There is not much to say about most aeroplane journeys. Anything remarkable must be disastrous, so you define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.
The gratitude brings such relief your mind goes blank, which is appropriate, for the aeroplane passenger is a time-traveller. He crawls into a carpeted tube that is reeking of disinfectant; he strapped in to go home, or away. Time is truncated, or in any case warped. (..) And from the moment he departs, his mind is focused on arrival.

Paul Theroux

in “The old Patagonian Express”

I thought of that quote yesterday. After spending five hours in transit at Madrid’s airport before boarding. A group of 150 seven-graders from Portugal boarded just in front of me, all excited about their one week trip to Rome. I loved their excitement and aggitation. Kids should have fun, so I put on my headset, and fell asleep the moment I got in my seat. Only to wake up half an hour later, in the midst of a school play ground. The boys and girls were running up and down, even though the “fasten seat belts” sign was on, calling the flight attendants for yet another coke or Mars bar.

I thought we were already in the air, half way to Rome, but we had not moved an inch. And we did not move an inch for three hours, unable to take off due to traffic congestion, it seemed later. Not that the captain was eager to announce anything. We just sat there. Except for the kids. They were not sleepy as I was. True, I had just flown through the night, and had been awake for 36 hours, but then again, I thought they’d been settling down after a few hours. But they did not.

It was strange to see how the other passengers reacted. The noise was that of a kids’ birthday party, and so was the agitation and the running around. Kids love kids parties. Adults not. So, most other people switched off. At best, some would get up to stretch their legs, still with a blank stare focused on the horizon. One guy started to play cards with them. Only two passengers got excited. “Che casino, questi ragazzi! Calma, per favore, calma!” shouted an Italian passenger. And it was “piu calma” for five minutes straight.

I was glad to arrive in Rome, where we got stuck for another hour waiting for the transit buses to arrive. And for the luggage to arrive. When I finally opened the door of my apartment, I sighed with relief. I can’t wait until time and space travel finally becomes reality. We just step into a tube, and “zwoop”, we arrive where we need to be. From the hotel lobby in Santo Domingo to my apartment in Rome. “Zwoop”.

Hopefully by the time we can warp into time and space, it will be immune to volcanic dust. But probably the kids would not enjoy warping that much. They enjoy the travel. I envied them.

08:30 – At Copenhagen airport… 8:30 and the sun just came up… Ready to fly back to Rome.

09:45 – “This is your captain speaking. Unfortunately, we have been hit by a ladder of the ground crew. Repairs will take an hour.”

10:30 – “This is your captain speaking… We are still looking for the spare part.” – anyone got a spare wing light for an MD82?

In the end, we took off with a little more than one hour delay. But the adventure was still to come. Approaching Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the clouds got thicker and thicker. It looked like we were landing for 45 minutes. Turbulence got heavier, having people “Ohhh” and “Oosh”. Plane swing up, down, left, right. Funny to see how much flex an MD82 has.

We got a direct hit by lightning (which was a bit of an anti-climax, as there was not that much of a bang, just a lot of light and a bump as if the plane hit a speed bump).

The final approach showed the strength of the wind as we were crab-crawling sideways towards the landing strip.

The applause for the pilot was well deserved…

More on The Road about travel, airports and flying.

1. Why can I not go through security with a flask of aftershave, but can buy all the aftershave I want in the duty free? If duty free goods are screened in a different way, why can my check-in luggage not be screened in the same way?

2. How come I can not take any liquid on board, but I can put all the liquid I want in my check-in luggage? If check-in luggage is screened in a different way, how come carry-on can not be screened in the same way? How come I can not take a bottle of water on board, even though I could drink it to show how harmless it is?

3. How come I have to put things like a deodorant and toothpaste in a sealed zip-lock plastic bag, but no-one ever sees or asks to see the bag tucked in my carry-on?

4. If my Leatherman with a 1.5 inch blade does not get it through security, how come I buy dozens of things more dangerous at the duty free (ever seen what damage a broken bottle can do?).

5. How come some airlines serve meals with stainless steel knives and forks? Why does the restaurant in the waiting lounge serve meals with stainless steel knives and forks?

