The day started off badly enough. Rising at 5 am reminds me that I’m not an early bird. Not that I’m a night owl either – more of a midday person really. Rush breakfast, bundle the glider into the pickup, scuttle off to fetch the new driver. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, it’s obvious that I should have simply switched the alarm off and stayed in the sack.
The new guy seems pleasant enough and comes highly recommended. I run over his employment details – very low daily wage, but a large bonus if he doesn’t crash or otherwise bugger things. He is being paid to drive, so I let him. After twenty minutes of wandering all over the road at the breakneck speed of a drunken tortoise I take over the wheel. I considered turning back, but decide that if he goes this slowly on the deserted dirt roads then he shouldn’t get into too much trouble. Famous last thoughts.
We arrive in the valley to find the wind howling. I start getting my kit organized, and brief the driver on how to drive while I am being winched, how to rewind the rope, and how to use the radio. We are setting up on a two-kilometre stretch of straight road on the outskirts of a native village. Within minutes of our arrival the locals have started gathering. They seem friendly enough, laughing, joking and asking plenty of questions about my activities. The soaring temperatures and dry air encourage my enthusiasm to get airborne.
The wind eases slightly and I launch. Above the flat valley floor the wind is pumping. Between gusts I make slight progress forwards, but mostly I’m stationary or drifting backwards. Repeated calls to the driver to slow down are ignored and before I reach 120m agl the entire 1200m rope has been pulled from the drum. Not a good start to the flight. I release my end over the road and start fighting a vicious wee thermal that has a nasty attitude. Between tucks and bounces I managed to yell instructions to the driver about going back down the road to find the rope and reloading it onto the drum. Surely he can manage this by himself? I am having doubts now, but already the wind has blown me more than three kilometres west of the starting place. There is no chance that I will make it back, the wind is blowing me backwards at a significant rate.
Deciding that my best option is to simply make the best of the day and leave the rope to the driver, I turn my attention back to the ferocious monster that is trying to spit me out. I rock, bounce and flap my way upward, all the time racing along over the flat valley floor.
Frantic screaming blasts over the radio.
“Boss, Boss, they are stealing the rope!”
“What?”
“Boss, Boss, the villagers are stealing the rope! I’m trying to stop them.”
“Ok,” think, think, what can I do? “Tell them that I am landing at the Police Station in the next village, and I’m going to bring the police to arrest them if they don’t leave it alone.”
There is a pause for a few moments, then “Boss, Boss, they are trying to make violence with me!”
I am more than 15km’s away now.
I tell him to get in the truck and drive.
There is lots of shouting backwards and forth. To his credit, the driver tries to rescue some of the rope, but keeps shouting at me that the villagers are ‘threatening to make violence with him.’ I tell him to tie what rope he has to the vehicle and drive away. Eventually, with much shouting over the radio, he follows my suggestion.
I am sure that he is driving towards me now, but every few minutes I get a distressed call on the radio, “Boss, its Shingy, They were trying to make violence against me.” He doesn’t engage in an interactive conversation, so I cant establish where he is, or where he is going. It doesn’t help my concentration at all. I tell him to go to the police station, but with no rational reply I have no idea what is going on.
Eventually the radio calls stop, but now I am low again. The dry acacia tress are rushing past below me, the small ploughed fields and their attendant mud huts flick past at an alarming rate. The small bubbles that I encounter are torn apart by the hot dry and gusty wind. I scramble about, hooking turns, pumping out the tucks and all the time keeping an eye on the landing options down wind. Anything beneath me or upwind is not an option. Eventually, at about 50m agl, I start my approach into a rough looking field. Lining up over my shoulder, I increase the brakes to take me further back into the centre, away from the turbulent air behind a row of trees. Low down the wind gradient eases my backward rush, and I grab the c-risers and drop myself down in a cloud of dust. One hour and fifty kilometres from launch. After gathering the glider I take it into the shelter of some trees to pack it away.
The heat here is stifling. Everything is coated in the dry brown dust, and within minutes my throat feels dryer than the Sahara. Within seconds of landing I am sweating profusely. After waiting more than 2 hours in the ferocious heat for the retrieve, I start walking just to have something to do.
Half an hour down the road I hear a vehicle approaching. Even though it is still out of sight I can hear that it is one of the typical African rattletraps that regularly endanger the motoring public. Sure enough, around the bend comes a battered wreck. The driver’s door is hanging half open, the windscreen is smashed, and steam pours out from under the bonnet. There is not an undamaged panel anywhere. With a sudden, sinking sense of horror it dawns on me that this is my pickup. The day’s horror is just beginning.