Flying for Kosovo

Compared to some of my very long flights, I feel like I’m going across the street here when I only have to fly from Maseru, Lesotho to South Africa, which is just across the border.  After just a few minutes, I am in South African airspace and its time to say goodbye to Lesotho (a country that I will never forget).

I could already start to see a huge difference in the amount of air traffic between the two countries.  This is by far the busiest airspace that I’ve encountered Africa so far here in Africa.  Planes are flying around all over the place and this is the first time on this continent where the air traffic controllers have alerted me to keep an eye out for para-gliders in the sky and that I should be careful to watch for them.  The air traffic is probably contributing to the slight turbulence that I’ve been experiencing, but it’s all good and just part of the process of flying.  It’s a joy today to speak with the air traffic controllers in English.  This is a tremendous relief as it means that I can fully understand them and they can understand me.  It also raises the level of professionalism when both parties are able to speak in the same language.

Down below I see little airports everywhere.  Some of them don’t even exist on any maps that I have seen.   Also, like the past few countries, I start to see some diamond and mineral mines below.  Down this way, the economy relies heavily on those types of natural resources.  They also rely on tourism is, which makes me think that their customer care will be more aligned with what I am used to in the USA and again, I am able to see a few fruit trees here as well.

After that short flight I landed at Lanseria airport, which is just north of Johannesburg.  Instead of landing at the high traffic international airport, they have routed me to one more suited for our baby plane.  This airport is generally used for smaller or ‘general aviation’ aircrafts, but compared to places like California or New Jersey, this airport definitely seems to have a bigger airfield.  I am starting to understand why this country is considered to have the third most developed aviation industry in the world.

Folks, upon landing, I was in heaven.  All of the overhaul or maintenance hangars at this airport were big name providers, like the companies that you would find in the USA.  They also had an aviation or pilot supply store here, which brought tears to my eyes.  I have always loved flying and aviation so much and to be near services like this gives me such a sense of comfort and familiarity with a world that I am used to.  I know that right now, my airplane could break down and that things would be fixed here in no time at all and with no problems at all.  I’m also certain that the quality of service would be comparable to in the States.  South Africa is definitely the aviation heaven of Africa as far as I’m concerned.

After I parked the aircraft in TPSC’s (Turbo Prop Service Center) parking area, I was given my first sense of South Africa’s great customer care.  Mr. Andreas Diener was very helpful and friendly to me and was gracious enough not to charge me for parking.  As another gracious gesture, he also offered to give me a ride into Pretoria (the administrative capital of South Africa) in order to get a hotel.  I was actually supposed to be getting some preventative maintenance done on the plane too while here at the airport. But since the mission is totally broke right and waiting on more funding, I can’t afford it so things will have to wait a little bit longer.

I was able to get a great bed and breakfast owned by a wonderful couple, Madame Hannie Greyling and Mr. Giel Greyling.  It was comforting and felt like a home away from home to be in such a warm and welcoming private home instead of an huge, impersonal hotel.  The Greylings helped me out so much throughout my swaye stay here in South Africa and became like a second set of parents to me right away.  It was comforting and felt like a home away from home being in their very warm and welcoming environment.  Mr. Grayling was so generous and offered to help me with some of the transportation that I needed to do for our mission.  This was especially helpful to me since the average rate to hire a taxi for the day here is around $200USD.

One thing that I dislike about traveling to certain countries is that some of them have more than one capital.  It is very time consuming and expensive when you have to travel to more than one capital in order to accomplish your goals.  Here in South Africa, there are many capital cities: Pretoria, which is the executive capital; Bloemfontein, the judicial capital; Cape Town, the legislative capital; and Johannesberg, which might be considered the economic capital.  Because I had the goals of meeting with the media and also the government officials, I had to travel to more than one city in this country.  Luckily for me, most of the work that needed to get done was in Pretoria and Johannesburg, which are less than 60 kilometers away from each other and that I don’t have to go around chasing capitals all over the country, since Cape Town is over 1200 km away.

One thing that I found interesting here was that even in places like South Africa, they still have their fare share of problems.  For one, this is the birthplace of Apartheid, which was a time in their history where it was legal to separate black and white communities in all areas of society.  This went on from the late 40’s until 1990’s when Nelson Mandela was released from prison after twenty-seven years and went on to become the President of South Africa.  Since then, the climate has become much better between the two communities, although the UN does rank this country very high in terms of assaults and rape per capita.  There are also 11 official languages spoken here, which means that there are many more cultures than that which makes it difficult sometimes to communicate with each other.  I guess that all of these issues are too big expected since even in places like the United States there are still some areas affected by the same types of things.

I was shocked though at one particular difficulty.  I would have thought, as economically strong as South Africa is, that it would have been exempt from things like power outages.  But as it turns out, though they may be the biggest producer of electric on the planet, they are also the largest consumer and their government power plants haven’t been able to keep up with the demand.  Now I don’t feel so bad about our problems in Kosovo, knowing that big places like South Africa have some of the same troubles.