6. How come the metal strings on my guitar are not considered as dangerous goods? Ever seen what damage my thin “high E”-string can do when strapped around a person’s neck?

7. How come a sharpened pencil is not considered a dangerous good? Ever seen the damage a pencil does when pushed through someone’s nose?

8. How come my glasses are not considered a dangerous good? They showed how to use it as a weapon in The Godfather III, didn’t they?

9. How come needles and syringes are not seen as dangerous goods? How come nobody ever checks what the liquid is in the ampules I carry on? How dangerous could the combination of syringes with liquid morphine ampules be? Or the combination of a lighter, syringe and a combustible fluid in an ampule?

10. How come airport security screening never catches the three metal bottles of compressed air of our self-inflating sailing life jackets when we check it in with our luggage, but there is no way in hell we would get it on board as carry-on?

11. How come security confiscated the horse-shoe my daughter wanted to carry-on?

12. How come some airports confiscate lighters and others don’t? Why do some confiscate matches and others don’t? Why do some only allow one single box of matches? Why do some confiscate Zippo-lighters and others don’t? What is more dangerous: a single Zippo lighter or five throw-away plastic lighters with lighter fluid in them?

13. How come in some airports, I just show a piece of paper, allegedly representing a printout of my Internet check-in, and they let me into the departure hall, and through security without scanning the barcode to see if I did not fake the print-out?

14. How come I could get on a flight even though the boarding pass was not in my name?

15. How come no-one at the gate ever checks if my plastified ID card is real? How come I can board a flight even though the lady at the gate said “I have never seen an ID-card like this!”.

16. As it has been proven some lithium-ion laptop batteries are a fire hazard, can explode generating heat up to 1000 degrees, how come they don’t have to be removed from laptops? How come some airlines offer adapters to charge laptops inflight?

17. How come in some airports I need to go through a security screening when entering the airport, one when entering the departure area, and one just before entering the boarding area? Just to make sure?

18. How come I could walk from the arrivals hall, back into the luggage-belt area and nobody stopped me?

19. How come the lady at the check-in counter laughs when I answer the question “Did you pack your bags yourself”, with “No, my wife did.”

20. How come everyone lies when asked the question “Was the luggage with you at all times?”, like it was never held in the hotel luggage room by the bellboy, never stowed in the trunk of the airport shuttle, or left alone in the hotel room.

21. How come I can pick up someone else’s luggage from the belt, and walk out of the airport without being checked?

22. How come, with all the security cameras around, people have their handluggage stolen at the check-in counter?

23. How come I can put my two mobile phones in the tray next to the metal detector and pick them up at the other side without them being screened?

24. How come some airport metal detectors go bazurk when I forget to take off my watch, and others don’t?

25. How come I always fear for my harddisk when I see the way the security staff handles the tray in which I put my computer? Why can I not complain without being arrested for contempt?

26. How come the shuttle bus from the departure gate to the plane can drop us off at the wrong plane?

27. How come, allegedly for security reasons, I can not board with a computer bag and a small trolley, but it is OK if I put the bag in the trolley? How come it is OK to have two carry-ons when flying business class then?

28. How come I can ask a friend to hold my excess carry-on out of sight of the check-in counter, deny having any carry-on when checking in, and pick up the carry-on again before going through security?

29. How come, allegedly for security reasons, I am only allowed one bag with certain maximum weight and dimensions as carry-on, but can buy 15 bags of duty free stuff?

30. How come airlines do not award passengers when they can prove the security staff did not check thoroughly? Why am I regarded as a moron when I show what I managed to get through security this time? Why am I regarded as a nuisance when I tell the security staff they are not paying attention when I walked through the metal detector?

31. How come nobody asks these questions aloud?

More posts on The Road about flying, airports and travel.

Cartoon courtesy U.S. News & World Report

Ten things I hate about travelling:

1. Have to check in two hours before departure, only to have to wait and wait.

2. Red-eye flights: leave tired, arrive tired.

3. Flight attendants who wake you up each time they pass by with (make your choice) a hot tower (which stinks anyway), the menu, drinks, food, newspapers, a hot towel (again), immigration leaflet, a headset.

