So this morning I met with the guy outside the Libya Oil depot, and I hitched a ride on his tractor, bringing the fuel to the plane. I had the wing tanks filled, and also my ferry tank.
Bo Therkildsen had told me last night, that he had a lot of problems talking to a lady in the flight permit office in Mali. He had been told several times, that a flight permit was forth coming, but as last night, he had still not received it.
I did not really need to land in Mali, since they had no fuel anyway, but it turned out, that the madame from Lome, by the of name of Chantelle, was going to join the 3. Senegal tour with the Dakar Aero club, just as I was! And since she had a problem with fuel not being available in Bamako, she had asked me, if I could leave some fuel there, for her to use on her return flight from Dakar to Lome? I had agreed to unload 120 liters for her!
But Bo had still not received the flight and landing permit this morning, but the operations office at the Ouagadougou airport, arranged for me, that I could go by motor bike to the nearby Civil Aviation Office to get a permit. Sitting down with a man in an office there, he typed my information into the system, and then presented me with a printout, which I thought was a permit. It would prove to be a very costly mistake.
I quickly put the paper in my pocket and returned on the motor bike to the airport, and soon after I was on my way to Bamako in Mali.
After a bumpy ride I arrived in Bamako, and requested taxi to the aero club, but was told to go to the main terminal. I went to the Operations office to pay the landing fee, and file the flight plan for tomorrow. The landing fee was 21$ - but before I could pay it, they wanted the flight permit number, and I got out my piece of paper from Ouagadougou - but it turned out, that this paper was not a flight permit, but a request for a permit!
So they would not accept my payment of the landing fee, or accept the flight plan, and said I had to go to the Civil Aviation Office. But by now, half an hour later, they called from the tower, and told me I had to move my plane, so I taxied to the aero club. Here I met with another pilot, going to Dakar for the rally, but he told me that the hotel, which had been recommended by Chantelle, had no rooms vacant.
Feeling a diarrhea in the making, I then got a taxi and went to the Libya Hotel, just in time for a diarrhea tsunami. (I will spare you the details).
In the afternoon I called the same lady, as Bo had obviously been talking to. Bo had told me, that he, with the 25 years of experience with flight dispatching, never before had come across a more strange behaving person. She asked were I was, and when I said I was in Bamako, she claimed I had arrived illegally in Mali! I told her about the application from the Director of Civil aviation in Burkina Faso, but she just said, 'Oh this is not Burkina Faso. I asked her to help me solve the problem, but then she just hung up the phone - something Bo told me, she had done several times with him.
I raced down to the reception of the hotel, and asked for a taxi, that could take me to the office of the civil Aviation. But they got me a taxi driver, that had no clue on the whereabouts of the office, and I had to return to the hotel.
