when food supplies become short, entire colonies march off in search of sustenance. forming columns up to 50 million strong, they are capable of devouring anything in their path. leaving a swath of destruction behind them, consuming plants and caged animals whole. there have even been cases of people - babies, the sick, handicapped, or others who could not escape- being consumed by them, down to the last strand of hair, last shard of bone.
workers and soldiers are all female. the rare male driver ant has wings, and lives as a banished bachelor until he reaches sexual maturity. then he is drawn back to a scent trail towards the hamlet. when the colony encounters the male, they tear his wings off and carry him back to the nest to be mated with a virgin queen. as with all ants, the male dies shortly afterward. a sad fate for any fly-boy.
******
after dinner i head to the airport. tonight us pilots are doing night currency. this means three takeoffs and landings each, with an instrument approach for practice.
entebbe's airport is on a peninsula, and the ends of both runways are right at the waters' edge. taking off and landing over a black hole can be visually deceiving, and it's easy to misjudge your altitude. you need to rely on your instruments to tell you how high you are above the water at any given distance.
although i've flown lots of hours at night, it has been a couple of years so i'm a bit rusty. also not helping my cause is the fact that i'm the last of the three of us to fly, and by now the windscreen is covered in dead bugs that have been attracted to our landing lights over the past hour and a half. they speed past us all the way down final approach like snowflakes. it's as challenging as landing in a blizzard, but with the snowflakes smearing their guts all over the windshields. add in less-than-awesome african airport lighting, and it's a workout. i finish my third landing and taxi back to the hangar.
the next day i head back down to the airport to help the mechanic wash the bird. when i see the aftermath of the evening's carnage in broad daylight, i can't believe how many bugs have been slaughtered. they are everywhere: the entire leading edge of both wings, the tail, all over the flaps and landing gear, propeller blades, spinner, windshields....absolutely coating and covering all surfaces like paste. after some quick mental math, i'm guessing between 20-30,000 lake flies have been squished by our big bird. their guts like gorilla glue all over the black neoprene leading-edge boots.
what's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind when he hits the windshield?
his ass.
******
the following day we are back at work. this base has four pilots, three of which are here during any given rotation. the guys are an interesting mix of characters. i am, by far, the youngest.
the first dude is very mellow. more than me, even. so chill that he reads while flying, or occassionally passes out drooling on himself when the autopilot is engaged. one time i looked up, we were wandering off course in heading mode and picking up moderate ice from the stratus layer. naturally, the boots were off, as was the prop heat. being a good neighbor, i reached across my sleeping captain's knee to flick on the de-ice systems. spun the heading bug to line up our trajectory with the way back home. re-punched the fms to get a direct course, and coupled the navigation function of the autopilot. it's the little things that count when you're in the right seat.
another bloke, the newest in town, is also the base manager. i get along famously with him. he's an ex-marine, very funny and laid-back, and has done a number of different jobs since he was a grunt. was a firefighter and a mechanic and a smokejumper pilot. didn't learn to fly until well after the military. from a place called man-chesta, new hampsure (fa damsure). my little brother was in the marines, and this devil-dog proximate relation seems to lend me enough credit to balance out any suspected liberal-leaning beard-growing sandal-wearing patchouli-smoking hacky sack-playing dirty hippiness.
the last chum is my partner on this glorious day; cruisin' above the double-quilted charmin' softness.
i drink my tea and try to enjoy the view, but it's impossible. the peacful serenity is an illusion.
this fellow is a former navy helicopter pilot who was based in italy. he has apparently signed a different contract than the rest of us: it seems that he is paid by the word. possessed of that rare talent of being able to talk for 9 hours straight everyday, always without prompt, always about himself. despite a plethora of visual and social cues from listeners that anyone with a dim reptilian awareness would interpret as non-interest. and every story out of his pie-hole starts with, "well, when i was in naples....."
when he's not hashing out his legendary leadership exploits in excrutiating detail, or interjecting his uninformed solutions to any problem in the world you can think of, he's talking his way through the flight. kind of like a flight instructor would with a brand new student. explaining the minutiae of what is happening, and what he is planning on doing next. the funny part is that he will be so busy telling you what he's about to do, that he doesn't do the very things he just finished explaining because he's distracted by his own blabbing and you watch it all go out the window. it's utterly distracting, let alone being annoying as hell.
although there's hardly time to get a word in edgewise, in those rare, brief moments of silence, i find myself involuntarily clamping down in the cockpit and not saying anything for fear that it will lead to a new speech. silly me. the speeches will come, no matter what i do.
it's kind of like the vagina monologues, only without the vagina.
i humbly but questioningly accept it as gawd's sentence of penance for the unclean life i've led. and when gabby's not looking, i turn the intercom volume down on my side as low as possible. try to get through the day, keeping the pointy end moving forward. monitoring the fuel status and building clouds and trying not go insane after hearing the same stories for the third or fourth time. ignore charlie brown's teacher: wa wa waa wa waa wa.
