The Norwegian guys who had been running the small logistics coordination office already started to celebrate in the morning as it was “syttene Maj” well 17th of may for the uninitiated.. that is the day the whole of Norway is celebrating my birthday or their national day :-)We packed up the last pieces and they said lets join the 2nd Iljusin -76 and fly back with that one to Entebbe.
The iljusin is one of the real work horse planes that we use for transporting whatever is needed. there was 3 of them that had been based in Mwanza and they were all wrapping up the last flights as the operation in DRC Congo was scaling down after the Rwanda Genocide.
We saw the first one take off fully loaded with food commodities for the refugees in Kisangani.
the noise they make when taking off can not really be described. It is just enormous and there are no normal commercial planes like it. Looking inside it is a purely mechanical plane and if there is any electronics it is with old Valves or Tubes as we would find in radios from the 50s and 60s. All the control wires are fully visible inside to save on weight and cost.
The crew for a plane is quite large as they carry their own spares and repair equipment so they are almost completely self sufficient… With a Russian crew just give the plane fuel and the crew some Vodka and the flights are on the way 🙂
As it was their last flight run before returning back home to Russia they were in both a sad mood but also celebrating their departure from a job well done. their return to Russia effectively meant that they would be out of a job as there was money nor interest in actually repairing the planes to get them back in business. (this was in 1997)
We sat in the back when taking off. I asked if there was any seat we needed to take with seat belts but it was obvious that this plane was not equipped with such luxuries. We could sit anywhere we wanted or why not simply lie down on the bags the plane was full of. When an illusin takes of and land it is almost not noticeable compared to other planes.. It basically drives off horizontally until it just lifts without any angle upward to speak of. the crew in the back were refreshing themselves with some black label and so did both me and the Norwegian guys.
After abut 3 hours we reached Kisangani and the pilot flew around the airport 2 turns before landing. As it was in a potential war zone with both government troops, rebels as well as rebel fighters from Rwanda in the vicinity a constant lookout was needed. Once the pilot was satisfied everything was OK he talked to his friends from the first plane on the ground and we landed.
The reason why we had to fly to Kisangani even though it was half the way through DRC, for the Rwanda crisis, was that the people had by any means tried to avoid the genocide and had basically disappeared into the jungles around Goma/Bukavu only to somehow appear in and around Kisangani several hundreds of kilometres away.
We parked the plane and opened the doors. there was a lot of military on the ground and the atmosphere was very tense. I had a camera and took some pictures from inside the plane but did not take it outside. That proved to be a very good decision as one of the other guys was almost attacked instantly when trying to take photos of the plane in front of the building.
About 30 people started offloading the plane by hand. The 50 kilo bags of food disappeared in rapid succession out of the plane. After about 30 minutes they were ready.
I was then informed by the pilot that we would bring all the people that we saw standing in line on board the plane and fly them to Kigali.
I will never forget the sights nor the smell of what was to follow.
The crew rolled out some blue tarps on the floor in the plane. Then they locked the entrance between the cargo hull and the cockpit and informed us to not under any circumstance open the door once we were in the air.
We all started helping the refugees getting onto the plane. They moved slowly and were so weak and skinny with hollow eyes barely able to focus on anything. In every ones eyes you could just see the fear. The knew they would be returning to a country which had just been hell on earth. They all carried a small returning pack consisting of some water and some little food. Mothers carrying their children. Each time we led someone into the plane their eyes were just saying one thing, please don’t let anyone harm us, yet they spoke nothing.
Talking to our guys on the ground I was informed that I was lucky to come at this time. If I had arrived even one week before I would have seen people in much worse shape than I now saw.
We helped about 350 people into the plane. The all sat down on the floor stomach to back in several rows.
The main cargo door was closed and we climbed into the cockpit.
As there was no seat anymore the pilot told me I could even watch the take-off standing behind his seat. I was a bit sceptical so I instead found a small cushion which I placed next to the navigator who is sitting below the pilots. It would be the perfect view to somehow feel the acceleration of the plane and see the rush of the ground running passed as we took off.
We taxed out started taking off. Once we had reached an altitude of about 500 metres it got cloudy several times. Suddenly I see another iljusin right in front of us heading directly towards us. the pilot quickly made a maneuver banking right. Luckily the other plane did the same… Only then did the navigator notice that he had forgotten to turn on the radar.
The flight went smooth after that and we continued somehow celebrating but in a more subdued way. The people in the back had been through hell and survived and they were now on the way home and would hopefully be living a better life than the had for the last 2 -3 years.
When we landed in Kigali airport I stood behind the pilot and I could barely even feel when the wheels touched the runway.
There was even more soldiers on the ground at this airport than I had seen elsewhere. We got out on the runway and the soldiers was commandeering everyone left and right. the cargo door was not to be opened until all the buses for the refugees had arrived. The tension was quite high. the trust among the people was virtually none and due to the situation no one could know if there potentially would be interahamwe among the returning refugees. So everyone would have to be screened once they reached their camp.
The smell was horrendous. Most of these people had never been in a plane let alone even seen one. That combined with the fear of returning meant that many had defecated right then and there in the plane. Luckily no one had panicked and they were helped of the plane to the buses.
Once the plane was empty it was cleaned up and we later on took of for Entebbe. The crew was getting more and more frisky with the vodka and they started to sing their traditional songs.
We landed at Entebbe just at sunset. I fell asleep in the Land cruiser on the way back to Kampala with very mixed feelings. Sadness, Happiness, Excitement, Anger all mixed into one. It was my 30th birthday and on my first mission I had seen upfront and close what the real work our agency do.
