Flying with MAF in Congo

If I had to name the guiding principles of my life, one would certainly be "every day is a potential adventure and learning experience; embrace every one." I knew that this trip to Congo would present a number of adventures, including those of air travel. Although there are commercial flights that operated into and around the eastern Congo, they are unreliable and of questionable safety. Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) provides transportation across eastern Congo and some other remote parts of Africa for those involved in mission or humanitarian work. On Monday, I traveled from Entebbe Airport outside of Kampala to Bunia in eastern DRC by a regularly scheduled MAF shuttle. The hour-and-fifteen minute flight was uneventful other than its spectacular views of the Rift Valley and Lake Albert. 

MAF "mosquito" for flight from Bunia to Beni and back

Today's smaller flight from Bunia to the city of Beni, about 200 kilometers to the south in the north of the region of North Kivu, was an experience that truly deserves the title of "adventure". This particular adventure began on the campus of the Université Shalom in Bunia when the person who was to take me to the airport received a phone call from his wife (who had the car we were to take) informing him that she'd been detained by the traffic police, for the reason that their "papers were out of order." This was clearly fishing for a bribe. Rightly, my host was eager to help his wife extract herself from a situation that, while likely not dangerous, was certainly unpleasant. I ended up traveling to the Bunia airport with one of the gardeners driving the 30-passenger university bus. 

The Bunia Airport terminal

The Bunia airport is a tiny, colonial-era building about the size of an average American ranch home. There is a narrow entry area for arrivals with a small, dark, stuffy room for passport control. The tarmac behind is littered with the shells of various abandoned airplanes, some of which appear to have been sitting there for 30 years. When we arrived today, the gardner who drove me was told that he was not allowed into the airport because he was not properly dressed (he was, of course, wearing gardening clothes). I made my way into the narrow check-in area which was thronged with people, all holding out their papers to the check-in clerk. It wasn't at all clear which flights were departing. Thankfully, the MAF clerk asked me if I was flying with them and processed my papers, handled my departure tax payment, and checked my bag. I then pushed my way to the small waiting room which was thankfully much less crowded. After about twenty minutes of being serenaded by Congolese music videos, a man approached and asked me to follow him. We walked across the tarmac to a tiny MAF plane, where I joined two other passengers:  one a retired Swedish missionary who was born and raised in Congo and the other an American lady making a documentary. We made our way into the small, six-seater plane (if you think commercial economy seats are tight!) and took off fairly quickly. 

Parking area for MAF, UN, and other private small planes at Entebbe Airport

The scenery of eastern Congo from 2500 feet in the air is stunning. You can see people making their way by foot down dirt roads between villages filled with thatched-roof huts and newer tin-roofed homes. Here and there, you see the remains of a colonial-era Belgian plantation home, most of which were destroyed in the Second Congolese War of the early 2000s when rebels swept through the area. We landed 15 minutes later in the town of Nyankunde, which is about 80 kilometers south of Bunia on the edge of the great forests, nestled below some beautiful hills. The airstrip was grass and the water from recent rainstorms splashed up as we touched down and taxied to the small parking space. Several dozen children from the village lined the airstrip to see the plane. One of my fellow fliers and a pilot departed at Nyankunde. Since it was now just one pilot and two passengers, I was asked to sit in the co-pilot seat. What an amazing, fascinating experience it was to see the mountains and rain forests spreading out below through the front of the cockpit. After flying across a range of steep mountains, we landed on a graded dirt airstrip at the city of Beni, where I was met right on the airstrip by my hosts. A porter carried my bag on his head while one of my hosts took my passport to complete all of the "formalities." I was thankful for that. I've had enough experience with dark little rooms for "formalities" in airports that this is an adventure I will gladly forego.