Part Two of Six
I explored various options concerning our travel to and from South Africa. I had originally hoped we might fly to Johannesburg via Addis Ababa which would have presented the option of exploring Ethiopia for a few days. Unfortunately our schedule and rather complicated logistics made this option impractical and we ended up flying directly from Washington, DC to Johannesburg.
It was a twenty hour flight. Departing Dulles International Airport shortly before dusk, the South African Airway jet cut through the night as it crossed the North Atlantic. I have flown to and from Europe many times and the seven or eight hour flight can seem grueling, leaving one in the throes of severe jet lag due to the length of the flight and the five to six hour time difference. One’s circadian rhythm is disrupted and it can take days to recover. The flight to Africa would take ten hours to Accra, Ghana followed by an equally lengthy leg to Johannesburg. Not being able to sleep well on planes (this flight being exacerbated by the fact that the passenger sitting behind me was coughing up a lung all the way to Accra), I feared I would be totally exhausted by the time we arrived in South Africa.
There was nothing to see below until I spotted the lights of Dakar, Senegal extending along the African coastline from Cap-Vert in the early morning darkness. Jutting far out into the dark Atlantic void, this is the westernmost point of the African continent. It seemed fitting that this is where we would make landfall, and rather poetic considering that Dakar, my first sighting in Africa, is a sister city of Washington DC which we had departed just a few hours earlier. I’ll mention Dakar again in Part VI of this blog series as our plane would land there for a brief refueling stop on the trip home.
From there our route took us across the length of Senegal and Guinea, and a thick cloud cover greeted us as Palm Sunday dawned somewhere over northwestern Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). We did not descend through it until we made our approach to Accra, Ghana – the trip’s half-way point. The green landscape stretched as far as I could see, interrupted only occasionally by a clearing surrounding a small village from which dirt trails and roadways extended in every direction. There was very little traffic on the roads. The ground below became more cluttered with housing tracts and industrial sites and we made our final approach to the Kotoka International Airport situated in central Accra. Most of the roads were unimproved except in the city center business district which appeared quite modern.
I had always imagined that, if I ever came to Africa, Accra would be on the list of places I would visit. Ghana, formerly the British Gold Coast colony, was one of the earliest African countries (after Liberia, South Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Tunisia) to throw off the shackles of colonialism, in 1957. Kwame Nkrumah, a colonial leader and first president of Ghana, was an early advocate of the pan-African movement and a founder of the Organization of African Unity. In high school I read Dark Days in Ghana, his 1968 autobiography, as well as a collection of his political axioms published the previous year. Both were published following the 1966 coup d’etat in which he was overthrown while visiting North Vietnam (he was a dedicated Marxist). The coup and its impact on the independence movements throughout Africa was one of the subjects discussed at the conference I attended in Chicago in 1969 (see Part I). Nkrumah lived in exile in Guinea until his death in 1972. He is now buried in Accra. Unfortunately I would get no farther than the airport on this trip, yet as we sat on the tarmac on a rainy Sunday morning in Accra, I hoped that one day I might return for a longer visit. There is so much history there.
We were on the ground in rainy Accra for less than two hours as we took on fuel and a new crew and passengers. Soon we were back in the air and into the clouds again as we crossed the Ghanian coastline shortly after take-off. We continued our journey over the Gulf Of Guinea and the South Atlantic. The remainder of the flight was during the daylight hours and I watched our position on the seat-back screen as it ticked down to 00º00". We crossed the Equator for the very first time not far from the islands of São Tomé and Principe, a microscopic republic in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Gabon. We crossed back over the Africa coastline in northwestern Angola. The cloud cover was still thick and I did not see the ground again until we were somewhere over the Caprivi Strip in northeastern Namibia.
This was my first good look at southern Africa; not much down there but barren hills, forests, and an occasional road or track as we continued to fly over the Okavango Delta and the edges of the Kalahari desert of Botswana. "Why is it you can never hope to describe the emotions Africa creates?" writes Fransesca Marciano. "You are lifted. Out of whatever pit, unbound from whatever tie, released from whatever fear. You are lifted and you will see it all from above." Indeed I was. Far below was the continent I always dreamed of visiting. And now I was here.
We eventually arrived at Johannesburg’s O. R. Tambo International Airport just before dusk. Named for a former president of the ruling African National Congress, it is the busiest airport in all of Africa since 1996. Coupling the flight time and the stop in Accra with the six hour time zone differentiation, we arrived in South Africa roughly 24 hours after we took off from Washington. And having slept very little on the flight, we were quite exhausted as we awaited our luggage and trudged through customs inspection.