4. Non-reclining seats. (Where the hell was the time where Ethiopian Airlines were the best in Africa? This plane sucked. Dirty floor cover, dirty seats, most of the seat covers half dismantled…)

5. Seats which have little or no legspace.

6. “I am sorry, we have run out of headsets”

7. Having to sit around an airport after midnight with all shops, restaurants and pubs closed. And to top it off, with the wireless Internet connection failing after you only used 10 minutes of your 120 minutes subscription you just paid online.

8. Stepping onto a plane, stopping over, with passengers picked up from the previous airport. Getting in the air smelling of 300 people stuck in a confined area for three hours.

9. Sitting by the plane’s emergency exit, which is that cold and draft-y, you think your hair is going to freeze against the wall as your head leans over while falling asleep.

10. Being happy you get through customs and immigration in a whizz (only handluggage, yuuuhuuu!), but then having to wait for 90 minutes for your airport pick-up. Only to find out that a. your hotel courtesy van claims to have been there all the time, b. the office driver thought it was tomorrow, c. another office driver had left one minute before you arrived.

11. Ok, here is an 11th: Checking into the hotel to freshen up after an overnight flight. Just as you are getting undress, the office calls and the reception guy knocks on your door stating “we will move you to another room, as we realized the toilet in this one is not flushing”.
They move you from a 15 m2 room with huge windows and a wonderful view, into a 5 m2 room with a 0.2m2 window, with mold on the walls. And while moving you, the porter did not notice your bag was already unzipped (no matter how many times you say: “don’t worry, I will take care of that”), and spreads your underwear, electronic gadgets, toiletry all over the corridor.

Dah. I guess it all starts with a 01:00 AM flight. It just puts me in a bad mood.

So far for the smileys.

At check-in it seems they have changed the system for self check-in: you will need your reservation number. You can’t check in via your name, passport scan (as in Rome), or credit card swipe. No, you need your reservation number. Damned if I would take out my computer, boot it up, and check my email for it. Damned if I would print it out on paper before I come. Thought eTicketing was all about paperless and effortless booking and checking in? Not so with Brussels Airlines, it seems. Nope you need your reservation number, sir!.

Ok, so I try to check in at the “Express check-in”, thinking “I only have hand luggage, so I guess this is ‘express check-in’ “? Not so. A young man stopped me asking for my boarding pass. I told him “No, I am checking in, and am following the signs.” He said: “No checking in here, you need to follow that line”, and pointed to another row of check-in counters.
I told him this was confusing. He just shrugged his shoulders and looked the other way, ignoring my comments. He told a colleague who approached me to explain and said: “Ignore him, difficult customer!”
He then turned to someone else, who wanted to do the same thing as I: check in through the express check-in. And another, and another.. Soon enough we were standing with 4-5 people complaining about the confusing signs. I just stood by and smiled. Ah the sweet taste of a little revenge! Life can be so sweet…

So, I am checking in. They ask to weigh my hand luggage, which is a compact trolley with my computer bag in it. In the bag some small chargers, my laptop and a book: 9.6 kg.
“Sorry sir, you are only allowed 5 kg handluggage, you will have to check it in”, she said.
Dah. Checking in a computer bag? To Rome? Rrrrright. *If* it would arrive, i’d have to wait for 90 minutes at the luggage belt.
“Nope”, I said, “I can show you one kilo of handluggage and then shop and buy 50 kgs of duty free goods, and you would not even know. So…”
She let me go… I *am” a difficult customer!

Anyways, last thought of the day: Did you know the Brussels Airlines logo originally had 13 balls on it. People said it would bring bad luck, so they added a 14th ball at the last minute. Some planes were already painted with 13 balls, so the 14th came with some expense. You don’t believe me? It is true, as it was in the papers!“!

Inside the office, the police officers were watching the Italy-Romania soccer match, and a small crowd was following the match through the window, shouting and commenting as if they were in a pub.
At the other end of the departure hall, two other guys had hooked up their laptops to watch the game via internet, drawing a small crowd around them too. I could even hear the luggage handlers next to the departure lounge cheering and shouting as the match went along.

Nobody seemed to mind the plane was late. Not even as the plane handlers were getting out of their office, at the last minute to prepare the flight for take-off. Every passenger understood that in Italy, they had their priorities straight: soccer first, plane later..

