Rainy Retribution

 

Well, that will teach me to ask out loud where all the rain is that we were expecting… It absolutely poured down the whole of last night. I shone my torch around the tent a couple of times during the night, firstly to ensure I was still IN the tent, and secondly to ensure my belongings weren’t drifting gently downstream towards the Zambezi River. Fortunately, apart from a few small pools of water next to the seams, the tent did its job commendably and all my stuff is still dry. Oh no! I’m tempting fate again!!

Focussed like never before!	Pierre giving me a break and showing me how accurate I’m supposed to be

We have done a decent bit of flying now, all the problems with computers and fuel filters of late sorted out. We had to get an engineer flown up from SA to change the fuel filter after we got a blocked fuel filter light come on during one of our flights. Fortunately nothing too serious, and all seems well again. We are doing as best we can to ensure the fuel is clean, and suspect the fuel filter gunk has built up over a good few hundred hours.

We think these open, grassy areas are rainy season streams/lakes	Definitely looks river-shaped

Anyway, I now have 14 hours of long-line survey work under my belt, so well on my way I also (rather quickly) earned the name “Twitch”, or Captain Jack Twitch.  As most of you will know, I have a tiny almost imperceptible habit of adjusting, then re-adjusting, then re-re-adjusting my helmet, glasses, watch, nuts, seatbelt throughout the flight. Pierre asked me on our first flight if I was ok. The Captain Jack part is because I wear a bandana on my head inside the helmet to stop me sweating up the helmet in this heat. It averages around 35°C every day and at the speeds we fly we don’t get a lot of airflow into the chopper. I also drink Captain Morgan Spiced Gold. It really does make a difference what sort of people you’re living with – and I’m much happier here than in Gabon because I have like-minded people with the same sort of sense of humour to while away the hours with, ripping each other off constantly.

One monitor showing our track, height, line distance and how much to correct the drift	A summarised version of the left that I have to fly on – slightly harder to follow than a pretty picture

My flying is improving slowly. There are white markers down the sides of the little grass airstrip we’re using, and one in particular is very close to where we land the loop each flight. I have been landing the loop right on top of it a number of times now, evoking complaints from the Techie and threats of making me buy “all the beers” for the evening. Not entirely unenviable, since they’re all bought and paid for and sitting in a fridge in the kitchen. But I have been trying to avoid landing on the marker (which for some inexplicable reason was made with sharp stones standing up vertically out of it on each end) as well as the windsock and keeping the loop out of the trees next to the LZ. And on the whole I think I’m getting it.

Everything together	The dreaded runway marker! Why add the pointy stones on each end?!

As far the the nasties around the camp are concerned, I spotted (and quickly despatched) another scorpion where I go to brush my teeth, I watched them kill a bright green snake under the TV (boomslang, mamba, envious rattlesnake, who knows…) and I listened to a mouse under my tent canvas scratching away for most of the night. The mouse sounds like its INSIDE the tent and of course your mind then starts playing tricks with you. The sound appears to come from inside my clothes bag, then from next to my matrass, and when I shine my torch around the tent to check, he stops moving – as if he IS in the tent and not under the groundsheet where he shouldn’t be able to see the light! I can see how one might go stark raving mad in a place like this – everything is trying to kill you!

The size of the ants here	Nom nom nom… Beatle climbing into a fat caterpillar – literally!

To show you how close I have already come to death, I found a tick between my toes the other day. No idea how long it had been there, but it was loving life nestled in the toe-jam. I instantly swooned at the thought of tick bite fever out here, and then did everything I later discovered after Googling it that was the incorrect technique for dealing with a tick. I stuck my foot in a bucket of paraffin (Jet fuel) to encourage it to drop off, then tried to dig underneath its head with a pin, only managing to skewer it with the pin and dig a hole in my foot, and finally grabbed and pulled the tick out of my skin. Turns out smothering a tick with Vaseline or paraffin will kill him, same with spiking him with a pin, but as he gets more stressed he’s more likely to regurgitate and pump the wound full of the bacteria that gives you tick bite fever. Wonderful. So I’m patiently waiting to see if I can get through a week without the headaches which would signal I’m going to be very sick for some time. I now put Tabard on my feet and ankles during the day whether I’m wearing slops (whenever I’m not flying) or shoes.