The Reluctant Traveller.

Forty one years ago today (if you are reading this today) a British Airways VC10 shattered the clean night skies the length of Africa to drag me shouting and kicking to Belfast. Being uprooted abruptly from an idyllic childhood did not put me in good form, although the appearance of pimples was heralding the end of childhood anyway, idyllic or otherwise. Moreover, being grafted onto Northern Irish society, a procedure that still requires constant attention, was not the success my parents had hoped for, and yes, I still have issues.

However air travel in 1971 still held onto some scraps of its initial romance, danger and promise of adventure unlike the antiseptic experience it has now become. Anything could happen and often did. There was menace in the air.
Along the way from Malawi we stopped at Entebbe, Uganda. Those were the days when passengers could get out for a while when planes had to land for frequent refuelling on long distance flights, but we were not allowed to get out this time.

As soon as the doors of the plane opened, fuel-saturated air squeezed into the cabin around dozens of people who filed on board quietly. There was a hush as they filled every empty seat, no fussing about stowing bags in overhead lockers and holding everyone up as they took their time organising themselves. The new passengers went quietly to whatever seat they could find and sat there in stunned silence. Their anxious faces spoke for them, telling stories of fear and horror and weeping, and they were mostly elderly. What sounded like shots rang out from somewhere in the dark and an old man passing along the aisle near me froze, shut his eyes tightly, and held onto the head rest of the seat in front of me. No luggage carts drove out onto the tarmac – no possessions got through the airport that night.

When the plane eventually taxied away it felt heavier to me than when it landed bringing a few of us from Blantyre, somehow more sluggish. It gathered momentum as it raced down the runway towards the first traces of dawn, then up into the morning air. That’s when the palpable sense of relief poured through the cabin like welcome warm water from a shower in a winter bathroom falling over a shivering body. That was when the weary, worried cargo of Asians knew they were at last clear of Idi Amin and his drunken soldiers who had robbed them of everything except the clothes they wore as they were processed through the airport after being ordered to leave the country. Many never made it through the airport.

My mind, trapped somewhere on the route between childhood and adolescence spent the next few hours putting together worried looks, the whispered asides of my parents and the snippets of radio news I had picked up over the past number of weeks. Some sense of perspective started taking over, some unchildlike recognition of the reality of other people’s suffering, some knowledge of my problems not being as significant as those of my fellow travellers. They too were being forcibly transported from Africa to Britain, but at least I had all my family, a change of clothes and a guaranteed, if vague, future at the other end.

And so to Cyprus. We landed at Nicosia to pick up more fuel and hopefully to stretch our legs, but no. There was to be no stroll around the airport, no opportunity to breathe cleanish air and no chance to see what it would be like to be in Cyprus. I had been intrigued by the possibility of walking on an island. I thought I’d never been on an island before until I remembered that I lived my first six years in Ireland so that made it alright. But the reason for not getting out at Nicosia was not alright. There was a gun battle taking place in the airport so the pilot wanted to get away as quickly as possible. So did my parents. So did the Asian Ugandans.

Then London for an hour, and then to Belfast and more gun battles. Gun battles in my street, bombs exploding in the shops at the end of the street, people being put out of their homes, entire streets of house being torched, hijackings of cars and buses I was in, daily road blocks and searches by boy soldiers who were trained to fight a military army rather than police a civilian population. But hey, I had my dreams and no-one could stop me planning my escape back to Africa. Forty one years later I have never gone back.