Africa – The Pilots of the Caribbean

We left Alter in Preveza, Greece in October 2019 with the firm belief that we would return six months later. We travelled to Haiti to replenish our coffers flying on contract for the local airline, Sunrise Airways. We have both come to love Haiti but flying for Sunrise was not the ideal farewell. Cap Haïtien was our only destination. It is only 25 minutes flying time from Port-au-Prince, and our schedule of up to eight sectors a day was unrelenting. We spent most of our time off in our apartment staring at the opposite wall, trying to find the energy or inclination to do anything else. When we did find the energy, we visited old friends and explored some of the sights that we had previously missed, including one of Port-au-Prince’s iconic Gingerbread Houses: a post-colonial mansion that was built at the turn of the last century.

Then Covid-19 happened. SARS and MERS had both come and gone with little damage and, at the time, COVID didn’t appear to be much different.

We returned to the UK in February at the start of the global pandemic and a world that was inexorably changing. We had booked a short skiing holiday in Valtournenche, in the Aosta Valley. We hadn’t skied for two years and were keen to get back on the slopes. But before we left, while we were staying with Nicky’s sister in Wales, the pandemic began to swell. It flooded the province of Lombardy in Italy and seeped from there via the surrounding provinces into the rest of the country. We considered cancelling. But decided to go ahead and boarded the flight to Turin as planned. On arrival, we joined a long queue that snaked towards a cluster of medical staff who checked everyone’s temperatures and collected contact forms. The Italians were riding Europe’s first wave and were paddling furiously, trying to stay ahead of its curling tip and prevent their winter holiday season from drowning. Most skiers had chosen to stay home leaving the towns of Valtournenche and Cervinia bereft, with many restaurants closed and a curfew that brought an eerie calm to the evening streets. Residents were in shock, their hopes fading like mountain mist. Some stopped us in the streets to thank us for coming.

When the ski slopes closed we went snowshoeing.

On Sunday 8 March, the ski lifts operated at reduced capacity, with blocked-off seats and social distancing in the queues. Then, when it was clear that the wave was really a tsunami, the Italians finally did what they had been desperately trying to avoid, they closed the slopes.

EasyJet cancelled our return flight to the UK on the morning of our departure and muttered vague promises of evacuation flights from Milan, the epidemic’s epicentre. We declined and took the last flight out of Turin on Ryanair, who continued to honour their published schedule. At Stanstead we were greeted by empty hand sanitiser dispensers. Nobody seemed vaguely interested that we were coming from the heart of the pandemic. It was a strong indication that Britain had rolled up its trousers to its knees, pulled a knotted handkerchief firmly down over its head and was preparing to paddle into the wave without a lifejacket.

I left for South Africa shortly afterwards to start a two-month contract flying in the DRC and Nicky returned to Wales. In a world where plans were fast becoming meaningless, Nicky intended returning to Greece to go hiking in Corfu before we met up at the boat in May.

But Covid had a schedule that didn’t involve us. Countries began to close their borders and lock down their citizens. I reached Kalemie in the DRC the day before the Congo closed its borders and cancelled all internal flights, leaving me without much flying to do. I settled in for an indefinite stay. Nicky’s planned hike became impossible, so she moved into her sister’s Airbnb to wait out the pandemic.

My two-month contract stretched three and then four. It was eventually four and a half months before a new crew could replace me. With no flights between South Africa and the UK, or anywhere else, getting back to Nicky in the UK was a challenge. Fortunately, my boss agreed to drop me off in Lusaka and the Zambians let me remain in transit – without going through the mandatory 14 days quarantine – while I waited for an Ethiopian Airlines flight to London, via Addis Ababa.

Post-apocalyptic empty walkways at Heathrow.

During the four months, Nicky had decided that we needed a more permanent home, somewhere that we could always go to in times of crisis. The boat was supposed to be our home, but neither of us could get there. She wanted something more tangible. South Africa was too remote and neither of us wanted to return there permanently, so we decided to take advantage of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and move to Europe. But where?

Our first instinct was Spain. We flew to Granada to spend some time there and see if we liked it. We landed in Malaga and joined a crush of people choking the passageway to the arrival hall. Most were wearing masks, but I’ve seen more social distancing at a Rod Stewart concert.

The crush of people that greeted us in Malaga.

Grenada greeted us with temperatures in the forties and mandatory mask-wearing indoors and out. It was a bit like walking about in a large sauna with a shopping bag over your head, so we often escaped to the coast or drove up into the mountains, where it was a few degrees cooler.

We both loved Granada, and very nearly made an offer on an apartment in nearby Salobreña. But after a month it didn’t feel like home. More importantly, it felt like it might never be.

