On my way to Zambia, I had to do a lot of flying across the Democratic Republic of the Congo since it is the third largest country in Africa. Often times, you don’t think of the realities of life, but once exposed to it, you start realizing that things are much bigger and much more complex than you originally thought them to be. Sometimes things seem so complex that they seem far beyond your reach. Congo-Kinshasa for example is about 200 times the size of our tiny Kosovo and it takes a lot of time to get things done.
On this journey, I have many times had to think ahead and have secondary plans ready for unforseen cirumstances. Otherwise, I would never be able to finish our mission. Sometimes, my plans change daily, even hourly due to the crazy circumstances that I am faced with. This time, it was getting a permit to fly over the country that was the challenging part. But this has been a part of my life during these travels. I sometimes have to shake my head at all of the crazy things that I have had to do in order to continue on with our mission.
On my way to Zambia, I actually found myself buying fuel from a street vendor my friends. I found an entire city being dry and out of fuel, only to be waiting for the next barge shipment to come in. In the meantime, it turns out that street vendors take advantage of the situation by buying fuel at cheaper rates when it is available and then selling it at double the price when everyone is more in need of it. Yes my friends, I actually had to purchase fuel for our airplane on the side of the road here from a street vendor. There was one other time I have had to do this in my life and it was on the first leg of our mission, back in Latin America.
For those of you that don’t know about aviation fuel, usually airplanes require an octane level of 100/130 for fuel. But in the United States there is a law that says that some airplanes may use automobile gasoline if the octane level is high enough (though still not as high as 100/130). Normally, if you were to go to a gas station in the US, the usually octane level offered to the public is near 90, but you can also get fuel there as high as 100 most times. I have learned that here in Africa, some countries offer fuel as low as 80 octane. Welcome to trouble with that low grade, especially for an airplane.
I had no idea what quality of fuel I was buying from the vendor, so I also bought a handkerchief in order to filter fuel before I put it into cans to take to our baby plane. I was hoping that this would help refine the fuel and help to screen for impurities. I was also praying that this decision wouldn’t haunt me in the future by costing me way more money in repair bills. I had no other choice at this point because I was not willing to get stuck here in the DRC for longer than I needed to be due to them seeing me as a walking dollar sign lately.
After that little fiasco, I was on my way to Lubumbashi in the Southern portion of the DRC so that I could continue my journey to Lusaka, Zambia after a good night’s sleep. My friends, there is a huge UN presences here in Lubumbashi, especially at the airport. Lubumbashi (and the DRC in general) is a very wealthy place due to all of the natural resources being mined here. Things like diamonds, copper, zinc, coltan, and cobalt, etc. help to make this country one of the richest in the world financially. But you would never know that from the war and conflict that they have endured. I did not see anything special in this city to indicate all of the wealth that I had heard about. Instead, I still see lots of struggling going on, like some of the other countries that I’ve visited.
I did manage to find what I thought was a safe hotel which was gated and had lots of guards surrounding it. I initially thought that the hotel was clean and safe until I found a small visitor that had invaded my room, my new friend, a hotel mouse. Again, you never know what to expect.
Despite my attempts to arrive early at the airport the next morning to leave for Zambia, life had other plans. The weather was rainy and foggy and there was a very somber feeling in the air. I should mention now that though Lubumbashi has an international airport, you would think that this place had been abandoned for years. One thing that I have noticed in all of my travels here in Africa is that there is not a lot of value placed on things like building updates, preventative maintenance , etc. Regardless of this fact, these facilities are usually no cheaper to utilize. They are very worried about you paying your fees and make sure to exert their authority in order to make you do so.
In an international airport with space shuttle or astronaut-like fees, as soon as you ask them for a service, they report that they are unable to provide it. All I wanted was the weather briefing and do you think that this international airport that deals with airplanes on a daily basis and charges you astronomical fees could provide that to me? Not a chance. Their response to me was that their computers, weather radar, and all of their instruments were not working. It is funny that the machines were not broken when they needed my service fees and such. I don’t understand how they cannot have weather updates available. In order to fly, it is mandatory that every pilot know the weather conditions at the departure city, en route and at the destination location.