Eventually we took off, and when landing in Rome, the passengers did get annoyed though: the car bringing in the chocks to block the aircraft’s wheels, was late, so neither the stairs nor the luggage handling equipment could be connected to the plane. Even after the chocks eventually arrived, all plane handlers took their time to engage into a lively discussion about the match, before they opened the plane.

Or would the passengers have been annoyed that in the mean time, the match ended in a 1-1 draw?

More posts on The Road about Italy

A bus was taking us from the terminal to the plane at Fiumicino airport. The bus zigzagged in-between parked planes, stopping here, and stopping there, until it parked itself next to an empty AirOne plane. Driver got out, talked to some guy next to the plane, who pointed to a Blu-Express plane a bit further on the tarmac. The driver was lost, did not know which plane to drive us to.

The bus drove to the Blu-Express plane. The passengers got off but were confused. “We were supposed to fly AirOne, not Blu-Express. Blu-Express does not fly to Brindisi”, they mumbled. Some went up the stairs, came back down, and finally we boarded after it was clear the Blu-Express plane was chartered by AirOne.

It was funny to see. Italy at its best, shining through confusion.

More posts on The Road about Italy.

So what did my first hand expert testing of the new airline come up with?Well, I did not want to test the quality of Brussels Airlines.. (imagine a small high pitched voice with corner of the lips curled down and a real real sad face). I merely wanted to book a ticket with my frequent traveler miles!! Boohoo… And I couldn’t Boohhoooo… (hand me a hanky!).

Booking using miles was a breeze at the time of SN, but boy, on the new Privilege website (the frequent flyer program of SN, now Brussels), it seemed EITHER they hid the booking feature real well, or it was not possible anymore to book flight online with miles…

No problem, I thought, I will call them. The number I found on the web was a paying number (charging 0.75 euro per minute), but they also gave a Belgian non-paying number to dial from abroad. I tried that one, and after two minutes of answering multiple choices (questions and options posed by a lady who sounded they were holding a gun to her head or had taken her children hostage), I was put on hold. And on hold. And on hold… Encouraged to remain on line as “I was to be attended to real soon now!” I gave up after 30 minutes. I tried again, and same thing. (I guess those 60 minutes on the paying number would have cost me 45 Euro, about a third of the price for a ticket.. Ah.. this is how they try to reduce the prices of the tickets! (I wish!)

I tried to find other numbers to book with miles via the phone. No go. Old numbers did not work anymore neither..

Hmm.. ok, I thought, I will book a paid ticket then. I went back online. They have a new webpage since the merger.. I booked destination, date, got the price and got… stuck… No way to go onto the last page to pay for the ticket. “OK”, I thought, “Bad luck, let’s try again!”. But same thing. And again…

So… I tried the normal booking telephone number… Got through in a few seconds, no questions asked, and the guy booked me a ticket in two minutes. Paid of course.

Oh, and the price was EUR152.99, about 30-50% more than what I used to pay with either Virgin or SN !

So I wrote them an email (Customer.Relations(at)brusselsairlines.com and Privilege(at)brusselsairlines.com ) stating how un-impressed I was. Giving my phone number, and stating I was going to publish my opinion and their answer on the Net.

I am still waiting for their answer.

At this point, my impression is: SN Brussels and Virgin Express? They ‘d better had an abortion than giving birth to Brussels Airlines… Now we have one Virgin less in the world and one more average airline…

Update:
I write this just as I got off the plane. Despite my rumbling on the problems to book a ticket, the actual check-in was a breeze, as it always was. Despite the fact I booked a low-fare ticket, they did not mind my luggage was 8 kg overweight, and that I had two pieces of hand luggage (each more than 6 kg) rather than the allowed one piece.
So maybe, just maybe, we’re in for a good thing… Some babies are a pain as newborns, but grow up to be loveable individuals… Maybe also so with Brussels Airlines?