So, after making a list of all the places that we might want to live: France, Italy, Greece and just about anywhere in the world apart from Chad or North Korea, we decided to move to France. It was already August and under Article 34, we had to be resident and make an application to stay before the end of the year. There wasn’t a lot of time to spare.

We rented an apartment in Carcassonne, a city on the Canal du Midi that we had visited a couple of times previously. Properties closer to the coast tend to be more expensive and we didn’t want to be too far from the sea. After Nicky had examined every property for sale in a five-hundred-kilometre radius, we found a village house that, for me, was a coup de foudre. It wasn’t perfect for Nicky, with little outside space. But other than that it was exactly what we were looking for: somewhere small that we could lock up and leave whenever we wanted to without the property beginning to deteriorate the moment that we locked the door.

Perhaps the best part of the deal was that we bought it from an English couple who had renovated another property three doors down and would therefore be our neighbours.

Having Paul and Tan there to show us around and introduce us to our other neighbours made our transplant almost painless. We quickly discovered that we had a lot more in common and have become firm friends.

And then, finally, in July 2021, Covid restrictions began to ease. By then France had vaccinated us and we were able to consider returning to Greece and the boat.

When the UN contract in Haiti came to an end a little over a year ago, we headed to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo to fly for Monusco, the UN Peacekeeping Mission that has been trying to separate Congo’s warring factions for the last twenty years.

Our job is the same; the destinations are different. Instead of Port-au-Prince, Cap Hatïen and Santo Domingo, we shuttle to Kalemi, Kisangani, and Entebbe in Uganda. Occasionally we fly to Beni, about two hundred kilometres north of here, where sporadic attacks by an Islamic militia hamper international efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Coming into land with Mount Nyiragongo in the background.

Goma huddles up against Gisenyi in Rwanda, on the shore of Lake Kivu. To the north, Mount Nyiragongo, an active volcano, smokes ominously, a constant reminder of the 2002 eruption that drove a swathe of molten lava through Goma and into the lake.

The city is five-thousand feet above sea level. Daily downpours in the rainy season wash away the film of sulfurous ash and keep the air cool. When the sun dips toward the horizon, it dapples the clouds crimson and the mountains guarding the edges of the lake fade to purple.

One of the best places to watch the sunset is from the bar of Hotel Linda. Fishing boats venture out for the evening catch: three boats tied together side-by-side with long poles protruding from their flanks, like the antennae of an enormous insect. It’s a tranquil scene, but danger lurks under the still surface of the lake.

You’d think that a volcano, armed rebels and the threat of Ebola would be enough for one region. But the three of them are dwarfed by the biggest danger of all, the lake itself.
Lake Kivu is part of the Rift Valley that tries to cleave the eastern third of Africa from the rest of the continent. The lake has an average depth of eight hundred feet, and a surface area of one thousand square miles.

Brackish springs deep within the lake release water rich in carbon dioxide. Because the water is saline, it’s heavier than the fresh water above, so it stays at the bottom. Pressures of over forty atmospheres ensure that the carbon dioxide remains dissolved in the water. In some places the bacteria that live at the bottom of the lake feed on the carbon dioxide, turning it into methane.
To the south-east, near the Rwandan shore, there’s a white structure that looks a bit like an oil rig. Rwanda is extracting methane from the water for power production. But the volume of methane is increasing faster than it is being used, and the water can only hold so much methane. When the pressure of the gas equals the pressure of the water, the dissolved gas will bubble and surge to the surface, forming a toxic blanket, displacing all the oxygen.
In 1986 something similar happened to Lake Nyos in Cameroon. The lake released a large cloud of carbon dioxide from its depths, suffocating almost two thousand people, and more than three-thousand cattle. Lake Nyos is a fraction of the size of Lake Kivu.
There, a solution was found to prevent it from happening again. Vents were installed to allow the gas to bubble out of the lake at a controlled rate. But a similar project for Lake Kivu might run into tens of millions of dollars, money that the Congo and Rwanda don’t have to spare.
A major disturbance, like a volcanic eruption, might trigger an overturn, with all the gas effervescing out at once, possibly causing a tsunami.

As in 2002, the volcanic eruption would send people fleeing to the lake shore. Those that avoid the lava, and don’t drown, will be suffocated in a gigantic gas cloud. Two million people might die.
Fortunately, it only happens every thousand years, or so. But the last overturn was about a thousand years ago. It’s almost due for another one. Scientists predict that the next overturn will only happen towards the end of this century… or when the volcano erupts. And nobody’s quite sure when that’s going to happen.

Category: Africa

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Lake Kivu