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The Tempest By Jannie Matthysen "Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gabardine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be past." Trinculo the Jester, from The Tempest by William Shakespeare.  I never cared much for the scrawls of Shakespeare. To me, this was always a pain to endure in order to pass some English Literature exam. Once Mrs. Klingenberg, our English teacher, in a fit of rage hissingly commanded me to present my essay on "Idioms & Proverbs" to the school principal. He promptly laid six of the best on my nether regions when he started reading my take on "Idiots and Prophets". They simply did not understand my version of poetic license. Just another day in English class...This scene briefly flashed in my mind, but the memory that kept returning was that of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". The characters were shipwrecked on a desert island in a terrible storm. I can still remember being uncharacteristically enthralled by the escapades of the playful spirit Ariel, Caliban the grotesque beast, the and the beautiful Miranda. I recall having actually read "The Tempest" from cover to cover. A flash of lightning jolts me back to reality. The rain is falling much harder now, and visibility is down to a few hundred meters. The Robinson R44 strains in the strong turbulent conditions. My accomplice looks a lot paler than I remembered. What did I do to end up here again? The day had started with much excitement as I was asked to fly a brand new Robinson R44 from Wonderboom Airport to Cape Town. Accompanying me would be the helicopter's proud new owner, Eric. We agreed to take our time and make the flight as much of an education as possible as Eric had never flown a helicopter before. He decided that he would purchase the helicopter and start his PPL training immediately thereafter. The long ferry flight was to be his introduction to helicopters and first unofficial lesson. What a lesson it would turn out to be... Eric and I agreed to fly the "scenic route" which would take us from Pretoria to Durban, then along the coast all the way to Cape Town. The plan was to spread the trip over two days, and we would overnight wherever we eventually ran out of daylight. This should have been around East London or Port Elizabeth. We wanted to depart before 10:00 from Wonderboom, but as Murphy always dictates, we only started the new Lycoming at around 13:00. The formalities of taking ownership of a new aircraft just could not be rushed. Having only met hours before, I was relieved that Eric and I had much to talk about. He was, like me, a petrol-head of note and displayed a very deep understanding of all things mechanical. We discussed cars, bikes, aeroplanes, and we had completed a detailed analysis the R44's systems before we even reached Heidelberg. I had a niggling concern about the weather forecast. Summer on the Highveld and the route to Durban would inevitably produce a few thunderstorms. The later you depart, the greater your chances of encountering a few of these rumbling giants. After the first twenty minutes of our flight we had finally negotiated the maze of airspaces around the Johannesburg area. We were able to set course direct for Durban. I was very pleased to see a very healthy tailwind of more than 20 knots propelling the Robinson to an admirable groundspeed of around 130 knots! Eric sat grinning like a fool. He was convinced that he owned the fastest R44 ever produced. I soon realized that the forecast thunderstorms were the reason for our rapid progress. Ahead of us lay a line of black mass as far as we could see to our left and right. We decided that we could afford to waste some time looking for a way around these cells as we were ahead of schedule due to the favourable winds. The new Garmin would assist us in always keeping track of the nearest airfield or town if we had to make a hasty diversion. "The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray..." The strong winds seemed to suck us into the storms much faster than we anticipated. Before we knew it, I had grabbed the controls again and Eric was staring wide-eyed at the crazy person next to him. The world around us turned very dark, very quickly. Our own Tempest had begun. I tried to steer clear of the weather, keep sight of the ground, handle the turbulence, and convince both of us that we were going to be OK. A cacophony of thunder and lightning conspired to elevate the stress levels in the cockpit. I did not have enough hands of my own, and this left me shouting instructions at Eric on how to find our way on the GPS. We were within 30 miles of Pietermaritzburg, and I hoped that if we could only get down the escarpment, the weather is very likely to abate. The frantic activity in the cockpit was suddenly turned up another notch as I realized that we had not checked our fuel status for a while. A quick mental calculation confirmed that we had to land... soon! Our scud running had consumed more time than expected, and we were no closer to any form of civilization. I mentioned to Eric that if we don't find a suitable place to land, the open savanna dotted with reed huts would be our abode for the night. I announced a 5 minute deadline for landing. We were both silently contemplating the the cold, wet night in the back seat of the R44, or the aforementioned huts. Neither of us voiced our preferences. Minutes later we flew over a ridge and noticed as small town. We promptly touched down on the local sports field, our desert island, but our relief