We were being thrown all over the place. Our parents held on to us, squeezing our tiny bodies so tight our very lungs felt like they were about to burst. At least that’s how I remember it. Robby’s memory of that moment was different. He remembers the weird man with all the piercings. I seemed to have blocked that out. I remember catching a glimpse of my brother’s putty colored face.

I was sitting on Dad’s lap. He was sitting on Mum’s. The strange look on his face made me wretch. Again. And again. All over my poor Dad already covered in my pink pasta vomit from previous throwing-up sessions. My hair felt damp and clammy around my face. My body felt limp with exhaustion. I thrashed. I was desperate to get out of Dad’s firm grip, to lie down on the cargo plane floor, to feel cool again. He just held on tighter. The noise was deafening. It sounded like a dragon breathing out fire. I was terrified.

Four chairs had been erected especially for us. In the midst of a jungle of what can only be loosely termed as cargo, there were baskets of foul smelling vegetables, live chickens flapping in a frenzy, large brown packages, ominous looking long steel crates plastered with painted red skulls staring up at us.

We were on a tiny cargo plane flying from Kinshasa to Lubumbashi. I don’t remember the reasons and the whys, I just remember the fear that gripped me and the continuous, relentless vomiting, and desperately wanting to get out of that plane.

That morning, my parents had been told to get to the airport fast. To push in front of the thousands of people waiting for the daily cargo plane and to run for it the minute it stopped. The British High Commissioner had informed my Dad the runway in Lubumbashi had a great big hole in the middle of it so the regular 737‘s couldn’t land and only small cargo planes had clearance to land there. I remember mum talking about her ordeal for months on end it has almost become my memory. She, along with Dad were both running towards the recently landed plane as if their lives depended on it, being pushed and shoved along with the crowd all with the same thought on their minds. They managed to get to the plane first, swiftly handed my brother and I up and over to the pilot of the plane. The ladder propped up against the plane was old, rickety and precarious to climb at the best of times. Once we were in safe hands, Dad scrambled up the ladder but Mum proceeded to be dragged back down and swallowed up into the forward surging crowd. If it hadn’t been for Dad grabbing hold of her arms and pulling her up with all his might she would have been lost.