Back in 1992, in my UNDP mission in Angola, I was responsible to coordinate the UN air activity in support of the needs for air transportation of the Angolan Electoral Commission in the Province of Moxico. Every late afternoon the Electoral Commission would present the list of cargo and persons to be airlifted to specific destinations. In most cases, those destinations were no more than a modest gathering of straw and mud made huts, in the middle of nowhere. Some villages were not even plotted on the maps, requiring someone (me) to join the flight as a navigator/interpreter, and ask the locals where to go in order to reach the destiny.
One day, we were flying in a helicopter to one of such (unknown) destinations, and we had to do a “stop and go” in a certain village and ask how to get to the place we were supposed to go. When we just about to touch down on a nice open area, we could see through the windows of the aircraft the locals gesticulating very intensively, signing us not to land there. We landed in another place and found out we were about to touch down in the middle of a mine field. After some short explanation from the locals, we finally located on the map where our destination was, and we took-off again.
Upon reaching the village we were looking for, the pilot decided to over fly the location, in order to find a place to land and deliver the material for the elections that we had on board. He found the perfect place right in the center of the village and maneuvered the heavy MI-17 helicopter on its final approach to the landing site. What the gentile (urban) Russian pilot did not take into consideration was the construction material of the small huts bellow the “down-wash” of his MI-17. Those dwellings were made of straw, dry mud and wood sticks; far too fragile (and light) to “survive” the strong down-wash of the low level fly-by MI-17 helicopter. Suddenly, we were flying in the middle of a thick cloud of dust, straw, sticks, papers, chicken feathers and what have you.
I only had the time to tell the pilot: – “Check your six!” – which means look at your back. The path the helicopter had just flown could be perfectly identified by a straight line of roofless huts and destroyed henneries. The population was (understandably) not happy with our performance and many people started to gather into a mob, showing a not so friendly attitude towards our helicopter. After analyzing the situation, we found out that we didn’t have conditions to land the aircraft, without endangering the local population and risking the safety of our helicopter. Therefore, the pilot decided to abort the landing and we flown away, back to the UN base in Luena. That small village, which I don’t even remember its name, did not get the chance to vote in 1992, during the first free elections of Angola.
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