The next mission on the HOA was to Entebbe, Uganda. The first stop was Dira Dawa, Ethiopia in the mountains of northern Ethiopia. I have written about the airport in a previous post, but this time was a different experience. The flight is a quick one, only 45 minutes from the DJ.

What made this visit different was the Rhesus monkeys that came onto the tarmac to visit us. It was pretty cool seeing the monkeys running around. I took a lot of pictures and I can't tell who is more interested in whom. Here we are a war machine and we're running supplies to soldiers who are engaged in fighting and a bunch of grown men act like kids at the sight of monkeys! On this high desert plateau, at an airport with little activity, exists a group of primates who seem pretty content and protected. One of them had a baby attached to her belly and she came right up to one of the guys and took food out of his hand. Most of them got within two feet of a group of ten people!! It was like being at a zoo with no bars.

The ground time was short and we soon left the monkeys behind, and took some with us (some of our passengers acted like monkeys), for Entebbe. The cargo compartment was empty except for 20 cases of water that were broken down off a pallet and floor loaded. We assumed that when we arrived at Entebbe we'd pick up a lot of stuff like we had done previously. Once again we were basing our assumptions off of the past. And once again we were absolutely wrong.

We arrived at Entebbe and were parked on the UN ramp. A Navy representative met us and his crew downloaded the water. After that we waited for the load and nothing arrived. The Navy Commander informed us that we had absolutely no cargo and no passengers to carry back. Say what? Nothing? Unbelievable!!

We had flown 3.4 hours down and had another 4 hours on our return leg. The total fuel burn was around 39000 lbs of Jet A-1. Divide that by 6.8 lbs per gallon and you get roughly 5700 gallons of fuel. The going rate of Jet A-1 in Africa is around 5.80 a gallon. That's about 33000 dollars in gas alone spent to get 20 cases of bottled water to a forward operating base next to the second largest freshwater lake in the world. WOW!!! If we shipped it via DHL it probably would have cost 1000 dollars. Had we bought the bottles outright in Kampala it probably would have cost 500 dollars. The US government just spent 60 times what it cost just to ship freshwater next to a large freshwater lake.

This is the part of my job that I can't stand. Someone with a little rank seems to think that it's pretty damn important to waste taxpayers money. I could write a thousand posts of all the money spent, as witnessed by the crews that fly the tangible objects of this spending spree, on things that seem out of place in a war zone. A couch to this base, workout equipment to that one, water over here, expired MRE's flown from one base back to a larger one just to be tossed in a burn pit. Yet we took years to properly armor vehicles and by then the enemy got way fuckin' smarter and found out how to increase the explosive yield that made vehicles like the MRAP just another taxpayer boondogle. I keep hearing the haunting words of that idiot Rumsfeld, "you don't go to war with the army you want, you go with the army you have." Dumb. If you believe that either war is justified in it's current or former state or that it's been executed, at any point, by any president, successfully or properly, check yourself in immediately to the nearest mental health facility because your delusional.

If the previous sentence insults you, you should feel ashamed for insulting those of us intelligent enough to open our eyes and say, "who the fuck needs a leather couch in a war zone?" I just read an article about how one platoon lost half their members defending an indefensible, small base in the mountains of Afghanistan. The enemy attacked right on schedule and knew when and where they were patrolling. My wish for the troops is that Americans really asked what is going on there and giving them the support they need to execute the mission as it unfolds. That means no putting me in harms way so some idiot can get some mundane item, or making me fly a mission that is completely uneccessary.

Having made that speech, I'll continue with the rest of the story.

We couldn't leave Entebbe early because the runway was NOTAM'd out of service for a few hours while crews removed excessive rubber from the runway. Too much rubber on the runway causes it to be slicker than normal and reduces our braking effectiveness. We knew when we left that we'd be able to land at midnight so we planned accordingly. I took that opportunity to call my wife and parents on the sat phone.

At the accorded time we fired up the motors and proceeded to make our way back to DJ for a midnight arrival. When Nairobi passed us off to Dira Dawa controllers, they informed us that we could not land in DJ as the runway would not be open until 0030. That's 30 minutes later than we were scheduled. NO midnight chow!!!! We haven't had it the whole trip. We have been sooooo Djibouti'd on this trip that we became accustomed to being screwed. So, we pulled the power WAAAAY back as if we were flying search and rescue and proceeded to entertain ourselves. I will not divulge exactly how we wasted our time crawling to DJ, but suffice to say we didn't fly past any checkpoints, or miss any radio calls. As soon as we came within range of DJ controllers we heard planes flying!!! What the F over? It turns out Dira Dawa gave us incorrect information. Suprise, African controllers had no clue about something and we actually listened.The power was pushed up immediately and we landed well after midnight with no hot chow to be had. Unbelievable. We fly more than seven hours for a little water, don't get a hot meal, and get lied to by people who have no clue how to flow air traffic. Bottled water next to a freshwater lake, 33000 dollars, Pulling the power back because an Ethi controller is incompetent, 10000 dollars, flying in Africa: PRICELESS!!!

Next in the rotation, Assault on Kenya Two!!