I have a vague memory of us discussing this years ago - maybe on Flickr, or when we met in London? But I fear for the life of me I shall never be able to remember the girl's name. Sorry, woman's name. But I know someone I could ask. I'll let you know if I get anywhere. She would have graduated from Cambridge, probably anthropology, in 1975.
My foreign forays were far fewer and less heavy-duty than yours, Tony, but you've awakened telephone memories - 'It's only a few inches on the map, old boy'... 'What are your plans for Christmas? Do you have family? Do you have Italian?'....Our triumphs were public but our embarrassments are all our own, and should stay that way (unless, of course, they're funny)...
Strangely enough, I was digging out my old Iran stories when I came across one of our few joint bylines - from Cherbourg, where sea ferry wars had broken out. Were we both there at the same time? I have no recollection at all of that story....
PS - most of my disasters were hilarious - for everyone except me....
Ha, I think that was my first outing in my short career as a foreign correspondent, but I can't remember anything about it, either...journalism is a career very prone to inglorious disasters, though, isn't it?
Luckily the daughters are all coming to France at one point or another this year, so I'm off the hook until next year at least. And who knows where we'll be by then?
You mention that "a light aircraft carrying half a dozen journalists crash-landed on an escarpment above the Rift Valley". Do you know anything more about that accident?
It actually made a short (but rather garbled) news story in the Daily Telegraph. Half a dozen of us had chartered a six or eight seat twinprop to fly up to Tororo on the Uganda border. On the way up a huge thunderstorm blew up from nowhere in the Rift Valley. The sky turned black in a hurry. Our young Czech pilot decided he wasn't going to fly through it, and told us he was putting down (in what by then was driving rain and very poor visibility) on a grass strip above the valley (I think it was some way northwest of Nakuru). As the DT's story (dictated down the phone by me later to an obviously drunk copytaker who typed 'Tororo' as 'Toronto') put it: "The plane overshot the grass runway, smashed its undercarriage on concrete blocks and careered 200 yards across a field before coming to a halt in a ditch."
When we emerged we saw what had happened: the starboard propellor had broken off when the wheels beneath it collapsed; the port prop was still running full power. We had completed an in elegant swerve to the right, thereby dodging a ramshackle hangar that might have killed us. Mercifully there was no fire when we finally tilted into the ditch. None of us were hurt but we'd been well and truly shaken, not stirred....
They eventually sent another plane to pick us up. I vaguely remember that one of us opted to continue to Nairobi by taxi; the rest of us decided that two plane crashes the same day were unlikely. Believe it or not, all this transpired the day after I had crashed my car en route to my migratory baboon lunch. I had intended to continue to Tororo after the lunch but ended up flying there instead....
As you know I don’t remember anecdotes - at least not anodyne ones like crash landings. But I do remember one incident on that road between Nakuru and Tororo. Or Toronto, wherever. I must have been 11 or 12, I think. In those days the road had not been tarred for long and was still narrow enough that approaching trucks clearly occupied all the relevant real estate. The road would narrow further as it went over bridges (which had been built in the days of murrum and graders). In those days the traffic was a tiny trickle - a few vehicles up and down every hour. I was in the car with my mum and bro as we approached a bridge at which there was a car in the ditch. There was also a lot of blood. We were soon racing back towards Nakuru with a woman in the passenger seat who was mercifully still conscious, judging by the invective, and holding what remained of her right arm, which she’d had resting out of the window as she drove off the bridge just as an approaching truck decided to share the one-lane bridge with her. She was still more or less awake when we got to the hospital. She was in a bad way, though. My bro, who was about 5, remembers it all vividly. I’m rather glad that I only know it happened.
Bit of a shocker at that age. No wonder it sticks in your mind. Oddly, what I remember most about the migratory baboon story is extracting myself from the wreckage of the car and spotting a mud hut some way off. I staggered over and would have knocked on the door if the hut had had one. An African woman emerged. "Excuse me," I said, "could I possibly borrow your phone?" She didn't speak English, of course. Nor was the hut wired for modern life. We looked at each other helplessly for a moment, and I continued my stagger down the road...
Who was your "old university friend who was conducting a study of baboon migration in a wild corner of the Kenyan bush"? I might know her.