Anyway, just a few months ago, SN Brussels Airlines and Virgin Express merged into Brussels Airlines. I was a regular customer of both “parent” companies, so when flying to Rome I was curious to experience first hand the excitement of the new merged airline.
I used to be a regular customer of SABENA, the Belgian national carrier. Back in the eighties and early nineties, they were a shabby airline, deserving their nickname “Such A Bloody Experience Never Again”. Back then, Brussels national airport was a dump, a national shame. Run down, inefficient, unattractive. It was the only airport I knew then, where you had to pay with a coin (then still Belgian Francs), to get a luggage cart in arrivals. Would the international traveler arriving in Brussels, with a Bef 20 coin in their pocket please raise their hand? Right. So most people had to drag their luggage out of arrivals. Pathetic, it was.

Mid nineties, it all started to change. Sabena expanded their network, renewed its fleet of aircraft, and had an overhaul of its staff. Actually it became a pleasure flying with them. And I flew Sabena a lot, as they had loads of African destinations.
Brussels Airport did not get a facelift, no, it went further than that. They amputated the departure halls, then the arrivals hall and cut off one of the oldest departure/arrival wings, all to be replaced by brand new state-of-the-art buildings.

After flirting with SAS, courting KLM, seducing British Airways and winking at Air France for a while – the latter relationship being blocked by the EU – Sabena decided to partner up with Swiss Air in 1995. And Swiss Air spoiled it all. They literally sucked up all liquidity and valuable assets, and run off with it, declaring bankruptcy themselves right after 9/11 (a handy excuse, 9/11 was!). They left behind a sad-faced Sabena management who could not have been too clever having Swiss Air get away with all the sucking! The souvenir of the short lived partnership was a huge debt and a flabbergasted Belgian Government (who was then a part owner of the national carrier).. They are still fighting as to determine who mismanaged Sabena. They went bankrupt also. Sabena that is. The Belgian state was bankrupt already a long time ago.

Gone was the holy shrine of the jet-era flashy status of being a pilot or air attendant. They all joined the long queue at the employment office. Left was just.. a shrine.. And a massively under-utilized brand new national airport. Oh, and thousands of stranded passengers of course… “Sorry, we can not fly you back to Belgium, madam as ‘We’ don’t exist anymore!”
It took “Swiss Air” only weeks to get reborn into “Swiss” – no wonder with all the cash and assets they ran off with from Sabena. But the Belgian carrier is still picking up the pieces today.

First reborn into SN Brussels Airlines (who invents these names? People actually get paid to come up with a name like “SN” Brussels Airlines?), as a small regional carrier, slowly expanding their network. They were still a pleasure to fly. And the left-over air staff from Sabena, still showed a pride.

Virgin Express was born in 1996, using Brussels as a regional hub, servicing several destinations in Europe. They were to be a low cost carrier, but after a few years they became just as expensive as SN. Minus leg room (you wanted to bring your legs aboard, you had to pay extra..), minus food, minus drinks, minus the frequent travel scheme and often minus the smiles too. Plus the attitude, often.

It is a mystery to me why SN wanted to merge with Virgin and create Brussels Airlines… Just as it was a mystery to me who invented their TV publicity spot announcing the merger (people actually get paid for stuff like this?). The spot showed (tricked of course) two aircraft (one Virgin 737 and an SN Avro Jet), courting in the sky, flying loops and upside down stunts together (rather a scary sight to see a 737 passenger jet fly loops and upside downs, I am sure there is a law against that, but hey it’s TV!…), to clearly show how much in love the two planes and the two parent companies were.
Result of the courtship was a rather distasteful televised birth of a small plane (including all the slime, blood etc..) pressed out of the back of a Virgin Express 737 (clearly in the female role!), and.. taraaaaaa, the small plane had the logo of Brussels Airlines. How inventive, those TV commercials people! Oh wow!

So I guess Virgin Express was no longer a Virgin anymore. They stopped being ‘Express’ a long time before the merger… Mr. Branson probably said ‘Thank you’, took the money and ran, to buy another island in the Caribbean (actually quite a nice one, we anchored right beside it last summer!) leaving all of us mortals to wonder what the merger would do..

And what did the merger bring? Read about it tomorrow in “SN plus Virgin equals abortion?”

