First Flight

IN EARLY DECEMBER 1961 THE END OF TERM AT SAKEJI SCHOOL soon arrived and parents drove from considerable distances to pick up their children for the Christmas holidays. With my parents in England they obviously could not come and arrangements had been made for my siblings (Esther (10), Gordon (7)) and me (12) to be taken to Mufulira on the Copperbelt to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Barham who would put us on the plane to England. My memory of that trip to and those days in Mufulira is a blur although it could not have been long.

The day arrived to for our flight to London, the first time we had not traveled by train and ship via Cape Town. We were quite excited, as we had never before been on an aeroplane, as we spelled it. The Barhams drove us the thirty miles to Ndola and checked us in for the flight on British United Airways (BUA), the largest competitor to government-owned BOAC. It had recently upgraded its fleet with the Bristol Britannia, a four-engine turbo prop, for the London – Southern Africa routes and we boarded one for our flight to London, which would have an intermediate stop in Entebbe, Uganda. It was the latest airline marvel, known as the Whispering Giant for its quieter ride than other planes. We taxied out to the end of the runway and turned around for our first take off anticipating being in London and with Dad and Mum in about twelve hours. But rather than pick up speed as expected we taxied back to the terminal and eventually disembarked. One of the engines had experienced a problem, possibly a bird had flown into it.

Fortunately for us the Barhams had chosen to watch the take-off, as Mr. Barham had never seen a Bristol Britannia. Otherwise they would have been on their way back to Mufulira and we would have been at the mercy of the airline. It soon became evident that we would not be flying out that day and were sent home to wait for a phone call. However we were not allowed to retrieve our baggage, already cleared through customs, so all we had were the clothes we were wearing.

As it turned out the Britannia would not be repaired very quickly and BUA would have to arrange to get another aircraft to Ndola. This would take a couple of days. The Barhams borrowed clothes for us from another missionary family staying in Mufulira at the time – the Greenhows. I was given a shirt and pair of long pants from Tim, who although about my age was shorter than me. The pants reached only two thirds of the way down my calves, but we made do in typical the missionary fashion when unexpected events occurred.

Eventually the call came – the replacement plane had arrived in Ndola. When we got there we discovered that it was an older Douglas DC-6. We boarded it fifty-six hours after our intended departure time (Mr. Barham had worked it out) and the flight to England would take twice as long as originally planned because the DC-6 did not have the range of the Britannia, requiring two additional refueling stops. Although I don’t remember, we must have taken off for Entebbe fairly late in the day and flown through the night. Between Entebbe and Khartoum, Sudan I remember the flight attendant offering breakfast but none of us felt like food. The plane seemed to feel every bump in the sky and after the long delay the experience of our first flight had us all feeling a bit woozy. We refueled in Khartoum amidst the sand and in a hot desert wind. We then headed for the tiny island of Malta in he Mediterranean where we landed after dark.

It must have been nearly midnight when we finally touched down at London’s Gatwick airport and the journey was not yet over. I had never had to negotiate customs and immigration on my own let alone for three of us. We did not have passports like everyone else because we had been listed on our parents’ passports. Instead I had been given special papers prepared by the British embassy in Lusaka but I hate being different in situations like this. The officials looked so stern and it didn’t help that passengers ahead of us were being asked questions and having their suitcases searched. I did not have any confidence that we would see our parents again. I shed some tears and maybe that helped. We eventually emerged from that very scary gauntlet to see Dad’s familiar smiling face alongside Uncle John (my mother’s older brother) who had driven Dad to the airport to meet us. Dad looked fine but only later would I understand that, while physically well, he had suffered considerably emotionally but would make an amazing recovery and in just over a year we would be back in Northern Rhodesia for perhaps his most fruitul years of ministry.

Our next adjustment would be to British culture. Neither Esther nor I recalled in a meaningful way our visit to England seven years earlier and anyway the country had changed a lot. And after spending all our school years at a small mission school in Central Africa we would have to adjust to British public schools, a significant adjustment in itself.

(c) 2008 roy kruse