Oct 10, 2005
Somewhere a light must have flashed in the control tower. The big jet roared and shuddered and flung itself down the runway, pressing me against the seat back. The motors rose in pitch from howl to scream and then to a rising whistle, and just when it seemed impossible that it should ever get its clumsy bulk into the air, it lifted its nose, the shuddering ceased, and with a final satisfying clunk as the wheels came up, it rocketed into the sky, free as a bird.
I always enjoy the takeoff, feeling the anxieties, frustrations and panic slip away below, leaving the booking clerks, the faxes, the work arrangements and the alternatives to take care of themselves. The harbour, the city, the coast, slips behind. This is the way to travel
“Something to drink, Sir?” Don’t mind if I do.
***
At Sydney the transit lounge was full and noisy. Out of the confusion a very tall fellow in a grey sports jacket came towards him and held out his hand. “You must be Pat Dale,” he said. “I’m David McDowell. Come and meet John. Did you have a good flight?”
John was also tall, but younger, sandy, and carrying quite a bit of weight. Did Foreign Affairs perhaps choose its diplomats on the large side, to compensate for the size of the country they represented? John in his shirt sleeves, greeted me with the off handedness that shy people sometimes affect, as if to imply that he did not expect to be written down on account of his boyish appearance.
The PA gave out a boarding call for a flight to Hongkong, and the lounge suddenly emptied. David and I sat down, while John took advantage of the empty space to get in some practice at a slow off-spin technique he was working up….. without a ball.
“I don’t know how much they’ve told you about this project,” David began.
“Something about agro-aviation, they said, whatever that may mean. Tell me more.”
“Well it’s in the nature of a rescue mission really.” He paused, collecting his thoughts.
“Let’s go back to the beginning. When Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan, not only did they have the mess of the civil war to clean up, and the rebuilding of their infrastructure, but they were also without many of the services they had previously shared, but which Pakistan now of course withdrew. One of these was a crop protection service, in which Pakistan sent its crop spraying aircraft over to what was then called East Pakistan, to spray the rice crops at the appropriate time. It was directed mostly, I think against insect pests of one sort or another, which of course is where you come in.
“The funny thing is that, for various reasons, very little spraying has been done in the last three or four years, and we are beginning to wonder how necessary it was after all. Rice production has fallen somewhat, but not, as far as we can tell, on account of pests.” He paused and took a curved stemmed pipe from his jacket pocket and set about filling it. “More to do with war damage, transport problems and the like, and a lack of other inputs.”
“So you want me to tell you which insects, if any, are a problem, and what should be done about them?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Can’t their own scientists tell them that? Pakistan used to have quite a reputation for turning out good entomologists.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think there are many of them left in Bangladesh today anyway.”
I thought for a while, watching the spin bowler, now including part of the corridor in his run up. “So why is New Zealand Foreign affairs taking such an interest in the problem”
“Oh it’s a long story. When Norman Kirk visited Bangladesh just after it became independent, he struck up quite a good relationship with Mujibur Rahman, their president. One socialist to another I suppose. Rahman must have been concerned about the problem of potential for rice crops being devastated when the economy was already in such poor shape. There was a real risk of the sort of famine conditions that sometimes occurred back when the British were in charge. Someone in Kirk’s party must have mentioned the New Zealand industry producing top-dressing aircraft, and the possibility of using them for crop spraying. Kirk saw an opportunity for supporting the industry in New Zealand and at the same time offering help to Bangladesh. So we gave them three Fletchers out of the aid budget, with an offer of six more in due course. We also offered to train some pilots to fly them.
“However when the newly trained pilots were on their way home, all but one of them cashed in their saved foreign currency in Singapore and bought some training time on multi-engined jets, which they then used to get employed as pilots on the new civil airline, Bangladesh Beeman. So only one pilot ended up flying the Fletchers.
“To make matters worse he found that flying at low altitude in the Bangladeshi sunshine under a perspex canopy was equivalent to a Turkish bath in a hothouse. It just wasn’t sustainable. So we had to fit air conditioning on the Fletchers to make them usable at all. And that wasn’t all. At Bangladeshi temperatures the engine oil overheated whenever the plane was standing still or taxiing. We began to wonder if the Bangladeshi pilots were having us on, but when we asked some New Zealand top-dressing pilots about it, they said oil temperature had always been a problem, and they had repeatedly asked the company to do something about it. So we fitted new oil coolers.
“Things went on alright for a while, but there was still only one pilot for three planes. We were reluctant to train more pilots in New Zealand, because of the Singapore experience, but the Hamilton company also manufactured little training planes, so the aid budget paid for three of those to be sent over, along with an instructor to train pilots locally. That should have worked alright, but the instructor soon complained that there were no competent mechanics to service either the Fletchers or the trainers. So we had to send another instructor over to train some mechanics. So far he has trained more than 50, but as soon as they are qualified, they either want a desk job, or they resign from the Ministry of Agriculture and go and work for the civil airline.
“So you can see, after all this time, with so little spraying done, we’re beginning to wonder about the need to deliver the other six Fletchers. Furthermore there has been no serious crop failure in the meantime, and we’re beginning to wonder whether aerial spraying is all that necessary. That’s what you’re going to tell us.”
“Mm.” I was still pondering when the boarding call came over.
There was an empty seat beside me on the plane, but once we were airborne I found it was soon fully occupied by John. What followed was more of an interview than a conversation.
“So you’re an entomologist?” he said. “What do you know about insects on rice?”
“Not much. Only what I’ve read.”
“So why did they send you?”
“I don’t know. I worked in Samoa for three years so I’m familiar with tropical crops and tropical insects, and third world conditions, but I haven’t worked on rice pests before. Perhaps I’m the best that’s offering.
What about you? What’s your background?”
“I did a degree in Ag. Economics at Lincoln, and since then I’ve worked for Foreign Affairs, mostly in Wellington.”
However he seemed to know his way around. At Bangkok, where we did a stopover he spent the evening at some strip show, and the following morning he took me along as back-up while he negotiated to buy an engagement ring for some nice little girl he had in Wellington. I don’t think I was much help. He got the jeweler to spread out a couple of dozen stones of various sorts, while he turned them over and mumbled about them one by one, as if jewellry and gem valuation had been his sole occupation for years. From time to time he would seek my opinion, but I could see I was only a stage prop for the benefit of the jeweller. The only helpful suggestion I could make was when he asked me what colour I would prefer, and I asked him what colour his girlfriend’s eyes were. He seemed to accept that and bought a nice emerald, while I got conned into buying a black sapphire for Pam.