was rather short-lived as we had no idea where we were. Our destination was not even indicated on our new Garmin. We felt like shipwrecked mariners on a foreign shore. A yellow van with the words "SAP Weenen" pulled up next to the helicopter. I braved the rain and left the relative comfort of the Robinson to chat to the policeman driving the van. "Where are we?" I asked standing in the downpour. He grinned. "Weenen." I did not know that the place actually existed. I remember from my school history lessons that hundreds of people had been killed here by Zulu warriors during the Great Trek. The town's name is the Dutch word for "Weeping". I felt a cold shiver. The policeman offered us a lift, and within seconds we were crowded into the cabin of his vehicle with our luggage on our laps. We soon learnt that there were no coffee shops, no car rental offices, no hotels, and certainly no Avgas in Weenen. The policeman dropped us at the only known accommodation in the area: a converted farm shed on the outskirts of town. The shed had only two bedrooms, one of which had already been spoken for. The bedrooms shared a lounge and bathroom. Eric and I wasted no time in making a series of telephone calls to get an update on the weather, but more importantly, to secure a drum of Avgas. We finally got hold a farmer nearby who had some fuel to spare, but could only deliver it the next morning. We resigned to our fate that we were going to spend the night sharing the only available room for rent in Weenen. When Eric and I first arrived at the shed, we noticed the one room had a small bag on the bed and a big Bible next to it. We made ourselves relatively comfortable in the other room. Our neighbour arrived back to his room a while later. He was a small, pale man with a nervous demeanor. We greeted the stranger, but our salutations were met with nothing but a wild stare from his dark eyes. We continued our planning for the next day... our new friend knelt on his bed and started murmuring from the Bible. Eric said nothing, but we both rolled our eyes in weird amazement. Dinner was a strange affair. There were no restaurants in Weenen,but we were given directions to the local "bush-pub". To say that the place was a dump, would be kind. The food looked and smelt rather weird, so we decided to spend the evening eating or drinking anything that came our way in some form of sealed container. We simply did not trust anything else. A packet of crisps and a few beers represented dinner. All the locals we chatted to had their own version of a hard-luck existence. They were all form elsewhere, recently divorced, recently released, or recently rehabilitated. No-one came from Weenen, but they all called this dreaded place home. "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows" Shakespeare must have known exactly what we were experiencing in this forsaken hamlet in Africa. We could not wait to return to the relative safety of our shed. Both Eric and I thought that we had consumed enough beers to fall asleep and make the night of misery before us a brief, blurred memory. As we approached the shed, we noticed through his open curtains that our neighbour was still, bible in hand, murmuring on his bed. We rushed our bathroom procedures to retire to the safety of our room. We were exhausted, but our neighbour's chants meant that we were not able to drift off immediately. A loud, raging voice tore us from sleep at around midnight. I thought Caliban himself had arrived to vent his temper on our poor neighbour. That must be what he's been praying about all day! We heard three voices arguing and fighting in the lounge next door. Furniture was being flung about, and I was sure that I could hear a few punches being thrown. The language sounded like nothing we'd heard before. We rushed to the door, and realized with a certain degree of terror that we could not lock the door as there was no key. We were not keen to get involved in the local violence. I dropped to the floor to look underneath the door at what the commotion was about. I expected to see three pairs of scuffling feet, but what I saw almost made me swallow my tongue. I saw only one pair... but the voices kept raging and arguing... the furniture kept moving. Eric saw the same thing. With superhuman strength he lifted the rusted fridge in our room and wedged it against the door. We looked for another way out, but the only window was convincingly secured with steel bars. We quietly summed up the situation: the neighbour is fighting with himself in three different voices after reading from the Bible all day. There was no way we could leave the room. Hopefully the fridge would be too heavy for the neighbours to force open our door. We agreed that it is inappropriate for one to take sides in matters of domestic disagreement. Especially if there is just one person involved. We must have eventually drifted off to sleep amidst the raucous. The next morning we carefully listened and surveyed under the door for any sign of Caliban before quietly removing the fridge. The lounge was neat and clean. There was no sign of any of the neighbours, and his bed was neatly made. We rushed back to the helicopter where the Avgas thankfully arrived while we were busy getting the R44 ready. I don't recall too many other details of that morning, but I know that the sky was a beautiful blue. One of my all-time greatest feelings in a cockpit was climbing away from Weenen into the crisp, clear sky. "Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air; And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep." |
