There's something nebulously awful about the skylines of Juba and SS in general. Domestic flights within SS will bless you with hair raising experiences. They're designed to make you prayerfully think of 'sisi ni wageni hapa duniani'.
With all seats full to the brim, on this old Russian bird, you'll be pleasantly surprised to see them loading more iron-sheets, bags of cement and bundles of Y18 wires on the isles. A few more soldiers armed to teeth will then sit on top of these load- against the godly IATA promulgations. Meanwhile you've been waiting for eternity in the cruel hot humid decaying plane, you're drenched in your sweat and they've 2kg towels for mopping their faces.
Afew vertically gifted people will then manually help haul the plane as it finds its bearing for taxiing. The engine coughs painfully and the propeller gets into motion. After all the gyrations, struts and struggles, the plane painfully lifts off the ground for several meters then lands again with a bang. It's then that you realize that an army General's wife delayed to check in and he's given a gentle reminder via radio that the plane isn't allowed to touch-down at it's final destination without his darling wife. So we wait on the runway till cows come home. The elegant queenmother is loaded and sits gently on a kibuyu ya mafuta by the door side brushing her seductively white teeth with a 2 feet long tree branch . The almighty struggle to leave the ground is mounted again and after all the prayers and maybe soiling your pants, the bird is relatively stable on the air.
Now, there're some semi-solid thick cloud of dust in their skies, with every painful thrust of penetration, the plane inadvertently jerks and drops several meters down before regaining stability . You'd feel like your rectum has betrayed you and expelled your lungs and intestines incognito. You grab your neighbor and get enjoined in deep mumbles of prayers irrespective of your faith, you learn how to speak in tongues at these times. At times up there, the plane is tired, expels plumes of steamy smog and starts to sweat, squirting all the greasy droplets all over the resigned passengers.
There's no warning that we're descending there; the thing just drops down like the magical bottle in 'God's must be crazy '. Afew minutes to hitting the ground, congregations of cows start leaving the potholed runway at their leisure, the pilot skillfully manoeuvres a heart-wrenching touchdown with the plane occasionally skidding of the muddy runway in swings like an overfed pregnant cow cat-walking to the meadows. You can see a huge sense of relief on the faces of the non-natives; their air is thick with gratitude. For the others it's normal like coming out of a Mathree za Githurai. The Ethiopian pilot then breaks opens his door and you realize he'd been literally sitting on a long four-legged wooden stool in the almighty cockpit.
Credits: Tindi Seje Nuru
With all seats full to the brim, on this old Russian bird, you'll be pleasantly surprised to see them loading more iron-sheets, bags of cement and bundles of Y18 wires on the isles. A few more soldiers armed to teeth will then sit on top of these load- against the godly IATA promulgations. Meanwhile you've been waiting for eternity in the cruel hot humid decaying plane, you're drenched in your sweat and they've 2kg towels for mopping their faces.
Afew vertically gifted people will then manually help haul the plane as it finds its bearing for taxiing. The engine coughs painfully and the propeller gets into motion. After all the gyrations, struts and struggles, the plane painfully lifts off the ground for several meters then lands again with a bang. It's then that you realize that an army General's wife delayed to check in and he's given a gentle reminder via radio that the plane isn't allowed to touch-down at it's final destination without his darling wife. So we wait on the runway till cows come home. The elegant queenmother is loaded and sits gently on a kibuyu ya mafuta by the door side brushing her seductively white teeth with a 2 feet long tree branch . The almighty struggle to leave the ground is mounted again and after all the prayers and maybe soiling your pants, the bird is relatively stable on the air.
Now, there're some semi-solid thick cloud of dust in their skies, with every painful thrust of penetration, the plane inadvertently jerks and drops several meters down before regaining stability . You'd feel like your rectum has betrayed you and expelled your lungs and intestines incognito. You grab your neighbor and get enjoined in deep mumbles of prayers irrespective of your faith, you learn how to speak in tongues at these times. At times up there, the plane is tired, expels plumes of steamy smog and starts to sweat, squirting all the greasy droplets all over the resigned passengers.
There's no warning that we're descending there; the thing just drops down like the magical bottle in 'God's must be crazy '. Afew minutes to hitting the ground, congregations of cows start leaving the potholed runway at their leisure, the pilot skillfully manoeuvres a heart-wrenching touchdown with the plane occasionally skidding of the muddy runway in swings like an overfed pregnant cow cat-walking to the meadows. You can see a huge sense of relief on the faces of the non-natives; their air is thick with gratitude. For the others it's normal like coming out of a Mathree za Githurai. The Ethiopian pilot then breaks opens his door and you realize he'd been literally sitting on a long four-legged wooden stool in the almighty cockpit.
Credits: Tindi Seje Nuru
