Twenty minutes to
Zanzibar
By Fatima I. Bapumia
“Twenty minutes to Zanzibar,” said a
tall dark and moderately handsome pilot to the passengers boarded on a
thirteen-sitter charter plane going from Dar es Salaam to Zanzibar. But most of
the seats were unoccupied; I was one of only three people on board the plane.
Filled with the excitement of going to Zanzibar, an island representing an
integral part of my history, I decided to sit right behind the pilot so I could
see everything that he was doing.
I looked out of the window, on the tarmac road and suddenly a touch of fear hit
me. Is the engine all right? I asked myself. While I was getting carried away
with my wild imaginations, the pilot turned right, and together with the
aircraft my guts got twisted and I felt like throwing up. But where?!
Then I asked myself “can I trust the pilot, am I going to be part of a story in
series of John Grisham?” I checked my cell phone and made sure I had enough
credits to call home in case of trouble.
Meanwhile, the immediate trouble was wearing the seat belt. Just as the aircraft
began to move I pulled the belt from the corner of the seat, rolled it across my
chest and tried to buckle it, but it didn’t work! I tried one more time, but
failed again. By the time I decided to give up on the belt and turn around, I
realized I was high above the ground.
Everything looked so small and tiny and the few people I could see from four
thousand feet above the ground reminded me of a fairy tale I heard as a child of
a little Tom Thumb. Diverged into the land of fairy tales, I looked at the
clouds outside the window and just as I was thinking how wonderful would it be
living in the clouds, the plane shook.
Back to the real world, I told myself reaching for the belt again, hence
initiating the Herculean task of wearing the seat belt, which once more proved a
failure.
Now that I had given up on the belt I tried to concentrate on what the pilot was
doing. He was just fiddling on a big board full of weird looking switches. There
were switches with red lights, some with yellow and lots of them with green
lights. There were some other switches at the top as well. Bored with the
switches, I looked at my watch and already ten minutes had gone. Halfway there,
I said to myself.
Having heard about the curses of the Bermuda Triangle I felt butterflies in my
stomach; I looked out of the window and the water looked friendly. Still, I
tried to look for an emergency exit door and a parachute. Behind me, the two
people who had boarded the plane with me were fast asleep. I hope they are
alive, I thought. And at that point the phrase “caught between the devil and the
deep sea” started to make sense.
Once more I tried to fix the belt and hurt my finger in the course but the
buckle was just not friendly to me, and so I closed my eyes for a few minutes
keeping my sixth sense active (not so sure what that is) in case I needed to
pull a stunt. However, I couldn’t keep my eyes closed for long.
Just when I was about to ask the pilot to help me with the belt I saw the plane
approaching dry land, filled with palm trees. I am home, I said to my self and
begun to enjoy the remaining minutes of my journey, admiring an aerial view of
the spice island. And suddenly, 20 minutes after take-off, the pilot’s voice
sounded: “Welcome to Zanzibar” he said.