oases

my chief pilot dawson is in town on his first visit to the chad program. we have been flying together for a few days now; i've been giving him some orientation and showing him the meek little desert hops we make to refugee camps.


about a month ago, we finally got our twin otter back from maintenance and i qualified as a captain. she's a real dream to fly and i'm going to miss her when i leave.


another day at the office. in the sun-glinting silence, i survey the human anthill from 2 miles high. not much has changed today. it all seems so absurd.

i drop down to earth again.

landing in koukou, a shy little girl watches me taxi up and park. she hides halfway behind a tree branch; neglecting the tending of her camels, intent on seeing my ship up close. but not too close. but her curiosity seems to be winning out.

she watches me like a hawk as i load my ship. i walk over to say hello, waving and grinning in the language we all speak.

she bites her lip in an awkward smile, beaming with beauty. dark eyes offer a smoky glimpse into a sweet soul; warm like honey and still dripping with purity and innocence and goodness.


she deserves so much more than this tough life under the chadian sun. it's not fair that i will crawl back into my ship and fly away, and she will be left to prod the stubborn animals onward through the simmering sands. who decided this? certainly not john calvin. i'm not sure what went wrong so long ago.

the sour green apple and battery acid taste of inequality in my mouth. the unfathomable expanse between how it is and how it should be.

st. exupéry knew this well:

space is not the measure of distance. a garden wall at home may enclose more secrets than the great wall of china, and the soul of a little girl is better guarded by silence than the sahara's oases by the surrounding sands.

the peace and sweet solitude in her eyes let me let go and surrender to the world's madness. words misplace their own meanings; and my voice is swirled and swallowed by the scorching blast of air across the open spaces.

it is enough just to know that she exists: a secret sugar elixir to counter-balance the filth.


speaking of filth, the president of sudan, omar al-bashir, was recently indicted by the international criminal court for crimes against humanity in the ongoing darfur genocides. his actions as president have led to more than 300,000 deaths and 2.4 million people displaced from their homelands.


al-bashir's response to the arrest warrant was to immediately expel most western humanitarian aid groups. doctors without borders, oxfam, solidarites, and the rest also had all their computers, money, and vehicles "seized" (stolen at gunpoint).

i can't think of any better way to show your innocence than to kick out the only people helping your poverty stricken, starving, sickly countrymen.

one rich dickhead can truly do more damage than an army of aid workers could ever keep up with.

and in the middle of the madness, all i can do is fly a damn airplane.

we depart. on the climbout, dawson receives a radio call requesting a medevac. a woman has been shot in the head in one of the refugee camps. i dip a wing and steer her 30 degrees to the left; heading to goz beida.

our aircraft is not equipped with a locking litter or oxygen or a medical staff. all we have are cargo straps and d-rings to hook into the floor. but we are the only thing resembling an ambulance for hundreds of miles.

after arriving we find the woman is in bad shape. a bandage covers most of her head and face. i can tell she is older. she quietly whimpers in her pain, as the aid workers, a field nurse, and dawson and i gently lift her and her tiny dusty mat into the back of the otter.

climbing out of the turbulence as quickly as possible.

i think about our fucked-up world; and humanities' endless depravity. i think about the little girl tending camels, and i feel ashamed. deep inside her is an eternal spring in the desert: the human capacity for caring for others. a spark we have smothered. a seed: a planet's salvation, trembling in potential.


what will happen to you, little girl? what sort of violence awaits your purity? what vinegar will you taste in this life?

you get something squeezed out of you in this place.

it's almost time to descend. my eyes silently flow over gauges for engine and propeller speed; on to fuel flows and quantities; around to oil temperatures and pressures. i look behind me into the cabin. the woman is curled up, writhing in pain; forcing me to close my eyes in embarrassment and pity.

an image seared into the inside of my eyelids: tiny chocolate hands bending a branch down to hide behind. a young girl still full of hopes and dreams.

maybe this woman tended camels when she was young. maybe she looked like you.

maybe we all looked like her.


******


disoriented, i sit in the yard and watch another sunset with no answers. is this the best the future holds? humanity playing an endless game of king-of-the-dunghill? the rebels fighting back and forth over wastelands, temporal riches, and nominal power? and what about the woman with a gunshot wound in her head?



the land cruiser came to take her away; into the smoking hot vortex of dust in this middle-of-nowhere town. i watched her go and it filled me with a great sadness.

will she survive the journey? will any of us?

where are we going? i feel trapped inside a runaway vehicle with no one to take the wheel. speeding through the cosmos; always onward, into the hot hazy crazy blurry hurried worried road ahead.