On a more positive note, this country seems no different from any other place like the USA or Western Europe.  It’s beautiful here, the infrastructure is great, they have nice roads and parks and the people here are wonderful.  More to the point though is that I have to admit to you here that I never in my life would I have imagined that I could miss something as simple a McDonald’s restaurant.  But after seeing one here for the first time in many months, I know that this is no longer true.  I went crazy like a little child here in South Africa when I saw the golden arches and I couldn’t help but to buy myself a lunch there to feel that small comfort of my home in the States.

I wish the media made me that joyful, but they were a little more difficult to deal with.  A majority of them wanted me to arrange future appointments to meet with them.  Now let’s not exaggerate here people, I am not trying to meet with the President himself for lord’s sake, just a reporter (at most an editor) so that they can write about our nation and our cause.  If I would have made appointments for all of the times I needed to meet with the media, I would never finish our mission in this lifetime, especially when I’m trying to fly across half of the planet.

Another thing about the media that I’ve learned over time is that unless something is a disaster or there is something bad happening and thousands of people have died, they usually don’t want to cover it and the story is not that important to them.  This makes me feel kind of good actually though because it means that Kosovo is not considered a hot spot anymore and we are not such a big interest today.  On the other hand, after doing this mission for over two years, I have also learned big countries like South Africa still remain knowledgeable about exactly what is going on with Kosovo and follow our developments step by step.  They are all well aware that we are asking to be recognized in the world.  Especially when we remember that it is big countries like this where Serbia also tries to focus their attention and lobbying efforts.  Make no mistake my friends – we are very much on the radar of internal documents in big countries like South Africa.  The smaller nations, however, need a little more sometimes because they don’t always have the required staffing to keep up with all of the world’s events.  Instead they have to just go with the flow and address things as they come up.

So I want to say a big thank you to all of the media houses that were willing offer their time and meet with me here, given the challenges that were presented.  Thank you to the great team at the national radio station, South African Broadcasting Company SABC FM 104-107FM for being part of our mission.  Mr. Themba Dlamini is the wonderful person who organized a live interview for me that lasted over 25 minutes, Ms. Mignon Van Deventer, who was their evening program manager and Ms. Nthateng Lerate who was the one who actually interviewed me and also had a great personality.

Thanks to Ms. Seugnet Esterhuyse with the newspaper Beeld, who did in-depth interview with me lasting over an hour.  At the newspaper Sowetan, the staff was also wonderful, so thank you to Ms. Nonku Khumald for her dedicated work and professionalism.  Finally, thank you to Peter Fabricius, the excellent editor and journalist who interviewed me for his newspaper The Star.  He was the foreign editor of that newspaper and had lots of knowledge about the functioning of the globe that we live on.

It is great to be continually reminded of just how much can actually be done just by being sincere and nice to people and treating them with respect.  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs so far on this portion of the mission have all been excellent and I have luckily been able to get what I want accomplished with them in the shortest amount of time possible without having to wait for weeks on end just for a quick meeting.  Especially in the nations where we are not yet recognized, it would be extremely difficult to get a meeting organized without having the protocol reject your request.  But, I have been able to get in without arranging any meetings so far just by showing respect, being nice and talking to the right people.

I have been very happy when I can get in to these places so that I can get our main message out, which is ‘we the people and governance of Kosovo request for your formal recognition of our newly independent nation’.  It helps that I am there to hand deliver a letter from Ms. Citaku requesting such, so that I can leave them with a formal document to help them remember us.  I guess that if you know how to be nice to people and show them respect, it allows you to get things done in the way that you want them to happen most of the time.

Thanks to Mrs. Nowetue Luti, the Director of the Eastern Europe Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who granted me a meeting and accepted our letter from Vlora Citaku.  Her response to Kosovo’s independence was clear: we are following the progress of your nation very closely and your position in the world.
My taxi driver (a gentleman in his 60’s), Mr. Anelius Mthembu knew journalism quite well.  He had great values as a mature human being and also showed character in providing a service instead of just being worried about taking my money and moving on like some of the others that I’ve dealt with.

I have nothing but excellent memories of this beautiful nation and it was great to be able to see a bunch of malls around me during my short visit here.  I had no idea that I would ever miss those types of things either.  It was also nice to see the booming construction and advancement of life that was happening around me.  Its surprising to me the things that I realize I’ve missed while on this mission.  Like KFC, back in the States I would never dream of enjoying a meal or two there, but down here my friends, my taste buds were having a party.

South Africa is a country that I have been wanting to visit for a very long time.  I have always had the desire to reach the most unreachable places and to try and aim for the furthest things in my life.  This experience has definitely been one of those occasions.  To be able to have traveled throughout half of the African continent already makes me very happy.

Psychologically though, I have personally struggled and had to quickly accept some preconceptions that I had about this place.  I had always thought that the African continent was only the home of darker skinned people, but I was wrong.  This continent is a home for everyone – white, black, Asian, you name it.  There are many lighter skinned people who have lived here fore many generations and who call this place their home.  And I have already learned so much more than I could have imagined from all of the darker skinned cultures that I have met.  There are some truly beautiful people in this world my friends, with the kind of beauty that money can’t buy.
I can see that South Africa is place where all people can prosper in life and I wish for this country and its people to be blessed for centuries to come.

IOL travel