the k-train

for my mom, and the whole mammography staff



not all of our flights have that same romantic africanized pure liberty to them. we do operate a couple scheduled shuttles, twice a week. one goes north to beni and bunia, before continuing on to entebbe, uganda. you grab lunch and then drive the bus in reverse back to goma.

the other goes southwest, deep into the heart of the katanga province of eastern central congo. depending on how many stops, this can run anywhere from 4 to 7 hours of flying. bukavu, kasongo, kongolo, manono, and kalemie are the typical ports of call on this milk run. we cover nearly 1000 nautical miles on a long day.


alot of the passengers on these shuttles are frequent flyers, so we have gotten to know them well. but there is always the odd surprise thrown in: an NGO buddy from goma, a couple 70 year-old spanish nuns, chickens, ben affleck, duct-taped coolers of fish, bags of beans, emile hirsch, pineapples, shovels, portable generators, lucy liu, bicycles, 20 reams of dunder mifflin copy paper, boxes and boxes of condoms, angelina jolie, or bananas. we've flown them all.


this time it's a young french lady whose shamefully tight, low-cut blouse is doing an exceedingly lousy job of restraining her bulging mammaries, which threaten escape. her breasts arrest me. she sits directly behind my captain's seat, giving a whole new meaning to the term "milk run." and though i try to give the passengers a safety briefing, my french vocabulary fails me. the only word i can think of is lait.

boobies are nice.

my ship today is N1209X. she is also milky-white and red, with a pointy end. 9X has a tight, predictable feel, though. she doesn't just flop around. we get along well. she's not as squirly as the other van, N715BT.


preflighted and loaded, i depart the goma drizzle. things are running smooth as i reach flight level 125 in cruise. trimming her to straight and level and fine tuning the throttle and propeller speed finishes my job. i click on the autopilot and let george fly while i do paperwork.

today is one of those days. every time i land, whether on the waist-high grass of kasongo, the packed red lunar gravel of manono, or the shabby, cratered and decaying "pavement" of kalemie, i can't feel the airplane touch down. it remains a secret that my bird keeps from me; the exact moment when she settles reluctantly to earth. i'm really painting it on; i can't even hear the wheels squeak as they spin up. this doesn't happen often, especially because i usually have my eyes closed when i land. but today is my day, and i can't go wrong.



this morning's departure was overcast and hazy in goma, with visibility only a couple of miles in light rain. here, 200 miles south, there's hardly a cloud in the sky. it's a beautiful sunny day, brought to you by the airplane (well, technically i guess it's brought to you by god, more than N1209X, but those two can fight it out). if you don't like how it looks outside, just hop in nine-ex and speed off to the other side of the equator. change your latitude.

hell, change your hemisphere. in the caravan, it's no big deal.


on this, my fourth and final leg, i depart kalemie and steer my ship due north toward the first fix on the flight plan, 150 miles away. we're following a routing down the middle of the string bean-shaped lake tanganyika. it's skinny, and i could easily glide to either shore if i needed to. north to south, though, it's 417 miles long. and 4,823 feet deep. it is the second largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. its water eventually flows into the congo river.


i plug in the ipod. there's only one choice for this brilliant, sunny day of bird's-eye vistas and perfect landings. frank sinatra.

he introduces his first song:

music puts wings on the human spirit. what i mean is with a song in your heart, that's the oooooooonly way to fly, buster. music and flying, i'm irresistibly mad for both.

i couldn't have said it better.

come fly with me let's fly let's fly. the miles tick off as i look out the window. on the left is the democratic republic of the congo, which is neither democratic or a republic. the sun shines down on a struggling congo on this glorious day; a trusted friend who still believes there can be peace. weather-wise, it's such a cuckoo day.

tanzania, burundi, and rwanda all slide by out my right window. from our lofty perch, my bird and i can see four different countries. you just say those words and we'll take our birds down to a-capulco bay.

if it wasn't for the segmented lines demarcating borders on my moving-map gps, i wouldn't be able to tell you where one country stops and another begins. from here, it's only waves on the water; enveloped by jungle-covered mountains.

far below, millions of trees are densely packed together like the gently-misted bundles of broccoli on display at your neighborhood market. from among them, an arboreal, electric-green mamba stealthily lifts its gaze toward the heavens. at the same moment, i peer downward; dead smack at the branch it coils around. through two miles of space, our eyes unknowingly lock for the briefest of moments: mine in confused pondering, and the mamba's in investigation of a dull droning passing overhead. a coal-black, glossy-wet, unblinking eye reflects the insignificant trajectory of a cherry-striped albino fly. i flick spilt cookie crumbs off my professional pilot's shirt. a flicking, sky-blue tongue tests the air for movement. it doesn't know what country it is in. come fly with me let's fly let's fly.

i look back at the gps. across one line, there is peace and sometimes almost enough food. but on the other side of this satellite-dispatched, digitally-generated dashed white segment, people are killing each other. thousands of others are fleeing the violence, abandoning their only earthly possessions: a crumbling mud hut with a leaky, rusted tin roof. maybe a jerry can of water and a cooking pot. pack up let's fly away.



and on this side of the line, more than 800,000 people were murdered with machetes during a few weeks one spring when i was in junior high discovering girls. their crime? being born the wrong ethnicity, as defined by some pompous rich pricks of belgium's imperialistic grandeur.

i feel like something of a rich prick myself: guiding my burgundy and cream colored bird above it all; passing parallels, matching meridians. the only thing absent is a glass of some snobby merlot.

some say that africa's soil is such a fiery, rich muddy crimson because of all the blood that's been spilled here.


luck, be a lady tonight. i daydream of ladies. especially redheads, especially those that sing, and play piano. what can i say? this crazy shit-show of humanity must go on, thanks to the millions of red-blooded young men like myself. always distracted from the task at hand by an auburn-hair all together too rare scarlet girl. one of her songs finds its way into my head:

from here, no lines are drawn
from here, no lands are owned
13,000 and holding
swallowed in the purring of her engines

images of this morning's french-speaking heaving cleaving curves flash through my mind. i stare through the smoky north toward home. the familiar twin volcanoes soon appear out of the haze, and after a long day of transporting aid workers around katanga, i touch down back in goma. the k-train has returned.