Air Maybe or Is It Normal To Experience Frequent Brushes of Death While in Africa?

Not only did I have to run for my life from a herd of 50 elephants (please see my last post), I had a near brush with death on Air Tanzania. 

Normally, the simple act of boarding an airplane would not be considered adventure travel. But flying, like all forms of transportation in the developing world, is notoriously dangerous for the simple reason that there are no rules to follow. If airplane maintenance schedules do exist, there is no guarantee that they’re adhered to with any sort of regularity, or at all for that matter. So there is little comfort in taking a flight with Air Tanzania, an airline so unreliable and precarious that Tanzanians themselves refer to it as "Air Labda," Swahilit for "Air Maybe."

I was on my way to Dar es Salaam via Kilimanjaro International Airport with Moyo and Eunice, co-workers from the African Wildlife Foundation in Arusha, where I was working as a volunteer. The three of us were securely seat-belted in a row near the rear of the plane as it rumbled down the runway, gaining speed for take-off.

Suddenly, I heard a loud pop! The pilot quickly slammed on the brakes triggering an earsplitting noise of grinding gears and metal parts that sounded as though a pack of rabid hyenas had attacked the engine and was gnawing it to shreds.

But we kept going; the plane refused to stop.

I clutched onto my arm rests in a white-knuckled death-grip preparing for our certain demise when we barreled through the barbed wire barrier at the end of the runway, took a nosedive into the bottomless trench beyond and burst into flames.

After what seemed like an impossible amount of time and a miraculously generous length of runway, we did stop. All of the passengers looked around at each other in the absolute silence that usually follows near disaster, where seconds seem like minutes. “Whew, we made it!” I remember thinking.

But then the cabin filled with the acrid smell of smoke and I saw flames shooting out from underneath one of the wings. The engine was on fire! Everyone on board was no doubt gripped by the same terrifying thought—our plane was nanoseconds away from exploding.

The steward seized the intercom and began shrieking as if his testicles had unexpectedly been clamped in a vice, "Evacuate! Evacuate! Evacuate!"

Utter pandemonium erupted.

People crammed into the aisles, pushing and shoving and climbing over each other to get out. The strap of my purse was caught on something under the seat. I yanked at it for what seemed like an eternity until it broke free. But then, as I turned to the aisle, I was faced with a solid mass of African men and women, who proved more difficult to push past than wall of granite.

After finally squeezing my way into the aisle, my near hysteria increased when I saw that I was going to have to slide down the chute to escape.

Like a disembodied voice in a dream that sounds very far away, I heard someone shouting, "Shoes! Shoes!” What about my shoes? Only later did I find out that we were supposed to take off our shoes before going down the chute. I hopped down. My skirt slid up beyond my waist and the friction between the rubber and my bare skin scraped my legs and behind raw. I hit the tarmac and ran like the wind, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and the ticking time bomb behind me.

Moyo, Eunice and I met up far out in the field. The three of us stood there breathing heavily, too stunned to speak. As I turned back toward the plane, I saw hundreds of papers floating in the breeze along with shoes, books, purses, briefcases, and hats scattered everywhere on the runway.

There's nothing like a brush with death to pull people together. When we arrived back in the waiting room of the airport, it was a celebration. Families and friends were huddled together wearing relieved smiles. Sworn enemies were hugging and kissing one other. Well, I’m not positive about that, but my supervisor Eunice and I, not exactly on warm and friendly terms before this, were now clasped arm and arm recounting our getaway down the chute.

“Can you believe, our skirts slid up to our waists?” said Eunice in a voice all giggly and girlish, a woman normally about as giggly and girlish as a sumo wrestler.

The passengers who were seated in the middle of the plane were the ones that had really gotten the raw end of the deal. They had been forced to de-plane via the wings, by jumping twenty feet onto the tarmac. Several were injured, including one man who suffered a broken leg and sprained spine.

One family with a tiny infant and toddler was having a joyous reunion, extraordinary under the circumstances since the wife had grabbed the toddler, but the husband had jumped off the plane alone, leaving the baby behind to die in the explosion or be rescued by a passing good Samaritan. If I were his wife, I would've been searching for the nearest lawyer to initiate divorce proceedings, but I suppose some people are more forgiving than others.

Of course all of this could have been avoided. Personally, I blame the steward. What happened to that calm, cool demeanor that airline employees are supposed to maintain under any and all circumstances? Where was that droning voice that normally puts everyone to sleep, who could’ve made an announcement like, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're experiencing a few mechanical problems, so if you would calmly proceed to the nearest exit …"?

Later that night, safely back in Arusha, I told my housemates Katie and Stacy about my harrowing experience. Apparently, I’d failed to adequately express the true terror I’d felt since Stacy's reaction was, "Wow! You got to slide down the chute! Cool! I've always wanted to do that."

