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today was a first. first time flying a domestic ugandan airline. uganda recently launched its national airline, air uganda. it got cleared just before chogm for flights in/out of nairboi and had its first commercial flight sometime close to that. i considered air uganda for our tickets to zanzibar for christmas ‘cos i heard they were uber-cheap, but i said nuh-uh when i thought about it for oh, 2 seconds. how was i going to make that call to my mom?

uh, hi mom. i’m flying this great ugandan airline. yep, it’s safe. they have a clean safety record, no accidents. well, of course, this is the first flight they’ve ever flown, but still. no accidents.

i don’t buy it, and i don’t think my mom would either. i give air uganda credit, for sure. i just want them to have some more time in the air before i give them my trust. (plus, they don’t fly where i was trying to go.) so instead i opted to fly a local ugandan airline that’s been around for a while - eagle air. they have a daily flight entebbe to arua, which means that i can get to our west nile office in 1.5 hours instead of 8+. thank god. other than mistakenly being told that the flight left at 7am, which meant a 5:15 pickup to make it to the airport on time, it was smooth travels. it was a 21-seater with 10 passengers, pilot, copilot and no frills. the partition between pilot and passengers was minimal, and the takeoff prep consisted entirely of the copilot getting on board, asking everyone if their seatbelts were fastened, shutting the door, and we were taxiing to the runway.

it was a beautiful flight. i can never look out the windows on takeoff/landing on big planes ‘cos i always get nauseous - lucky phil always gets the window seat. the last time i was on a plane this small was flying into lake placid from boston on our honeymoon. ask phil about that sometime. he’s got good pictures of the runway at a drastic angle out the front window of the plane. my poor tummy. then there was the time brooke, phil, and i went up for a joyride around fox lake with troy (my cousin christy’s husband) in his little cessna 4-seater. we landed; i staggered out of the plane and crumpled on the tarmac face-first, spread-eagle where i stayed collecting my stomach for a good 5 minutes. but this morning’s takeoff was nonexistent. with no hiccup at all we were coasting far out over lake victoria then banking northwest across green fields to the left and misty hills to the right. my face was pressed against the window, until i fell asleep (i was awake at 4:45 remember). i dozed on and off; surprisingly woke up once to look down and see…nothing. turns out we were flying south-north directly over lake edward. the landscape noticeably changed as we went further north crossing into west nile, giving a new perspective on a country i’ve gotten to know pretty well by car. then landing in arua we flew directly over our office and did a low flyover of houses - i saw a man showering in his outdoor concrete shower stall, we were so low - before landing on the marram arua airstrip. smooth again.

then to top off the goodness of the flight, my orange patagonia duffle bag magically appeared from out of the nose of the plane. cool. :)