Just a 3 day delay and we hit the night shift. Khartoum 1980.

In February 1980, I had persuaded my good BA/JFK mate Carolyn that we should join a small group to go to The Sudan and see the practically stone-age and near naked Nuba people before they disappeared off the face of this earth.  The trip started in Khartoum.  To make the dates work best, we managed to fix Swissair tickets, so just JFK ZRH GVA ATH KRT. 

The transatlantic worked easily as a B747, but we were down to an elderly DC-8 for the once a week flight to KRT.  The SR staff in ZRH were having finger trouble with the system, as they had just bought in to Boadecia, the BA system and it was challenging them.  Getting us onloaded was a problem.  When she realized they did not quite know what to do, Carolyn, who had been using the system for years, was able to lean over the counter, so basically the keyboard was upside down and she showed them the entry that got us fixed.  Just a bit of real interline cooperation. 

We made it to KRT, along with a dreadful 12 years old UNMIN with a cold, who sneezed and sniffed LOUDLY the whole way there. The plan was the group would fly next morning to Juba, in the south of the country, tickets for which were included in our expedition.  Being unsophisticated hicks from New York, we knew nothing about Sudanese politics and were thus innocent of the fact that the north and the south of Sudan were virtually two different countries and about as close to war as you could be without bullets flying over your heads. 

The group of about 12 all duly showed up at the domestic terminal for our one hour flight south.  We are told that it is delayed and ‘come back tonight’… that was about as much info as there was.  We returned to a small hotel in KRT and kill time by looking at the confluence of the Blue and the White Niles, which happens right there. That is about IT for KRT sightseeing.   At 2000, we returned to the airport.  There is still doubt about the flight so we decamped to what was called the ‘restaurant’ upstairs to sit it out.  The restaurant had nice hard chairs and was where all Sudanese flies go to die. It also had a good cat population. We sat there all night. One of our group, a tall and thin Austrian, wearing a very black raincoat, was christened Doom, as he thought out loud about our situation and it was not good. (Diversion here.  About 10 years later, I am at a camel festival in Northern India and who is there ?  Doom, still wearing his raincoat.)

The airport was also being rebuilt around us so the noise and smells of building materials and concrete mixers added to the charm.  In the dawn, we climbed a staircase to the flat roof so that we could watch the sunrise.  We were joined there by a group of Norwegian missionaries, also on our flight, who saw the sunrise as very religious and informed us all of ‘The Glory of God’.  They were spouting all this over the locals, who had their prayer mats out and hopefully did not speak Norwegian-accented English. 

We returned to our hotel and went to bed.  Basically, it was rinse and repeat for another night.  Walking around town made us appreciate not living there.  One diversion for the young men was to look through the bushes and then the chain link fence around the Hilton Hotel pool.  This usually had a few bikini-clad BA crew sunning themselves.  The boys were, shall we say, very hands on at the sight.  BOAC still taking good care of you.

As KRT received a 2-3 times a week VC-10, arriving at something like 0330, one night Carolyn and I did manage to talk our way to a sort of ramp office and met the lonely looking BA guy, in his exceedingly bleak surroundings.  He came from the pool of keen young lads who would go off and wave the flag in strange places and he looked completely ready to quit.  The office was one of those gloomy rooms, lit by a high on the wall neon tube.  It was also very hot and the mosquitoes buzzed angrily against the window.  The only glamour was an old and torn BOAC poster on the wall. All the stuffing had been knocked out of this poor man and he was counting the days to escaping.  

It was only on the third morning, after we had consumed yet more fried eggs (it appeared that this was the only dish in the restaurant), that we were given boarding cards.   Carolyn and I realized this was a once a day flight so now they had three days’ worth of delayed passengers intending to board one very, very clapped out Sudan Airways B737-200.   We circulated the plans to our fellow pax and told them the moment the door to the ramp looked like it was going to be opened then we had to be there, elbows already out at right angles and be prepared to run to the aircraft.   This turned out to be a good idea.  We were all onboard and many others were not.    

We basically then drove and camped from the south of the country to the north and ended up back in KRT.  Carolyn and I were concerned about the once a week DC-8 that would get us out of there.  Somehow we managed to get checked in and through immigration and there was the aircraft, with tables set up half way between the building and it.  It was the cabin crew who did the security check, based on the Sudan’s poor record of nasty things happening on planes, but we all managed to get on board, including the miserable UNMIN from two weeks before, who still had a runny nose and never stopped deep-sniffing.    

At the stop in ATH, they took the two of us off the a/c as technically full from there, but after 30 mins, we were told we could go back to our seats. 

The UNMIN had disappeared and for a long time after, we wondered how his cold was doing.