The pilot had warned us that this would happen. We had to fly over Afghanistan at a high altitude to stay outside the range of Stinger missiles. Only the airspace right above the airport was secured, so we had to descent within a circle of safety with one kilometer diameter. It felt like a roller coaster ride. And I do NOT like roller coasters. I kept my eyes shut, holding on firmly to the seat.

Fayyaz and I were the two WFP staff amongst the handful of people flying in today. This was only the third UN-flight allowed into Bagram airport since the Taliban fled Kabul, three days before. Three days since the event that marked the unofficial ‘Taliban defeat’ in Afghanistan. The first flight carried our security officers, followed by one with some senior officials. There would not be another flight allowed for two weeks, until we could assure the security of our staff.
I was asked to participate in this mission as the head of FITTEST, the UN humanitarian fast intervention team. I had to review the UN telecommunications systems in Kabul, and call in any resources needed to resurrect the installations. Until the next flight, I had to do with my two hands and any equipment I could find on the ground. Weight restrictions on the flight had not allowed me to take any tools or spares with me. One thing I knew already for sure: all public communication systems in Kabul were out. No telephone, fax, telex. The whole infrastructure was bombed to pieces or sabotage-d. For many months, the only communications would be done through equipment we brought in ourselves.

We landed around noon, amid the wreckage of old artillery and aircraft of all kinds. Two guys in local attire, riding four-wheel motorbikes, guided the plane to its parking space on the tarmac. When we got out, onto the tarmac, we went over to say hi. “Where are you guys from”, someone asked, as their short blond hair showed they were no locals. “I cen’t tell ya’, said one, in an obvious Texan accent, with a radio labeled ‘USAF’ (US Air Force) strapped onto his belt.. Hmm..

We drove off in convoy to Kabul, crossing an area which up to three days ago was the front line in a war witnessed by the whole world through the cameras of CNN and the likes. It was a sunny autumn day with an absolutely clear blue sky above naked mountains topped with snow, which presided over a bright yellow desert valley. The litter of the relics of years of war were the only signs of civilisation amongst the void of sand and dust: old Russian-made tanks and artillery, shot to pieces and half-buried in the ground. In several places, the road was bombed or a big hole in the asphalt, with a wreck in the ditch alongside, reminded us that this was a heavily contested piece of land, fought over for twenty-odd years amongst countless warring fractions. The last battle took place only three days ago, between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance troops.

Fayyaz and I were anxious to see our Afghan colleagues in Kabul who continued to run the food distributions during the war. They were all standing in the office compound as we drove in. We hugged them. We had not seen them since September 12, when all international staff was ordered to evacuate after 9/11. “Welcome back,” they smiled, “Welcome back!”. We all had tears in their eyes. We knew this was not just a welcome-back, but our return might also be the turning of a page in the history of Afghanistan. The last page in a chapter of twenty years civil war. This could be the first day of a new beginning for this lovely land and its great people, after decades of civil war.

We told them it was good to be back, how worried we had been about them and their families. It had not been an easy time, these two months since 9/11. Our national staff were the real heroes of this emergency operation. Against all odds, and under the continuous threat of bombing and military reprisals, they had kept moving and distributing massive amounts of food for the needy. A short visit to the WFP warehouse proved the point of how real the risks had been to all of them. The staff there described with pride how they had loaded food as the military installations all around the warehouse were bombed. They showed us bags of shrapnel collected after the bombings. Many pieces of metal and debris had come through the tin roof and walls.

It has been a while since I really touched radio equipment. You know how it goes: the more you get into the ‘manager’ role, the less you actually are involved in the real core of what you manage. For me, it was radios, computers, antennas, generators, networks, telephone systems. For two weeks, I would be the only international technician there… Time to brush up on long forgotten routines and manuals..

With some of our Afghan staff, we drove to the Intercontinental Hotel where our radio repeaters were installed. They all went off-air weeks ago. We found that, for safety reasons, the hotel staff had dismantled the radios, masts and antennae. All the bits and pieces were still there. But now came the next problem: as the UN flight to Kabul had had limited luggage capacity, I had not been able to bring my toolboxes. With some ingenuity and a Leatherman, we put all the pieces together again and flicked the switch: the two repeaters came alive with a soft hum.

