Takeoff?
A Reminiscence Fictionalized by Time and Embellished by Retelling
by Matt Rooney
In summer of 1990, I accepted an assignment to the U.S. Embassy in Libreville, Gabon. Libreville was an overnight flight from anywhere our families had ever heard of, and the climate was hot and sweaty every day. Malaria, dengue fever, AIDS and other, more mysterious, viral diseases were rampant there. For the Gen-X/Y/Zers present, that was before the internet, before email, and before cell phones. Props to anyone who knows that Libreville is on the Atlantic coast of Africa, just 50 miles or so north of the Equator.
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My wife was skeptical that the assignment was a good idea. This may have had something to do with the fact that a French ex-girlfriend of mine lived there with her husband and two small children. On the plus side, our four-week-old son didn’t seem concerned. I was attracted to the assignment because my duties would include managing a small foreign assistance program in São Tomé e Príncipe, a Portuguese-speaking nation of two small islands just above the Equator about two hundred miles offshore, which I thought sounded interesting. As a bonus, it was an opportunity to learn Portuguese.
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To cram a twofer into the old joke, if Libreville wasn’t the end of the earth, you could see it from there – and what you saw was São Tomé.
Just a week or two after arriving in Libreville, I packed for my first visit to São Tomé. And I mean packed: there were no shops on the island, just a few open-air markets selling bruised yams and mystery meats crawling with flies. If you ran out of toothpaste or needed socks or batteries or a book or almost anything, you were out of luck. No soap, as they say.
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There were two or three flights per day from Libreville to São Tomé operated by Equatorial Airlines, which was owned by a shady Goldfinger-esque character who also had gold and diamond mines in Angola. At that time Angola was subsumed in a bloody and pointless civil war fought by Cuban soldiers funded by the Soviet Union and mercenaries funded by a U.S. government agency that shall remain nameless here. Running a transportation and mining business in that part of the world was a high-risk proposition, as evidenced by the burned-out carcasses of several airplanes that you flew over upon landing at the airport.
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It must also have had its rewards, because Goldfinger had a sprawling estate on the edge of the city of São Tomé that was patrolled by camo-clad goons armed with Uzis. It was the only place on the island with reliable electricity. He also had satellite TV with a full complement of channels – all pirated, no doubt. He was smooth and personable, with an urbane sense of humor. As far as I know, he didn’t have a cat. He invited me for lunch once. We sat in air-conditioned comfort while monkeys gossiped in the trees over the pool.
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Equatorial’s plane on the Libreville to São Tomé route was a twin engine propellor job that seated about 20 passengers. One of those old ones with the landing gear mounted under the wings and a tail wheel, so it sloped steeply upward toward the cockpit when you boarded. When you sat, you had the sensation of reclining. There was no door on the cockpit, so you were looking up, over the shoulders of the pilot and co-pilot at a patch of open sky.
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On that day, the plane was full. The other passengers were mostly bureaucrats and technocrats like me, working for embassies, foreign assistance agencies or international organizations; a Babel of languages filled the cabin as we waited to take off.
The pilots took their seats and began the preflight check, and we could see the co-pilot literally checking items off on a clipboard as the pilot flicked switches and pushed levers back and forth. Compass; check. Fuel gauge; check. Altimeter; check. Comms; check. Flaps; check. Ailerons; check. Rudder; check.
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Then the important part: the engines. Port engine, hit the starter; check. Throttle; check. The plane began to vibrate like the rivets were coming loose, and the din discouraged idle chitchat.
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Starboard engine, hit the starter –
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An enormous orange flame shot out of the exhaust manifold of the starboard engine, scorching the tarmac right outside the window at my elbow. All the passengers looked at the orange flame, taken aback. Looks bad, we all thought. I glanced to my left and met the eye of the passenger across the aisle from me. Salt-and-pepper hair, studious glasses, mid-priced suit, striped tie. I could see his thoughts mirroring mine: ‘Hmmm. I wonder if I should ask to get off the plane. I could always take the steamer.’
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The steamer was a small packet boat that sailed irregularly between Libreville, São Tomé and Príncipe. A few weeks before, it had departed Libreville one afternoon for the overnight trip to São Tomé, but when the sun came up, they were still in open ocean. They cruised for three days and three nights and were relieved to pull into a low-slung city at the base of a mountain where everyone spoke Portuguese – until they learned the city was Salvador de Bahia, in Brazil. They loaded up on water and food and put back to sea headed east, arriving in São Tomé a week behind schedule.
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I could see in my seatmate’s eye that his thought process matched mine. ‘No real choice but to fly, I guess. Good thing I’m current on my life insurance premiums.’
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We watched as the pilots also recoiled at the orange flame. We could see them thinking ‘Hmm. Looks bad. I wonder if we should call it off?’ We saw the pilot reach out and grip the starboard throttle. He revved the engine. The flame went out. We saw the pilot and co-pilot look at one another and shrug.
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Starboard engine; check.
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We took off.