Flying Again
I've been here a month and in the last week we have managed to square away all our startup problems with logistics and administration and we have started flying missions. We are still working out the operational bugs but we are flying.
A lot of our flying is done at night, differant from the Congo where we never flew at night. We fly at night often because that is when the irhabis do evil (Buddy Ebsen's character had some interesting things to say about this phenomena in the movie "Night People").
I was surprised by the appearance of the countryside at night. It looks like New Mexico. Lights from cities and towns following the big highway and the river valley. All the little villages you don't notice during the day-because everything is brown, the dirt, the houses, the roads-you see in the night because of the lights. There are many more towns and villages than I thought; like New Mexico. The lights may not be as bright but there are plenty of them.
There are no cars to be seen, by me anyway, except for convoys. When a big convoy is moving up the main highway it looks like an interstate. Then when the convoy has passed, nothing. Perhaps there are cars moving around down there but I don't see them. I don't know if there is a curfew for road traffic in this region.
Despite the war this is a vastly more prosperous place than the Congo. We didn't fly at night in the Congo because there was NO electrity. There were only 5 lighted airports in the whole country. Here there are 8 llighted airports within 40 minutes flying time.
This place could be so close to real prosperity. There is a highly educated population, a very deteriorated infrastructure, but an infrastructure nevertheless, a natural resource valued by the world, a commercial tradition; everything you need. If only they would stop shooting at each other. But that is why we are here, to try and make that come about.
A lot of our flying is done at night, differant from the Congo where we never flew at night. We fly at night often because that is when the irhabis do evil (Buddy Ebsen's character had some interesting things to say about this phenomena in the movie "Night People").
I was surprised by the appearance of the countryside at night. It looks like New Mexico. Lights from cities and towns following the big highway and the river valley. All the little villages you don't notice during the day-because everything is brown, the dirt, the houses, the roads-you see in the night because of the lights. There are many more towns and villages than I thought; like New Mexico. The lights may not be as bright but there are plenty of them.
There are no cars to be seen, by me anyway, except for convoys. When a big convoy is moving up the main highway it looks like an interstate. Then when the convoy has passed, nothing. Perhaps there are cars moving around down there but I don't see them. I don't know if there is a curfew for road traffic in this region.
Despite the war this is a vastly more prosperous place than the Congo. We didn't fly at night in the Congo because there was NO electrity. There were only 5 lighted airports in the whole country. Here there are 8 llighted airports within 40 minutes flying time.
This place could be so close to real prosperity. There is a highly educated population, a very deteriorated infrastructure, but an infrastructure nevertheless, a natural resource valued by the world, a commercial tradition; everything you need. If only they would stop shooting at each other. But that is why we are here, to try and make that come about.
posted by Carl at 10:27 AM
1 Comments:
Isnt that the problem in most of the developing world, that is, if only they would stop shooting at one another long enough they might develop some real prosperity. You mention the Congo. Look at the Congo, so rich in natural resources yet its people generally not cooperative enough to set aside tribal differences to exploit that wealth as a country.
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