"Was it fun?" Katie asked.

"Not really. It was actually very terrified…" I started to explain.

"Good old Air Labda," said Stacy.

The National Park no one has ever heard of...Lassen Volcanic National Park, California

Fifteen Minutes Can Last Forever

I originally published this essay in Sand in My Bra and Other Misadventures:  Funny Women Write From the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides 2003).  It is a true story, although when it happened to me, it certainly wasn't very funny at the time.

The day that I nearly drowned after my raft flipped on rapid number one of twenty-six mostly Class V rapids, and I was sucked and held under the Zambezi River for what seemed like hours, I had assumed this was my one brush with death on my first trip to Africa. But just one week later, in pursuit of what a travel brochure had promised as the "complete safari experience," I found out how wrong my assumption had been.

I was on the final leg of a six-week tour that I'd taken with Sam, a friend from the States. We'd spent four days at Kayila Lodge, a private safari camp on the banks of the Lower Zambezi River in Zambia. We'd waited until our last day to take our first walking safari into the African bush with Rolf, our guide and host.

On the jetty over coffee that morning, Rolf, a Zimbabwean, lambasted the current political situation in his country of birth. He had no use for animal rights activists who threatened his part-time livelihood, big-game hunting. Nor did he care for those "damn liberals" who wanted to redistribute land by taking it from the white settlers and giving it back to the natives.

But I wasn't interested in Rolf's politics. Oozing testosterone, he gave the impression that a barehanded scuffle with a charging Cape buffalo or a thrashing crocodile was an everyday occurrence and just part of his job. Through his square-jawed, self-assured manner, he inspired complete confidence in everything he did from serving drinks to telling bush stories late into the starry evenings. Here was a man who could deliver me unharmed from the jaws of a carnivorous beast. In short, he was the quintessential man's man and safari guide.

But it wasn't just Rolf's masculine attributes that took away any trepidation I might have had about setting off into the African outback on foot. It was my ignorance. For some reason I had the whimsical notion that a walking safari would be similar to taking a stroll around the zoo, only the cages would be missing. The animals would certainly keep a respectful distance while I could admire them at my leisure. I couldn't possibly be in any real danger.

We set out early, driving a short distance into the bush in the Land Rover. Along the way, we met up with Warrix, a game scout for Kayila. Despite the fact that this grown man was the size of a young teenaged boy, he seemed formidable, armed with an AK-47 and two strings of ammunition strapped bandit-like across his narrow chest. He joined us for our trek.

We drove farther into the bush. Rolf stopped the jeep. He grabbed a .22 and a .50 caliber rifle from the trunk, tossing the .22 to Sam. We started walking.

I heard an elephant trumpet in the distance. We walked toward the sound to a small rise and saw fifty elephants in the clearing below us. It was exhilarating to be only several hundred feet away from these lumbering giants. I asked Rolf if the elephants knew we were there. He said they didn't know and that he'd hoped it would stay that way. Because of poaching, elephants have learned to associate the scent of humans with extreme danger.

But then the wind shifted.

One of the bull elephants caught our scent, panicked and trumpeted. Rolf whipped his head around and said only one word as we locked eyes, "Run!"

Run? What do you mean run? It took me several seconds to process the fact that I was in grave danger. The person I'd entrusted my life with, Mr. Oozing Testosterone, was clearly scared stiff. It took me another second or two to realize that three men armed with one weapon each couldn't do much against a herd of fifty stampeding elephants that can reach speeds of up to thirty miles an hour. But under the circumstances, with my options being severely limited, I ran.

As quickly as possible, we climbed over vines and roots, waded through thigh-level grass, skirted around bushes, and ducked under low-hanging branches. Rolf, in the lead, constantly ordered us to stay together but I kept falling behind. My heart was pounding and adrenaline coursed through my body. I heard them but couldn't see them. The sound of elephants trumpeting and charging through the bush is deafening.

One part of me knew they were coming after us, but another part of me refused to believe it. My mind played little games telling me that all I had to do was to run for a few minutes and then I would be perfectly safe. I ran as fast as I could, but like the classic nightmare where a monster is chasing you, I felt as though I was wading through quicksand.

We reached a clearing. Rolf screamed for us to drop to the ground. We dropped. Lying in the dirt, the ground reverberated, red dust swam through the air choking me. My heart beat against the earth. I could see the elephants just sixty feet away crashing through the underbrush.

We moved out again passing a tsetse fly trap. We were about twenty feet beyond the trap when Rolf screamed for us to run back to it. We stood next to the tattered cloth soaked in poison, suspended from two rods. Rolf was hoping that this flimsy piece of fabric would somehow mask the smell of four sweating, terrified human beings from fifty frenzied elephants with their acute sense of smell. I couldn't have felt more exposed had I appeared on the Larry King Live show naked.

