tired, impatient, andgrumpy. At last after an hour the fuel truck came towards us driven by a"great grin" that cannot be adequately described. It was the hugest biggestgrinningest white-toothed face I have ever seen. This man looked like hehaving the happiest day of his life, and that nothing could be morewonderful and pleasant than to come over at last and fuel us. This issomething tired souls in our cities should try, to give life to theirwithering bones and to lighten the burdens of those around them. Laughing,we forgot our frustration and remarked on what a fortune he should earn as amodel for toothpaste commercials, though on further thought it should be incommercials for a reedy looking plant which people in Guinea chew on toclean their teeth. ( I will find out what plant it is exactly andinform inquiring minds).Without the right attitude it is easy for Westerners to become cut off andbe surrounded by high walls, physically and psychologically, and separatethemselves from Africa with generators, air conditioners, big high vehicles,videos, Corn Flakes, and Coca Colonial barriers.Guinea is Islamic and French is the common language, so I always returnFrench greetings with Arabic responses which gets me ahead somewhat. Atnight there are numerous checkpoints so that the soldiers can loot SierraLeonean refugees and collect cigarettes and bribes from other motorists. Iwind down the window and Salaam Aleikum them with great confidence whichusually gets me right through. When it doesn't I keep giving them variousArabic blessings. I start with the simple ones and then move on to wishingGod reward them with brides of honor and that their pilgrimages be acceptedand blessed. I carry on in this fashion until they let me pass. I don'tknow if they think I'm too holy or just too strange to mess with. Out inKissidougou I bid farewell to a crew of shoeshine boys in Arabic and theyreplied properly, so I kept it up and one of them kept blessing me back. Ifinally asked if he could speak it and sure enough he could hold a basicconversation, having learned it in Koranschool. He was a Mandingo. Imagine that, an Arabic-speaking Mandingoshoeshine boy in Kissidougou, Guinea!On one trip an important gentleman from "the Embassy of a major Westernpower" in Abidjan, Cote dIvoire, after getting on the airplane in Conakry,and getting off in Abidjan, (with two enroute stops), discovered that hisbriefcase was not on the airplane. He had last seen it checking it in withhis luggage in Conakry. He said his "whole life" including his computer wasin that briefcase. He had lost his suitcase in Ghana the week before, andnow he himself was quite lost. I spared him a discourse on attachments andthe spiritual benefits to be gained from losing them. Nor did I take thepsychotherapist's approach and suggest that perhaps he was not satisfiedwith his life and that his subconscious had caused him to put it all in abriefcase and lose it. I also did not ask him why, when travelling inAfrica, he turned his "whole life" over to an airport porter. There iscertainly a sermon to be preached on the whole concept of putting one's lifeon a computer and into a briefcase.On one of my later flights to Kissidougou my co-pilot and I spent the day intown and returned in the afternoon only to find the airstrip taken over bysoldiers decked out for combat. Just as we began inspecting our ownairplane two Russian Hind M-24 attack helicopters zoomed in and landed. Thepilots and crewmen were white and turned out to be Ukrainian and Russianmercenaries - three for each helo. We greeted them. One looked like ArnoldSchwarznegger. One was barfing. Another wore a cross. They were notunfriendly, but they also hadn't come out expecting to find a UN airplaneand two pilots and they unfortunately had some "work" to do. Aftera few minutes the Guinean officers asked us to leave the field and wait bythe terminal, and then scolded us for being out there in the first place.Our passengers arrived which also caused a little confusion andconsternation, but after the soldiers made sure all the car and hand heldradios were off and that no one was writing anything down we all waitedtogether a small distance away while rockets and ammunition were loaded.The last scolding officer said that we all had to wait and depart only afterhad they left to do "their work" at Gequedou - a Guinean town which we knewhad been taken over and was being looted by an unemployed renegade mercenarymilitia from Liberia. So we spent an hour watching the loading andreflecting on the fact that there were some people down the road who werealive now under the late afternoon sun who weren't going to see it set.The people who stayed behind after we left heard the rockets hit Gekuedouand the next day BBC announced a report from Liberia of a helicopter attackon one of their border towns in that area.The next morning we landed at Kissidougou again after getting all sorts ofpermission and assurances. One of the Russian pilots came over to greet us.I had never before shaken hands with a fellow who had just killed a bunch ofpeople for pay the previous evening and wasn't sure what to say, but Ioffered him some Altoids breath mints. In this land where military strategyis discussed in terms of magic and sorcery and special shirts that make asoldier invisible and charms that turn bullets to water, Africa squandersits gold, diamonds, and bauxite on the most advanced pieces of fightingequipment and the foreign mercenaries to fly them. And they in perverseturn keep me employed by creating the refugees who require the reliefworkers from around the world who require my services as a pilot. Imeanwhile have tried my best to "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly withGod."May you be rewarded with a bride (or groom!) of honor, and may yourpilgrimage be accepted and blessed.Will grin for you from Africa.