The Silent Sunset

FREEVIEW It was now September, and the day of my departure soon arrived. The memory of that day is now a little hazy. If only I could have seen into the future, I would never have left. Everything that day seemed to happen in slow motion. Now that the day was here, I hadn’t expected it to have come so soon. I was venturing into the unknown. A frightening thought, and yet exciting in equal measure. The only travelling I had done before was to Nairobi in Kenya. Which comparatively speaking was only next door, and even then I had used a coach to get there. Today, I would be getting on a plane for the first time, and fly thousands of miles away from my loved ones, and the surroundings that I had known my entire life, unil then. The evening before, my parents had advised me on what to expect aboard the plane, and how I should manage some of the more unpleasant aspects of an aeroplane journey. Father had said: “You follow your dream, and with determination you will succeed. Just look at an aeroplane; you don’t stop to think that somebody out there actually sat down, thought about it and devised ways of building it, do you?. It did not just appear suddenly, overnight, you know. Therefore, in this world, everything and anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Once you are on the plane, you should forget everything else outside and concentrate on what is inside.” In other words, he was saying that if you start to imagine how illogical it is for a long metal tube to fly through the air, you could start to panic, so the best thing was not to think about it. My mother, on the other hand, told me: “You should chew your mouth and swallow, as if you have chewing gum, both on take-off and when you are landing. This will enable your ears to pop, and ease some of the pain that you are likely to feel.” This was all very useful advice, which I occasionally think about and fall back on, even to this day. That evening, my father went further with a warning about men and said that no one should follow me to England! I took this to mean, that he suspected that I had a boyfriend here in Uganda, and was warning me not to allow whoever it may be, to come to see me in England. On the day, the house was unusually quiet; I did not want to think of the unknown, not yet anyway. I was still at home in Uganda and wanted to think of the here and now as long as possible. But it felt almost as if I had already left mentally and was only here in body. During lunch, some distance seemed to have crept in-between my siblings and me. As if today was over for them and they were looking to the next day without me. When we finished lunch, I went upstairs to make sure everything I needed was packed in the suitcase. Because soon it would just be me and that suitcase. It was all I had now. That sick feeling of pain that always accompanies trepidation was beginning to well up inside me. Doubts began to sneak into my mind as to whether I was doing the right thing; and if I was, why was I feeling so much anguish? The hours flew by regardless of how I felt. Soon it was time to go, and we all filtered into the car for the journey to Entebbe airport. It was to be an overnight flight to London on an East African Airways, DC-9. There were soldiers at roadblocks, and even more on the outskirts of the airport. There was an air of unease, as the Israeli commando raid at Entebbe airport, to rescue the Jewish hostages had only taken place two months earlier. At check-in my father showed them his pass as a member of the East African Legislative Assembly. The whole family was let into the departure lounge. Looking back, I wish we had all left that day for England, never to return until after Amin’s overthrow; but sadly, it was not to be. The last thing I remember of that time in the airport lounge was my father seated and trying to catch Victoria, a toddler then. She was walking towards him, and seemed as if she was going to fall. I was obviously not aware of it then, but this was to be the last time I would see my father. On the plane, the first thing I noticed was how cramped the space was for each passenger. I wondered what shape I would be in at the end of the journey. Slowly and steadily, the plane started to move. The flight attendant began to go through their pre-flight safety routine, all of which was new and fascinating to me. She went on about this being a nine hour flight….and…oh; I lost what she was saying at that point while I checked my seat belt to make sure it was secure. Looking out of the window, as we were taking off, I could see the lights of Entebbe receding further and further away into the distance and my family with them. The further we went, the more the darkness of the night descended upon us – it was about 12 a.m. local time. The motion made me feel giddy as I settled deeper into my seat, while chewing my mouth, in keeping with what my mother had told me. In the next seat sat a man, who must have sensed my nervousness at this, my first flight. We got chatting, and he revealed that he knew my father. Now I had someone to talk to, if things got a bit rough. I relaxed somewhat and as I did so I noticed that it was a full flight. Yet there did not seem to be many passengers waiting in the departure lounge earlier. Perhaps some of the passengers were on transit, and had remained on the plane, when it arrived at Entebbe. Since the airline belonged to the three East African countries of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, the other passengers could have got on at Dar es Salaam or Nairobi, where the flight may have originated.