Iris - her early years: IRIS FLIES ACROSS SUDAN

Laura McDermid continues her stories about Iris McCallum's early years in East Africa and the Sudan. In part 1 of this story she recounts how she had to fly a bunch of Belgian Missionaries to Aweil, a city in northwestern South Sudan, from Wilson in Nairobi in her old mate 'ARN', the Piper Aztec 5Y-ARN.

- LAURA MCDERMID

IT WAS A LONG DAY'S FLYING AS, in order to clear customs and refuel, we had to fly to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, a distance of 489 nm, and then a further 343 nm to Aweil.

We departed Juba at 13h30 local time for Bor. The soft, superheated air rising from the runway offered so little body for the wings that we ascended reluctantly, seeming actually to sag when the wheels broke ground and sometimes barely surmounting the oncoming trees.

As expected, the flight was rough. I heard one of my passengers vomit noisily into an air-sick bag.

This part of the trip was still easy, I just followed the White Nile North for about 40 minutes to find Bor airstrip.

The Nile held an excitement and allure when viewed from the air. This river had so much history that, regardless of how many times I laid eyes on it, it was like seeing it for the first time.

I landed at Bor and offloaded the supplies that I'd bought with from Nairobi for the local mission, and topped ARN up with avgas.

We spent 40 minutes on the ground and got airborne at 16h00 for Aweil via Wau.

Thinking of my old instructor's briefing for this flight I said out loud to nobody in particular, 'Here we go Dicky Bird.'

My heading was NW and I climbed to FL105, high enough to have reasonable visibility and to cool off.

My love of history paid off, as within no time at all, I was on the west bank of the Nile.

It was flat and there was nothing but elephant grass, which I knew from reading old hunting books, could be anything from 12 to 15 feet high and was sharp enough to slice though a person's skin as if it were wet tissue paper.

This was the start of the dreaded Sudd. From my bird's eye view it looked like a mosaic of floating islands, water lilies and tangled reeds occasionally interspersed with pools of water. No wonder it took explorers until the late 19th and early 20th centuries to navigate.