Fly me to...wherever

One of the (many) interesting things about my job, is that I get to fly around. This makes me feel really important and like I’m earning some serious street cred. 

I have to fly a lot for work. I used to be naïve and think that this was kinda a cool thing that made me bad ass, in a humanitarian kind of way. But really, it’s mostly just a pain in my (arguably bad) ass. It has been 14.5 weeks since I left home, and I have been on 19 flights (which is a low enough number for serious business travelers to scoff at while producing their frequent flyer miles as proof that what I’ve got going on is just child’s play, but still. It feels like a lot. Just go with it.)

It is obvious that I’ve left my humble environmental beginning in the dust, but I sure hope that my humanitarian calling trumps because my carbon footprint is bloody huge and I still hope to get into heaven.

My most recent flight was on a charter flight to one of our sites near the (to-be-defined) border between Sudan and South Sudan. I was supposed to come here months ago, but shit happened. We charter a flight here a couple of times a month to fly in people and supplies, and I was included on the manifest this time – the benefit of which was that I could bring as much luggage as I wanted (face wash? Check! Big block of cheese? Check!) and got escorted through the airport and straight on to the plane. (I don’t know why anyone bothers to fly commercial. Ick!)

I sat behind the pilot and it gave me a chance to take some photos. Now, these aren’t going to win me any awards, but I’m just trying to heed the pleas for photographs and give you an idea of what things look like here. The windows were unfortunately a bit tinted and it was also a slightly overcast day so they’re a bit foggy looking, but you’ll get the gist.

(Grandma, when you get this in your email, you’re going to have to click on the title above - Fly me to…wherever- and my actual blog site will open so you can see the pictures.  UPDATED: never mind, it seems that maybe the pics will be in the email so you won't have to worry about clicking on the link)

Just after takeoff in Juba (told you I was sitting right behind the pilot!)

Juba town

What pretty much everything else looks like

So about 2 hours into the 2 hour flight, we start descending and I’m thinking that everything is going much smoother than I had expected, until the pilot turns around to my colleague who is sitting beside me, and asks “do you know where the runway is? I haven’t been here in a while”.

And I respond the only way I can: I pull out my camera again.

We do a second swoop around

(the round things are the tops of mud huts, the rectangles are tin roofs and the shadow of the airplane, is well- us)

Oh right, there it is. Duh.

I don’t have to prove that we landed successfully since I’ve lived to write this post, but it was a crazy smooth landing and even the crates of eggs landed happily!