When the thundering died down, we ran to a nearby cluster of trees. Rolf told us the herd had separated into three groups and that we were almost completely surrounded. This was information I definitely didn't need to hear at that moment since I was in a state of near-hypoxia. I did the only thing I could. I leaned my head against a tree and prayed with every fiber of my being, muttering over and over like a crazed lunatic, "Please God, don't let me die."

We had to move out again but I was frozen with fright. Rolf gripped my shoulders, pulled me towards him and held me close. It was a scene straight from a Hollywood action romance flick minus the obligatory passionate kiss and the fact that my hair was plastered to my face with sweat, my eyes bugged out with fear, and I looked like a zombie possessed.

"I know where to shoot an elephant to drop it. I've killed them before. Just stay close. But whatever you do, don't run if an elephant jumps out!" he said.

Elephants jumping out of bushes! I knew they were smart but I didn't know they were capable of hiding, lying in wait, and then launching a planned attack like a platoon of Marines.

We quietly sprinted, ducked, and tiptoed gingerly along the twenty-five-foot-high expanse of bushes, made it past, and continued on. We reached a ten-foot-tall termite mound and stopped there. Rolf said the jeep was nearby and he went off alone to get it. By this time, my emotions and the adrenaline had caught up with me and I started crying. Warrix told me I shouldn't cry because, "Madame did good."

Finally, fifteen minutes after Rolf had first ordered us to run, he drove up in the jeep. It was ten in the morning and we hadn't eaten a thing, but it seemed like the perfect time to start drinking. We each grabbed a forty-ounce Tusker from the cooler tucked under the back seat. I drank mine in about three minutes flat. It had no effect on me. I had another, not even a buzz.

At brunch an hour later, Rolf was back to his swaggering, you-call-that-a-brush-with-death self, although he'd confessed during our drinking binge that he'd had many close calls but none this close. On a scale from one to ten, with a ten described by Rolf as the four of us "looking like pieces of bacon after being gored and stomped to death," we were at nine. He'd almost shot an elephant during our ordeal so we could crawl up against the carcass to mask our smell from the rest of the herd. What a pleasant thought. Exactly how long were we supposed to stay in that position? Until the corpse began rotting and crawling with maggots? Until the vultures picked it clean? For the rest of our lives?

Many people hope for Andy Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame. But if this experience taught me anything, it's to heed the old adage, be careful what you wish for. Sometimes fifteen minutes can last far longer than you want it to. 

There’s a Fine Line Between Passion and Addiction: But does it really matter?

        I knew my life would never be the same the day I named my pet fish after my Latino salsa dance instructor.  I’d christened my saltwater Blue Damsel fish of unknown sex Antonio*.  In a moment of lucid reflection I realized that I had completely lost it.  At least I had little worries that anyone would pity me for having named my pet something mundane like Fred, or Bubbles or please no, a fish called Wanda.

        That is, if anyone ever found out.

        So I kept my fish called Antonio a secret until I discovered that I was not alone in my newfound passion—salsa dancing.

        Looking back, it was the first dip that hooked me. It happened on a dance floor not much bigger than a Spanish tapa in a hot, smoky cigar bar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Virtually no fresh air circulated, a stogie haze coated my skin and clothes, and leering stares from beady-eyed, mustachioed men made me feel naked and self-conscious. 

        I was fifteen minutes into lesson number two with Antonio. I couldn’t get the steps right and was moving about as gracefully as a Holstein.  Plus, with no dance background, I needed to learn important things like maintaining the proper frame and following a man’s lead.  Concentration just to master the basic steps was not something I’d anticipated.  How could I possibly have fun when I needed to think?  And what was I doing in a bar alone at forty years old?  I should be home, married, with 2.2 children, making a soufflé or potpourri or something. 

        And then without warning, Antonio dipped me.  One instant I was vertical, the next my head was just inches from the floor. In one fluid move that had lasted only a few seconds I was changed forever. 

        My ardor for salsa developed rapidly after that first dip.  I started taking lessons twice a week and going out dancing another two nights a week. For the first time in my life I stopped caring about my age.  Before 40, or as I prefer to think of it, B.S., “before salsa”, I’d been dreading the big “4 – 0”.  But now my age truly did feel like nothing more than a number.  In fact, I began to feel like a teenager again.

        I spent the early months like a zealous missionary spreading the gospel of this fantastically fun fountain of youth that I had discovered.  Naturally, I’d attempted to convert my non-salsa friends.  Try it!  It’s incredible, fantastic, better than sex (well, almost).

