John Matshikiza
WITH THE LID OFF
The plane (I know you’re beginning to get bored with this plane, but so am I) is getting ready to take to the skies. This is no ordinary airline. It is part of the infrastructure of what should be Africa’s pre-eminent carrier, Air Afrique, named after the continent itself. As such, it is, to all intents and purposes, staffed by no ordinary people – owned and run by Africans, for Africans.
We lift off from Johannesburg airport. I have been allocated a seat in a strange position – between me and the window is the jump seat that will be occupied by a crew member at take-off and landing. It is facing the opposite direction from my seat, towards the back of the plane, in the gap across the emergency exit. This is to make it easier for the crew member to get in and out, especially during a crisis. But one tries not to think about these things, especially during take-off and landing.
The stewardess, who settles in next to me as the captain turns the heat up in the engines, is wider than the jump seat. We rub shoulders with unprofessional intimacy as the plane begins to leap down the tarmac, the two of us going the same way, but facing opposite directions.
We hit some turbulence over Gauteng just a few minutes after take-off. I am trying to ignore it, but suddenly I feel the stewardess involuntarily clutching my arm, her polished nails digging into the flesh around my biceps. Her face expresses alarm and discomfort. I am surprised because, although none of us feel totally comfortable with turbulence, this feels like just a small affair. Her reaction makes me wonder if she knows something I do not know.
The turbulence subsides. The captain turns off the seat-belt lights, and the stewardess gets up and goes about her business, giving me a smile and a thankful squeeze of the shoulder as she goes. We are friends for life – or at least until the plane lands safely at Abidjan, where the crews will change, and my companion and her team will leave us in the hands of a new set of complete strangers to continue our journey.
At Abidjan there is an unexplained delay as we wait obediently in the transit lounge. The delay stretches to four hours. Nobody complains. We are held hostage by an airline that never has quite enough aircraft to cover all the routes it advertises, and therefore keeps you waiting while planes and crew are juggled around.
We are also being held hostage by a gang of well-oiled South African plumbers and outfitters on their way to a blind date with the unsuspecting citizens of Mali. The artisans are going to set up a paper mill for the Malians. They stand around the bar in a tight group, one or two of them loud and out of control.
Male and female Ivoirian soldiers swagger through from time to time, looking casually chic in their olive fatigues, unconcerned about the tension the louts from the deep south are engendering among their fellow hostages.
At last we are seated on the plane that will take us onward to Bamako and Dakar, having fought our way on board through a throng of crazed Africans desperate not to be left behind, even though every single one of us has a certified boarding card in the hand. As well as being at the mercy of the airline, we are now also at the mercy of the night, which has long fallen.
We are on one of those airliners that has introduced the thoroughly modern gimmick of a live movie camera built into the nose of the plane, so that the passengers get a pilot’s eye image of the process of taking off and landing relayed to them on the screen that usually shows the in-flight movie.
I wonder if this is strictly necessary.
Flying is scary enough as it is. Nevertheless, there we sit, in our terrified ranks, staring down the flickering tunnel of darkness faintly illuminated by the runway lights. We wait like sheep for the final explosion of power that will take us roaring down the runway, entirely at the mercy of a captain called Mulligan (is that an African name?) and the aircraft mechanics who are responsible for keeping this complex mass of metal airworthy.
Not so many weeks ago a Kenyan Airways airbus had set off along this same runway at Abidjan, lifted off the ground successfully and then plunged without warning into the waters of the Atlantic minutes later. Had the same kind of video images been running as it made its last attempt to reach for the skies? And if so, were all those passengers sitting there, transfixed, as the aircraft that had taken them aloft moments before went plummeting towards the hungry ocean, glittering ominously closer by the second?
I’ve always found in-flight movies somewhat aggravating, since an aeroplane is a particularly uncomfortable environment for enjoying a movie (unless someone has paid for you to ride first class and you therefore have your own private screen) and the films have usually passed their sell-by date, anyway.
But the idea of sitting in an aircraft, watching a live snuff movie unfold before your very eyes, with you as the lead player, surrounded by dozens of screaming extras, strikes me as exceptionally tasteless.
I’m sure I’m not the first frequent flyer to moot the idea of a passengers’ union that would fight to protect us from additional perks like these. And I’m sure I’m not the first to wish that someone else would get on and start it, so that I could join, but not have to do all the hard work. As a result of which, we grit our teeth, and take whatever the airlines throw at us -whether it’s terrible food, stewardesses seeking comfort in our arms or movies that we’d just rather not be watching.