I have a vague memory of us discussing this years ago - maybe on Flickr, or when we met in London? But I fear for the life of me I shall never be able to remember the girl's name. Sorry, woman's name. But I know someone I could ask. I'll let you know if I get anywhere. She would have graduated from Cambridge, probably anthropology, in 1975.
My foreign forays were far fewer and less heavy-duty than yours, Tony, but you've awakened telephone memories - 'It's only a few inches on the map, old boy'... 'What are your plans for Christmas? Do you have family? Do you have Italian?'....Our triumphs were public but our embarrassments are all our own, and should stay that way (unless, of course, they're funny)...
Strangely enough, I was digging out my old Iran stories when I came across one of our few joint bylines - from Cherbourg, where sea ferry wars had broken out. Were we both there at the same time? I have no recollection at all of that story....
PS - most of my disasters were hilarious - for everyone except me....
Ha, I think that was my first outing in my short career as a foreign correspondent, but I can't remember anything about it, either...journalism is a career very prone to inglorious disasters, though, isn't it?
I hope you are not planning a return to the US of A any time soon. Ripping post!
Luckily the daughters are all coming to France at one point or another this year, so I'm off the hook until next year at least. And who knows where we'll be by then?
Perfect.
You mention that "a light aircraft carrying half a dozen journalists crash-landed on an escarpment above the Rift Valley". Do you know anything more about that accident?
It actually made a short (but rather garbled) news story in the Daily Telegraph. Half a dozen of us had chartered a six or eight seat twinprop to fly up to Tororo on the Uganda border. On the way up a huge thunderstorm blew up from nowhere in the Rift Valley. The sky turned black in a hurry. Our young Czech pilot decided he wasn't going to fly through it, and told us he was putting down (in what by then was driving rain and very poor visibility) on a grass strip above the valley (I think it was some way northwest of Nakuru). As the DT's story (dictated down the phone by me later to an obviously drunk copytaker who typed 'Tororo' as 'Toronto') put it: "The plane overshot the grass runway, smashed its undercarriage on concrete blocks and careered 200 yards across a field before coming to a halt in a ditch."
When we emerged we saw what had happened: the starboard propellor had broken off when the wheels beneath it collapsed; the port prop was still running full power. We had completed an in elegant swerve to the right, thereby dodging a ramshackle hangar that might have killed us. Mercifully there was no fire when we finally tilted into the ditch. None of us were hurt but we'd been well and truly shaken, not stirred....
They eventually sent another plane to pick us up. I vaguely remember that one of us opted to continue to Nairobi by taxi; the rest of us decided that two plane crashes the same day were unlikely. Believe it or not, all this transpired the day after I had crashed my car en route to my migratory baboon lunch. I had intended to continue to Tororo after the lunch but ended up flying there instead....
As you know I don’t remember anecdotes - at least not anodyne ones like crash landings. But I do remember one incident on that road between Nakuru and Tororo. Or Toronto, wherever. I must have been 11 or 12, I think. In those days the road had not been tarred for long and was still narrow enough that approaching trucks clearly occupied all the relevant real estate. The road would narrow further as it went over bridges (which had been built in the days of murrum and graders). In those days the traffic was a tiny trickle - a few vehicles up and down every hour. I was in the car with my mum and bro as we approached a bridge at which there was a car in the ditch. There was also a lot of blood. We were soon racing back towards Nakuru with a woman in the passenger seat who was mercifully still conscious, judging by the invective, and holding what remained of her right arm, which she’d had resting out of the window as she drove off the bridge just as an approaching truck decided to share the one-lane bridge with her. She was still more or less awake when we got to the hospital. She was in a bad way, though. My bro, who was about 5, remembers it all vividly. I’m rather glad that I only know it happened.
Bit of a shocker at that age. No wonder it sticks in your mind. Oddly, what I remember most about the migratory baboon story is extracting myself from the wreckage of the car and spotting a mud hut some way off. I staggered over and would have knocked on the door if the hut had had one. An African woman emerged. "Excuse me," I said, "could I possibly borrow your phone?" She didn't speak English, of course. Nor was the hut wired for modern life. We looked at each other helplessly for a moment, and I continued my stagger down the road...
I keep hoping that with your experience you'd be telling us that things aren't quite as bad as they seem. You have crushed my hope.
Look at it this way, G - they're going to be bad before they get better...