        But I didn’t win over a single friend.  A few tried it but gave up after a lesson or two.  Could it be that salsa was not for everyone?  But this seemed impossible so I continued to regale them with minute details of my new salsa adventures until one day I realized that they looked bored. Eventually, any semblance of politeness was abandoned.  They begged me to stop talking about what they now referred to as my “dark side.”

         A few months later my 401k mistakenly cashed out.  I held the unexpected five-figure check in my trembling fingers feeling as though I’d won a lottery jackpot.  No doubt this was a message from the universe to spend my life savings on private salsa lessons and sexy salsa clothes. 

         After a year I outgrew Milwaukee’s salsa scene and started traveling one-hundred eighty miles round trip to Chicago to go dancing two nights a week. 

         One night I realized that my passion might be more of an addiction.  My partner and I were under the lights in the center of the dance floor when ten seconds into our dance, my bra unhooked in the back.  I had on a skin-tight flesh colored tank top.  Any movement of the bra and my breasts would be fully exposed.  Of course any sane woman would’ve excused herself immediately to dash to the restroom for an emergency re-adjustment.  But I continued to dance because of the following salient facts:

1)                  “Celos” by Marc Anthony, one of my favorite salsa songs, was playing;

2)                  I was dancing with Javier, one of my favorite partners.  When he dips me the earth moves, making me feel as though I’m starring in a Hollywood movie, having the best sex of my life and eating Godiva chocolates by the pound without gaining weight, all rolled into one incredible feeling;

3)                  If my breasts were bared I certainly wasn’t risking arrest.   In fact, I could attract more dance partners.

          Obviously there was only one alternative.  I kept dancing unconcerned about whether I’d crossed that line between sanity and hopeless obsession. But then, a few weeks later, while using the restroom at my favorite club, I found out that perhaps I wasn’t so crazy after all. 

          “Yeah, my boobs popped out one night,” announced an attractive Latina as she primped in the bathroom mirror.  “I just stuffed ‘em back in and kept dancing.”

            Trying to keep breasts intact and covered while wearing revealing salsa attire is a mystery not yet solved by the laws of physics or Maidenform.  Another night I joined a heated discussion about the pros and cons of duct tape for those flimsy tops for which no brassiere exists. Duct tape works, but almost too well.  It’s almost like smearing breasts with super glue and putting them inside a plaster cast.  The one time I tried it, my breasts were red, raw and wrinkled like prunes when I'd finally removed it.  (I wonder, do the Duct Tape Guys know about this?) 

           Some women use the stick-on silicone cups, but I find they slide off with excessive sweating, something I’d discovered in the middle of a dance at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress last summer when I realized that the left cup was intact, but that the right had slithered down to my navel.

           Over a few months, my two trips a week to Chicago had gradually turned into three.  One night, I took a brief break from dancing to order a bottle of water.  A man at the bar struck up a conversation with me.

           “You drive all the way from Milwaukee just to salsa?” he said in shock.

            “What do you mean ‘just’ and how did you get into this club?” I almost responded.  But I could see in his eyes that he thought I was insane. Self-doubt set in. 

            I sought out and quizzed every salsa regular who was willing to spare a few minutes of dancing time to talk.  I found dozens of people who went out dancing five or six nights a week.  One woman confessed that she owned three hundred pairs of salsa shoes. Another woman had quit law school to become a professional salsa dancer.  A man I often danced with told me that he was taking Pilates for dancers classes five days a week to improve his flexibility for salsa—this was in addition to holding down a full-time job and taking six salsa lessons a week.  Another guy had had an expensive dance studio built in his basement where he took private lessons and held salsa parties.

           Whew, I was okay, clearly not in the same league of insanity as those people.  But I continued to wonder, what was it about salsa that made me love it so?

           Was it simply the release of endorphins?  No. That’s a side benefit realized with regular types of exercise.

           Could it be that salsa is a pure form of communication?  Certainly, no words are necessary to elicit the intense feelings of euphoria and exhilaration experienced while dancing with a partner with whom one shares "salsa chemistry."

           Is it that salsa attracts people from diverse backgrounds and cultures?  I love the fact that salsa appeals to people of all races and I’ve danced with everyone from busboys to brain surgeons.  And best of all, no one cares—it’s all about the dancing. 

            Is it the music?  Just hearing the music makes me want to move whether I’m in my car, kitchen or on the dance floor.  

            After four years of trying to unravel the mystery of why salsa sets my soul on fire, I’ve finally come to understand that it truly doesn’t matter.  Call it a passion, addiction, obsession or infatuation; the bottom line is the still the same.  Salsa is pure joy and fun, not to mention incredibly sexy and calorie-free. 

            So go ahead, lock me up and throw away the key.  I won’t mind, provided I can keep dancing.

*This name has been changed to protect the innocent—the fish, definitely not the instructor.