The A(frica)-Team

January 22nd: Abidjan

In Abidjan we get our first day off since Zanzibar. The crew heads into the city on foot to try and buy groceries to keep onboard the aircraft – snacks and drinks for long flying days. Norbert, our engineer, is late as usual and we leave without him. “Mate is likely spending some quality time alone with the logbook,” Mick says, feeding the running joke about Norbert’s obsession with the aircraft logbook, which he has perpetually clutched to his chest or ferreted away in his hotel room so that I almost never see it. Not that I care. I’d just as soon not see it for the remainder of the trip. There have been so many errors and corrections made and then unmade that none of the times in it are correct anyways. It is an arbitrary thing without meaning, like the borders with which European colonizers carved up this continent.

“The security guard says dere is a market a few blocks up the hill and to the right that maybe could accept credit cards,” Christophe translates.

“Happy days.” Mick says, looking as if he’s heading out to find a surf break.

We wander aimlessly through the crooked streets of Abidjan, looking for a grocery store that will accept credit cards so that we don’t have to withdraw local currency from the ATM. The hotel is full of foreigners, mostly French, but out here on the street we are the only white faces in the crowds. Christophe leads the way, speaking French with the locals as we strike out at one store after another. Mick follows, a burly Aussie mass strolling casually in his flip-flops and board shorts. Half the time I can’t understand what he’s saying, but his relaxed good nature is magnetic and my vocabulary is growing continually as I spend time with him; I’d never guessed there were so many English words for male and female genitalia. On second thought, I don’t think most of his vocabulary qualifies as English.

Abidjan doesn’t exude the same sense of latent menace that we experienced in Luanda. Perhaps it would at night, but here, now, as we climb up and down hills, clambering over uneven and dead-end sidewalks, weaving our way through the crowds and evading near misses with traffic at every intersection, there are only people bustling about their lives. Horns honk. People yell and shout greetings. Beautiful, exotic woman with lean black limbs sway by. Everybody moves at a languid pace in the heat and the noise. Everywhere there are smiles. If you look somebody in the eye and smile it is returned with a wide grin and a nod.

The handshakes are complex algorithms, hip and slick, that I cannot understand.

The grocery mission is a failure and we return to the hotel empty-handed. Credit cards are not accepted outside the cloistered confines of the hotel.

Norbert is floating in the pool, his brown body supine and orientated for maximum sun exposure. There is no sign of the logbook. We order beers and he climbs out of the pool to join us. A most unlikely specimen, he walks with a strange short-gaited lumber, his arms pumping at his side like pistons. Born to a South African mother and Austrian father he speaks English with a German accent, his hands raised as he speaks with his index and pinky fingers splayed like a magician casting spells. When he talks about the aircraft, it is always a he. “He needs the new nav database downloaded. I will complete his seven-day inspection tomorrow. He had both his generators replaced in Johannesburg.” And so forth. I always look around, puzzled, as if he is talking about a sixth member of our crew.

Norbert shuns conventional methods of cellphone communication. He is regularly late and disappears at random intervals. I think he is holding the logbook hostage so that we cannot leave him behind when he is incommunicado and AWOL. When he isn’t wrenching on the airplane he dresses in tailored suits and stylish berets with his beard fashionably groomed. He is one of the most eccentric and endearing people I have ever met.

Konstantin, the salesman, is in his element poolside. He looks like the quintessential Russian on vacation; drink in hand, smoking electronic cigarettes, his white beer gut protuberant, he regales us with Russian jokes and tales of perestroika, it’s hardships, and the perseverance of the Russian people. He has been the biggest surprise of the trip and has become a valued comrade. His rolling Russian r’s and exaggerated accent, his indefatigable cheer and drinking stamina have earned him the nickname “The Machine.” On the rare occasion when he isn’t around, morale noticeably flags like the wind vanishing from the trip’s sails.

Konstantin’s world is one of shady Russian oligarchs, hunting trips with gangsters and prostitutes into the taiga on old Russian Mil-8 helicopters, and gin palaces in panama. It is defined by aphorisms such as, “Yes, it is ready. We are building it now.” And, “Even goat fucking is better than no fucking.” The tour won’t be the same when he leaves.

I think Christophe is still stunned that he is here, having been recruited at the eleventh hour, but he is well-travelled and adapts instantly. He is our resident historian. Having grown up in Paris, he knows the French colonial legacy of many of the countries we are visiting and his parents lived in Algiers when it was a French colony. They had to flee, leaving their lives behind when France abandoned Algeria during its war for independence. With his French accent punctuated by profanity, he rambles loquaciously about flying in the Caribbean, engine failures over the everglades, French culture and arrogance from Marseille to Quebec, the French army, and his travels with his father in Morocco and other far-flung exotic locales.

Christophe is impossible to anger. He doesn’t get frustrated. He is a man of laughter and family and philosophy. He is a beacon of positive energy. As we sit isolated in the cockpit for hours on end with Africa unfurling beneath us, his enthusiasm is unrestrained and even if I am remote and lost in thought or stressed by the challenges of the trip, Christophe will talk and I will listen and I will learn something, or his philosophy will remind me that life is a beautiful song often drowned out by white noise and that if we don’t attune ourselves in to it, we will miss it. To do so we need to identify what is important. What is real. What is immutable. And we need to jettison everything else, all the distractions that make us tone deaf and rob us of the infinite.

By the pool I chat with Mick over beers. Mick is the ultimate professional. He has learned his trade as a special missions operator doing SAR for the Australian Coast Guard, intercepting drug smugglers and human traffickers off the remote coastlines of Australia, and doing rescue drops from Dornier 328s at low altitude over hellish seas to vessels in distress. He’s easy to talk to, when I can understand him, and sitting here I listen to stories of his grandfather who survived WWII and then raced cigarette boats and cars and made a fortune in Oz by hard work and daring before he was betrayed by his brother and lost it all.

Mick is a man who, like his father, would have your back in the hardest circumstances, unflinching.

The crew has gelled, and friendships have formed which will outlast this outrageous adventure. As we prepare to leave Abidjan the following morning, here is an image as abiding as any of the iconic vistas or exotic peoples and places we have seen: Christophe is speaking French to the handler, Norbert is on top of the aircraft, his back to the rising sun; Mick and Konstantin stand in the shade of the wing, laughing. There is an unhurried easiness to the routine. We have found our stride in Africa.

All Photos by Mick Sheehy.