Happily our luggage arrived intact and upon clearing customs we were immediately greeted by our hosts for our first night in Africa. They ran a charming little bed and breakfast in Marlboro Gardens, which is a constituent borough of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality on the northeastern outskirts of the city.
It was a short drive from the airport and we quickly settled into our comfortable quarters. It had been an extremely long day and we soon fell into bed. A great adventure lay ahead.
I explored various options concerning our travel to and from South Africa. I had originally hoped we might fly to Johannesburg via Addis Ababa which would have presented the option of exploring Ethiopia for a few days. Unfortunately our schedule and rather complicated logistics made this option impractical and we ended up flying directly from Washington, DC to Johannesburg.
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| Departing Dulles |
There was nothing to see below until I spotted the lights of Dakar, Senegal extending along the African coastline from Cap-Vert in the early morning darkness. Jutting far out into the dark Atlantic void, this is the westernmost point of the African continent. It seemed fitting that this is where we would make landfall, and rather poetic considering that Dakar, my first sighting in Africa, is a sister city of Washington DC which we had departed just a few hours earlier. I’ll mention Dakar again in Part VI of this blog series as our plane would land there for a brief refueling stop on the trip home.
From there our route took us across the length of Senegal and Guinea, and a thick cloud cover greeted us as Palm Sunday dawned somewhere over northwestern Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). We did not descend through it until we made our approach to Accra, Ghana – the trip’s half-way point. The green landscape stretched as far as I could see, interrupted only occasionally by a clearing surrounding a small village from which dirt trails and roadways extended in every direction. There was very little traffic on the roads. The ground below became more cluttered with housing tracts and industrial sites and we made our final approach to the Kotoka International Airport situated in central Accra. Most of the roads were unimproved except in the city center business district which appeared quite modern.
I had always imagined that, if I ever came to Africa, Accra would be on the list of places I would visit. Ghana, formerly the British Gold Coast colony, was one of the earliest African countries (after Liberia, South Africa, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Tunisia) to throw off the shackles of colonialism, in 1957. Kwame Nkrumah, a colonial leader and first president of Ghana, was an early advocate of the pan-African movement and a founder of the Organization of African Unity. In high school I read Dark Days in Ghana, his 1968 autobiography, as well as a collection of his political axioms published the previous year. Both were published following the 1966 coup d’etat in which he was overthrown while visiting North Vietnam (he was a dedicated Marxist). The coup and its impact on the independence movements throughout Africa was one of the subjects discussed at the conference I attended in Chicago in 1969 (see Part I). Nkrumah lived in exile in Guinea until his death in 1972. He is now buried in Accra. Unfortunately I would get no farther than the airport on this trip, yet as we sat on the tarmac on a rainy Sunday morning in Accra, I hoped that one day I might return for a longer visit. There is so much history there.
We were on the ground in rainy Accra for less than two hours as we took on fuel and a new crew and passengers. Soon we were back in the air and into the clouds again as we crossed the Ghanian coastline shortly after take-off. We continued our journey over the Gulf Of Guinea and the South Atlantic. The remainder of the flight was during the daylight hours and I watched our position on the seat-back screen as it ticked down to 00º00". We crossed the Equator for the very first time not far from the islands of São Tomé and Principe, a microscopic republic in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Gabon. We crossed back over the Africa coastline in northwestern Angola. The cloud cover was still thick and I did not see the ground again until we were somewhere over the Caprivi Strip in northeastern Namibia.
 |
| Over Botswana |
We eventually arrived at Johannesburg’s O. R. Tambo International Airport just before dusk. Named for a former president of the ruling African National Congress, it is the busiest airport in all of Africa since 1996. Coupling the flight time and the stop in Accra with the six hour time zone differentiation, we arrived in South Africa roughly 24 hours after we took off from Washington. And having slept very little on the flight, we were quite exhausted as we awaited our luggage and trudged through customs inspection.
Happily our luggage arrived intact and upon clearing customs we were immediately greeted by our hosts for our first night in Africa. They ran a charming little bed and breakfast in Marlboro Gardens, which is a constituent borough of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality on the northeastern outskirts of the city.
It was a short drive from the airport and we quickly settled into our comfortable quarters. It had been an extremely long day and we soon fell into bed. A great adventure lay ahead.
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