As the days went by, bit by bit all comms systems were revived. As I was the only UN technician, the staff from the different organizations asked for all kinds of support. I drove around town with my improvised ‘intervention’ team, and a Leatherman. Amazing what those combinations could resolve.. Generators were revived, satellites phones re-programmed, Email systems started spitting out messages again. The most exotic thing they asked me to do was to configure a computer so the head of the UNHCR office could pick up his email. Nothing exotic about that – except that the computer had a Japanese version of MS Windows! Euh.. What’s the Japanese for ‘modem’ and ‘control panel’ again?

The trouble with all of these support trips was they were all followed a visitor’s protocol to first drink tea with the hosts. Unfortunately, the tap water in Kabul was real bad, and soon my stomach gave in to the constant attack of bacteria, and I got food poisoning (well ‘water poisoning’ more likely). One day, I just could not get out of bed anymore, except to go to the bathroom to throw up, or to do a liquid number two.

One of my more exotic tasks was to secure a good new site for the repeaters and mobile phone system we were bringing in. For years we had tried to get access to “TV hill”, a mountain smack in the middle of Kabul. It would be an excellent place for the antennae for our radio relay stations, but during the Taliban regime we were never allowed access to it.

I had asked the UN security officer to get permission to go up the hill, but he had not succeeded. I was hard headed (Tine, my wife has other words for it, though), the more as other UN staff in the guesthouse had started to tease me: “Hey, has WFP conquered the mountain yet?”. In the end, I went to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They all said that only the –newly appointed- minister could give me this kind of approval. But he was not in. So I sat on the steps of his building for hours waiting until he arrived. I knew him from television. Dr Abdullah was a well known figure in the ranks of the Northern Alliance. As his convoy drove into the compound, and he got out of the car, I got a hold of him. He looked me up and down. Perhaps I did not look like someone who could conquer mountains, in my grimy sweatshirt and a torn and ragged WFP safari jacket (as I said, the check-in luggage allowance on the Bagram flight was extremely restricted!)…

In fact, conquer the mountain is just what we did. The minister gave the green light and signed a paper stating so. A day later, we were in a car with a guy called ‘Maruk’, who turned out to be the Minister’s personal bodyguard. Hey, I must have given a good impression!

“TV Mountain” has two peaks. The first had been heavily bombed and still had loads of live ammunition all over it. That was a disappointment: in between the anti-aircraft shells and thousands of rounds of heavy machinegun bullets, the uneven ground of the shelled bunkers and areas which looked mined, there was no space to put up any equipment. The locally hired UN de-miners also shook their head: ‘Too dangerous, it will take months to clear all this live ammo and to defuse any booby-traps’.

The local military commander in charge of the hill, came over. Maruk and Wahab, my local counterpart, started discussing with him in Pashtu. They kept on pointing at me, at the sky, the town, and a handheld radio.. The commander finally got into our car and we drove to the second peak of “TV mountain”. I gasped for a moment, as we stepped out into a magnificent scenery. We stood, at an altitude of 2200 meters, under a clear blue sky, with B52 bombers still circling overhead, leaving white trails behind them. Kabul with its buzzing activity lays hundreds of meters below us. We looked at the horizon and at eachother as walked onto the roof of a building with a round concrete roof. It used to be an air traffic beacon, and now featured a hole from a massive bomb in the exact center of it. I remembered the video shots of the precision bombing from fighter planes, I had seen on CNN.

‘The commander has a request’, said Wahab. He took us into the ruins of radar installation. A local military guy lay on a make shift bed. He had two radios in his hands. He listened on one, and repeated what he heard on the other… A manual retransmission of messages.. ‘The commander says their radios have interference, can you solve it?’, translated Wahab. I looked on the roof at their antennas. They were too close. It took me fifteen minutes to shorten the bamboo poles supporting the antennas and to separate them. Interference solved. The commander smiled satisfied, and slapped my back and we shook hands in agreement. “This is the place.”, I smiled at Wahab.

A week later, we brought in the first containers with equipment and the installations started.. The mountain was conquered. Still to today, “TV mountain” is the main communications site in Kabul.

This is a re-edit from an article previously written with by C.Hurford
Pictures courtesy of O.Hadziemin, L.Marre, R.Kasca

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