Remembering Porto Alegre
Porto Alegre was very much in the news a couple of months ago. It was one of the cities used by Brazil during last Summer’s World Cup (Brazil 2014). I remember Nigeria played one of its group matches there. And so did Argentina.
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However, I have been wondering how many people outside Brazil had heard about the city before the World Cup.
Definitely, it is not as well known as Rio de Janeiro or Sao Paulo or Brasilia, the capital.
It may be because of its location.
It does not hold much attraction to the African. Porto Alegre is more or less an European city, in the southern part of Brazil almost on the border with Uruguay and not far from Argentina. It is in the temperate zone.
Whereas you will find many blacks in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasillia, it is not so with Porto Alegre. Everything about it is European, with hardly a black to be seen.
Porto Alegre is highly industrialised; it produces goods made from leather. It is also the centre of Brazil’s corned beef industry, which means it has a high concentration of cattle.
Visit to Brazil
I had an opportunity to travel to Brazil in June 1981 as a member of a delegation led by Prof. de Graft Johnson, Vice President of the Republic of Ghana in the People’s Ntaional Party (PNP) administration of Dr Hilla Limann. The delegation was to study Brazil’s brick and tile factory, the leather industry and to look at other areas of economic co-operation.
Among members of the delegation were Mr Yaw Osafo Marfo, who was then Managing Director of Bank for Housing and Construction and Mr Bentum Williams, then Managing Director of the National Investment Bank (NIB). It also included, if my memory serves me right, Mr Wulff-Tagoe, then a Deputy Minister of State and the irrepressible R.O.Frimpong-Manso who was a special assistant to the vice-president and who was being groomed to become Director of State Protocol before Rawlings’ coup on the very last day of 1981 dashed his hopes.
I still remember after this particular trip, any time or any where I chanced upon R.O., as Frimpong-Manso was fondly called, he would greet me by the words ‘Porto Alegre’ and I would also reply the same way.
This was because of the high drama we had in the air in the presidential jet, the Fokker Friendship which in later years used to be called the Flying Coffin, especially when we were flying from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre.
Now I must confess I have a phobia for air travelling. Despite the numerous occasions I have travelled by air, it is one means of travel I so much hate. If I had my way, I would always travel by road despite the risks and the stress involved.
I must also admit that flying with air force pilots over the years did a lot to remove some of the fear I had for flying. During my interactions with air force pilots, they assured me that the safest means of travelling was by air.
No doubt it is also the fastest. These pilots used to tell us there was nothing to fear about flying and there were so many safety measures in an aircraft that unless it came to the crunch, unless it was unavoidable, pilots, whether civilians or military, could always land safely even where there were problems.
All these lessons were at the back of my mind when we left Accra for Brazil on June 16, 1981. The Fokker Friendship aircraft was a medium-range one which could not go more than three hours without refuelling.
So before we took off from Accra we were told we would land on the small Atlantic island of Ascension, half-way between Accra and the Brazilian city of Recife. The plane was under the command of then Air Commodore J.A. Bruce, who was later to become Airforce Commander. He rose to the position of Air Marshall and died not quite long ago.
Display of dexterity
Indeed, it was then Commodore Bruce who used to put my mind at rest about flying anytime we got to our destination and were relaxing.
On that particular day in June 1981, Commodore Bruce displayed his dexterity as we were about to land on the Ascension Islands. As we approached the islands, we all thought we were going to fall into the sea since the runway ate into the sea and the plane landed a few metres from the sea before it taxied to a halt. It was a crazy thing.
We were received by the governor who took us to his mountain residence on that volcanic island. I kept wondering what the British were doing on an island which had no natives of its own. We got to know that everybody working there was brought from somewhere.
Readers, there was another harrowing experience as we got ready to depart the island after staying for a few hours. Our plane taxied almost to the end of the runway, with the sea just ahead, before we took off for another three-hour journey to Recife on the Atlantic Coast of Brazil.
The real drama in the air, however, was when we were travelling from Sao Paulo to Porto Alegre on the final leg of our journey. We had been to Rio de Janeiro, Brasillia and Sao Paulo without any problem. But the journey to Porto Alegre was a crazy one.
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Even though the aircraft was a small one, we were flying at a very high altitude. Then darkness came in and we were told there was a rainstorm on the approach to Porto Alegre.
Flying in the dark
I can say that we were just flying in the dark to nowhere. But Commodore Bruce knew where we were and what he was about. He appeared equal to the task. There was dead silence as we began our descent into Porto Alegre. In situations like this, you would see light below you but we saw nothing as the plane continued to descend. It was a nightmarish experience as we all kept mute.
Then all of a sudden we broke through the clouds and started seeing light below us. In a matter of minutes we landed in heavy rains. The welcoming party had moved from the arrival hall to a few metres from the aircraft.
In fact, they couldn’t believe it when they realised that the crew was all black, all Ghanaian and everybody was black. Meanwhile, everybody at the airport was white. They couldn’t help clapping unceasingly as we approached them and moved into the arrival hall.
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It was then they told us they had been waiting in the heavy downpour for so long that they gave up hope that we would ever arrive, thinking because of the bad weather we would return to Sao Paulo.
After welcoming us, they all moved towards Commodore Bruce and his crew to congratulate them. They were sincerely impressed and couldn’t believe we had such good and reliable pilots in Africa.