are you still talking? yes, yes you are.
by the time we're ready to head home, the weather has turned sour, and my mood is not far behind.
i guide the swiss miss around thunderstorms with the professional and polished skill of a veteran. as with all females, it's best to lead them firmly but gently by the bridle.
giving lots of space to the monumental walls of water suspended all around me. i don't want to play the whack-a-mole-on-the-head arcade game with zeus and his electric bolts. i've been hit by lightning before; flying the brasilia around storms near the dominican republic. it was an impressive experience that i don't care to repeat.
between weaving around cells and fighting off my co-pilot's attempt to give me carbon dioxide poisoning, my paws are full. i contemplate putting on my oxygen mask. but there's no time.
i start down, smoking her back into base before the boiling sky erupts into chaos.....victory once again for our hero, spaceman spiff!!!
land and taxi the toy back to the toybox. park and climb down from the cockpit. i note turkey buzzards circling high overhead on the thermals; fellow aviators casting a foreboding pall on future events. i take note that the universe is sending personal smoke signals to me, austalopithecus dipsticus. trying to communicate with a doltish oaf.
head home for a quick run and then dinner. afterward, to the red rooster to shoot some pool and drink some beers and decompress from the auditory onslaught that hath poured forth from the blubbering, blathering fountain of annoyance.
as usual, the alehouse perimeter is occupied by chicks. there's all kinds here tonight, from broilers and layers to the run of the mill night fighters, the local term for sexellence in prostitution. the prozzies and mozzies buzz around the room, looking for a fresh victim.
i survey the environment for any threats lurking in the perimeter grasses. attacks frequently come from the side, as night fighters are pack hunters. the only safety here is in numbers. you just don't let yourself become isolated from the herd.
i spot a couple of blonde ladies i know, and stealthily work my way towards sanctuary. the ingrained, inbred, institutionalized church of latter-day segregation is blatantly apparent. with matriarchal jealously and possessiveness, british aid worker girls hover protectively around the breeding males of the group. one ex-pat female is normally enough to preclude any blitzkrieg; but it is sobering to consider that only petite blondes stand between us and brutal carnage.
for now, though, these nocturnal predators are too skittish to approach, and instead wait until a young or inebriated individual wanders away towards the toilet. they know that it is only a matter of waiting, and bide their time stirring rum-n-cokes with painted acrylic claws. the eternal patience of a turkey buzzard circling high overhead.
one in particular has been visually violating me for the past half hour. i give a friendly salute with my beer and feel the sour green apple and battery-acid taste of inequality on my tongue. i feel sorry for these girls, they are for the most part very pretty and young and have been driven to this life by the shitty circumstances of economics. nevertheless, i am not interested in anything more than buying them a beer to get through the night.
my brain bathes in malted barley and hops. the liver, nicely marinated now. the frustrations of the day have floated off into the substantially soggy inky ether. i take another quaff of my third guinness and remember the driver ants. some metaphor there. but too intellectually advanced for my current state.
i excuse myself. head to the head to return some rented beers to the eco-system. as joyce said, "all forms of excretion are pleasant."
unzip. staring down in the urinal, as all men do. drain the lizard. contemplate this thing and the appalling affairs it always asks of it's owner. what a terrible lizard. i tell it so. "you are a terrible lizard."
deinos-sauros. from the greek.
despite buzzing nicely, i sense danger as a witless chicken might. like foretelling ripples in the puddle in jurassic park, i am acutely aware of my isolation and vulnerability.
the night fighter i've been trying to escape from has positioned herself close to the bar door, anticipating my unannounced departure. a gyne-saur. more like a gyne-sore. always get more than you bargain for.
clever girl.
i try my best to blend in, a white man in this sea of chocolate. i slip past her line of sight, utilizing evasion techniques i learned in the war. hop the fence around the corner, and continue out the back alley and onto the rutted dirt road that leads home.
potholes and open sewers are difficult adversaries in the buzzing black of night, but i navigate around them like the late-afternoon thunderstorms. winding past mud brick huts and tin roof shanties and meager plots of corn and peppers.
walking home by braille under the equatorial stars. i look up and see that orion's belt has kept his pants on for another night.
2 comments:
A sad fate indeed ;-) Have you tried "Sterile Cockpit" on Heli-Boy? It works when the only other option is to strangle him. Less paperwork too.
Ah the Nightfighters!!! Have you seen Shakura? I remember the night it cost me 10 thousand shillings to go home ALONE. Something seems wrong when a man has to flee for his life to sleep ALONE.... At least you have cute petite British aid workers, we have no such thing up here :(
Keep up the good fight and if you turn up your iPod enough, and just shake your head in agreement every so often, the day will go better ;-)
Learned in the war huh? You know nothing of the war... I don't want to talk about it anymore..
Thats probably a really good idea to exit out the backdoor... you know what they say, when the crows of love fly in the night, they have ravenous appetites...and probably herpes... was that Poe? maybe Frost...nah, I think Hemingway said that one.
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