“Oh sh*t! These lights are getting smaller and smaller”.
Earlier, I had been able to notice the cars driving in the nearby road. Now, all I could see were lights the size of a sugar grain. It is night, so lights are easily distinguishable.
“I can’t begin to imagine the altitude we must be at. Look at those freaking lights” are the thoughts my mind is jostling with.
Our flight had just taken off from Kigali airport. It’s about 10:40pm local time and 11:40pm in Uganda.
I am just one seat away from the window. The blinds are up and for the life of me, I can’t seem to resist the urge to peep outside.
I don’t know how high the plane was, but looking outward, the answer lay in the tiny lights that floated in a sea of black. Soon, the window glass was not as clear as it had been earlier. Frost was beginning to collect.
That’s when the anxiety set in. Not that I didn’t try to block it. Unfortunate thing was, my panic antennas were out and feeding from everything my eyes had taken in.
There’s one more thing that’s not helping the jitters I found myself in. In ideal situations – on a random Saturday night as I stream a movie or TV show on my phone – I am a freak for a good popcorn moment. Jesus could be descending during his second coming, or the entire neighbourhood could be on fire, and I will miss both these memos if all this is happening simultaneously with a compelling motion picture, especially one that keeps me on the edge.
I have watched a good amount of movies and TV series. It’s fair to argue, the cumulative hours of runtime I have consumed in my lifetime is in their thousands. While at uni, I was so invested in this undertaking, so much so that I would binge-watch one Season of 24 (Fox’s hit serial drama centred around Jack Bauer’s compelling manoeuvres as he races to save the U.S from multiple terror threats) in one day.
A Season of 24 has 24 episodes, each lasting 45 minutes. Put simply, in a day, I spent 18 uninterrupted hours on TV watching this show.
The mix of film & TV content I have consumed over the years includes stories around airplane crashes, airplane hijacks (by terrorists) and all that. From Manifest, LOST, Flight, Non-stop, Sully, 7500, Snakes on the Plane, United 93, you name it. To Apple TV+’s Hijack – the 2023 TV series that follow Sam (Edris Elba) who must use his skills to broker a peaceful end to a hijacking of a seven-hour flight from Dubai to London.
On the same list is MH370: The Plane That Disappeared, the Netflix docu series based on real life events – on March 8 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 enroute from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur disappeared without trace. The plane had 227 passengers and 12 crew onboard. To this day, 11 years later, there is no explanation of how this airplane vanished and to where.
When you have watched all these stories, many of them fiction, you can see how your mind can race.
“If this plane crashed, how bad would the impact be?”
“Would it crash down in some remote village in the middle of nowhere?”
“If I somehow managed to locate a parachute, would I be in the right state of mind to even operate it?”
“Are these passengers innocent? Is the guy I see over there a suicide bomber?”
“That’s too much frost on the window. What happens when the glass cracks?”
Airplanes! Groundbreaking innovation. You can’t argue with that. If you ask me, no other invention comes close. Can you imagine how long it would take you moving from Uganda to New York without air transport? The terrible roads that dot rural Africa, immigration delays, long days of sailing across the Atlantic Ocean.
Ordinarily, it takes 9 hours to move from Kampala to Kigali by bus. To have an alternative means that saves you 8 hours and 14 minutes, is definitely a sigh of relief. However, unlike other means of transport, there’s a sheer sense of vulnerability that comes with moving in the air. You’re sitting in a metallic tube hanging 30,000 meters above sea level, clueless of whats going on outside or what yur next course of action is should things go South (pun intended). A football pitch is about 100 meters long, so picture 300 football pitches joined together vertically. That’s how high you are flying.
Turbulence. What a concept! I can’t say with certainty the first time I heard the word turbulence, but I can bet it was through film. Air turbulence is the irregular and often sudden movement of air that causes changes in an aircraft’s altitude and attitude during flight. It can be due to disturbances in the airflow, mechanical effects, changes in wind speed or direction, jet streams, thunderstorms, or the wake left behind by other aircraft.
When the comedian at the comedy club uses turbulence for a punchline, trust me, they will have you in tatters. Throw in a good amount of exaggeration to the joke, and you’ll almost choke on laughter. You know the one time it wasn’t funny? When I felt the plane shake and bump midway the flight from Entebbe to Kigali.
You begin to flash back at the life you’ve led, to appreciate the good highlights and you tell yourself “It was worth it”.
Shortly, the little Spirit that sits in your brain asks; ‘Was it though? Was it?’
‘What about the kid you never had? You die right now, there’s no single genetic trace of you left’.
Your soul begins to wrestle with the intricate theories on the afterlife. “Do i have a shot at heaven or is heaven symbolic of the good times i had while i lived?”
“Sir, would you want anything to drink?” interrupted one of the cabin crew manning a meal trolley loaded with drinks – alcoholic and non-alcoholic.
Me to myself; ‘Thank God. I could use a distraction’. The passion juice preoccupied me for a while. The neighbour to my left, with whom I could have done small talk as a way of keeping my nerves in check, slept through the entire flight. A part of me envied him.
I guess everybody has a breaking point. I have often struggled to wrap my mind around why some of my friends are so uptight about adventure-related activity, often a result of phobia of water and heights among others.
I always wore the carelessness attitude with which I partake in travel experiences like it’s a badge of honour. Whether it’s the two times I have done white water rafting on River Nile, or when I overcame the intensity that bungee jumping is, or ziplining across Lake Bunyonyi without stopping to care that I had no lifejacket on me. It is always long after these adrenaline-filled thrills that I reflect how reckless I get when I travel. Not that it hasn’t put me in trouble with those that care about me. In particular, my ex-girlfriends could write a book.
But it seems something finally broke me. Flying. A combination of heights, the potential risks that films have ably dramatized, and a mind that is in the habit of playing out all kinds of scenarios.
According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), around 20 percent of travellers experience some degree of fear. Of these, a fifth (or 4% of the total) experience phobia, making the very idea of air travel unbearable. Guess who the latest recruit of this statistic is.
Not that the adventure freak in me is phased. Old habits die hard. And Jesus didn’t shed blood on the cross on our behalf so we can succumb to fear. Which is why I won’t stop to think twice if ever a window opens for an air ballooning or sky diving adventure.