So after a few hours of trying to figure things out, the local weather had lifted and I was ready to leave for Zambia. However, when I went to do my pre-flight checking of the plane, I started the engine and something was not right. I heard a strange noise and everything started vibrating. The engine power level was also not responding appropriately. This is bad news my friends. So I shut down the engine and got out of the plane to check on things. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so I got back into the plane and started it again. I was hoping that this time the situation had improved, but it still didn’t feel right. Here I am in this very expensive airport in an area that is highly patrolled by the UN due to conflict and I’m thinking that I will be stuck here because I had bought that fuel off the street vendor and put it in our baby plane. Praying to higher powers, I started to take-off anyway. My thinking was that with the bad fuel, a cold engine and cold outside temperatures, maybe our plane just needed to fly a little and get warmed up. I was trying not to be paranoid and wanted to get out of here and continue the mission.
When I did take off and apply more power, things were not getting any better. Normally, an engine like mine puts out about 23-2400 RPM’s upon take-off, but now it was only giving me 1900. Even after flying for about five minutes things did not improve. I had no choice but to head back to the airport. I headed straight to the maintenance hangar, which seemed to have more airplanes in it than the whole airport. My friends, normally I am not a big believer in higher powers, but I am convinced that I was guided toward the best people that you could ever find to maintenance our plane.
The team at ITAB was absolutely fantastic. They were very helpful and my time with them was very meaningful. I had a a strong sense of comfort upon meeting them as it is not very often in my travels lately that I meet someone who looks like me. Often times, I meet people from many different cultures, all speaking different languages, etc. I am grateful that I have been able to communicate with most people so far, but it provides a sense of security when you can speak with someone in a language that you are fluent in and who can understand you.
Upon arrival at ITAB, Mr. Maxim Cagnettie and Alain Deleommenne guided me right away to their amazing and wonderful mechanics, Mr. Peter Brand and Brian Hill. Mr. Brand and Mr. Hill then introduced me to their boss, Mr. Jose DeMoura and within minutes my friends I was taken care of for the rest of my stay here in Lubumbashi. I could write a book about these wonderful people, but it still wouldn’t be enough. Within the 3-4 days that I spent with them, they became like family to me and were so generous to our mission. I will never be able to thank them enough for all of their help.
In no time these amazing and experienced mechanics had found the problem. As it turned out, one of the valves in one of the cylinders got stuck which caused the arm to brake that drives the valves. Now that I knew I had that kind of problem, I knew that I would be staying put in this city for several days. No problem due to my new friends. Mr. Brand and Mr. Hill got on the phone right away with their contacts in South Africa and organized everything so that the parts could show up the next day around 5:00 pm. Guess what folks, these wonderful men not only organized for the parts to get delivered to from the shop to the airport in Johannesburg (which was several hours of driving for someone), but everything was done absolutely free of charge. Thank you to Mr. Simon Law who was the wonderful person who organized for the parts to be donated and sent from South Africa to Lubumbashi.
I indeed was blessed by meeting this great team. The delivery to the airport, the freight and shipping of the parts, the parts themselves and even the three hours of labor that they completed on our plane was absolutely free. They not only didn’t charge me for any of it, they even fed me for three days (and like a King I might add) and offered to let me lodge at the ITAB mechanic and pilot house. Thanks to god that this problem arrived in a place like this and not in some of the other places that I have had to land that weren’t nearly as friendly and would have ended up costing us tens of thousands of dollars.
Mr. De Moura (the owner) is of Belgian descent, but has lived most of his life in the Congo. Mr. Brand and Captain Hennie Steyn are from South Africa. Mr. Hill, he is from Zimbabwe originally and Captain Maxim Cagnetti is from Belgium. I want to remember the two other people there who were helpful too, Pierre Moen and Mr. Alain Deleommenno. My dear friends, experiences like this will be engraved in my heart and memory forever. Amazing people like these gentlemen are hard to find sometimes. Let’s hope that higher powers will bless them with many good things in their lives.
After three days of their care, our baby plane was ready to go and was put together by Mr. Hill who has many years of experience on the same type of engine that our plane has. I was ready to head off to our next country, which is Zambia.
