When I think about the past 15 years or so, working in the humanitarian field in East Africa, I remember people I met, places I visited and incidents that happened, as I moved around the region.  One such memory was from 2006 or 2007 - I’m not sure which. The place was Gode, a town in the Somali region of Ethiopia, known to Ethiopians as Region 5 and to much of the international community as the Ogaden.  It is an arid area, vulnerable to drought. The person was Haile and the incident was in the air.

Waiting for the plane at Gode’s tiny airstrip I got talking to Haile who was probably the only passenger, besides me, who was not of Somali ethnicity. He told me that he was a TV engineer working for the Ethiopian government and had been transferred to Gode from Addis Ababa. Gode, compared to Addis, is like Moyale to Nairobi, or Kitgum to Kampala, and he said that he lived for the day when he could return to his family in Addis.

Haile had once trained as an oil engineer in Russia, he said. Unsaid was the probability that this was in the time of the Derg, the military dictatorship that toppled Haile Selassi from power in 1974, later to murder him. The Derg allied itself to what was then the USSR and many Ethiopians in the late 70s and 80s were educated or trained behind the ‘Iron Curtain’. With its collapse, the Derg (which later became a civilian government, but led by the same people)  could no longer rely on support from the Soviet Union and was overthrown in 1991.

Haile spoke good English and, by the time we boarded the plane, it seemed natural to sit next to each other.

He was a religious man and once he had taken his seat Haile took out his small English bible, given to him, he said, by an American soldier who attended his church in Gode. The soldiers were constructing bridges he added, though always suspicious, I thought it more likely that they were looking for ‘terrorists’. (Several years later, I learnt through reading a book called It Happened on the Way to War by Rye Barcroft, that the US military had indeed been in the Ogaden building bridges.)

The flight was going to Addis, but the first stop was Dire Dawa, my destination, from where I was to proceed to Harar, about 30 minutes uphill drive away. Haile had done the flight many times, so he was concerned when an hour and a half had passed and there was no sign of us coming in to land. Instead we seemed to have slowed down considerably, and all we could see from the side window were mountains.

‘They use this route to train pilots’, Haile exclaimed with slight panic in his voice. ‘We must have a trainee flying us!’

Thanks for that Haile, I thought but didn’t say, as I gripped the armrests a little tighter.

About 10 minutes later we began our descent, much to my relief, but as we got close to the runway, the aircraft nosed upwards and we overshot, climbing back into the sky. Haile looked panic stricken, as I probably did too. Did we really have a trainee pilot landing our plane? Well, I suppose they have to learn somewhere.

Suddenly the pilot, who up till then had kept his silence, came on the intercom.  He apologised for the aborted landing, saying that there was heavy rain at Dire Dawa and he would try to land one more time. If he didn’t succeed he said, we would go straight on to Addis.

So we circled over the mountains again, began to descend, and, just like before, the pilot aborted the landing and we ascended once more. This time I could see the rain on the windows.

There goes my trip to Harar, I thought, but with some relief. At least we wouldn’t have to attempt that landing again. So I was a bit perturbed when we didn’t seem to be gaining height and speed. Instead we were circling over those infernal mountains, which were beginning to take on a menacing look.

Haile, was now reading his bible aloud and adding in his own supplications. Not usually religious, I found myself appealing to the God of my Catholic childhood, making bargains. If you get us safely down God, I promise …

I thought of my children and how would they manage without me and I promised myself that if I got home safely I would give up the job. 

Then I got angry with the pilot who had promised us he would not try a third landing. I silently cursed him and his lies, while at the same time knowing he was our only hope. All these promises …

Eventually we started descending again. I remember Haile reading aloud, the bible in his hands, while my white knuckles gripped the arms of my seat. The other passengers however, were calm. It is possible that, being from the Somali region, they didn’t understand either Amharic or English, the languages used by the pilot, but they must have been aware of our two aborted landings. I admired their composure.

This time we did not overshoot. We landed on a wet runway and came to a perfect halt. The relief was overwhelming, all the more so because I had been expecting the worst.  I wanted to shout and cheer and clap for that pilot that I had so recently cursed. But the rest of the plane was silent, except Haile of course, so I kept my applause low.

Yet I couldn’t completely keep my feelings to myself. I searched for the pilot in the terminal because I wanted to thank him for getting us down safely, having now forgotten that he had broken his promise to take us to Addis. But the only pilot I found was on his way to another plane. Nevertheless I congratulated him on having such a capable colleague, whoever he was.

I broke my promise and didn’t give up the job. In fact I have flown that route several times since then, without incident. A couple of years later I had a far worse landing in a tropical storm at a Kenyan airport on the shores of Lake Victoria. 

And difficult landings are not restricted to Africa. I recall another aircraft at London Heathrow, landing in winds so strong that when we got down safely the flight attendant practically ordered the passengers to give three cheers for the captain.

As for Haile, we said our farewells on the plane at Dire Dawa and I never saw him again. I really hope he got his wish to relocate back to Addis.