I got a chance to go to Africa a few years back, and among other things on this trip I had a chance to check out the ecological disaster that has hurt Lake Victoria. I had just come back from Lake Tanganyika and was hanging out in the capital city of Dar Es Salaam. I heard that there was a cargo plane heading to the small port on Lake Victoria of Mwanza. They were heading there to pick up a load of fish, mainly food fish, the Nile perch that the fisherman bring to this north-western Tanzanian small port city at the lower end of Lake Victoria. They were also going to pick up a load of tropical fish that a local exporter gets from the swampland and small estuaries that feed the lake. Here I went! I convinced them to take me along so I could spend a few days, at least until the next plane arrived, with this exporter in one of the remoter parts of Africa, if having a runway where a jet plane can land can be called remote. They needed to load the plane, with supplies for their rounds around the outback. I sat it out at the airport bar, and if it wasn’t for the fact that all the characters were humans, this place could have been a scene out of star wars. Talk around the airport bar told me that the runway was plenty long at Mwanza, but terribly narrow. A few years back a DC-8 crashed trying to land there and the remains are scattered in various places around the airport. Finally they came and got me in the late afternoon, and I threw my fish collecting gear aboard and off we went. We had one stop before we got to Mwanza. Our ground time there was amazingly short as the cargo crews were very well organized and we were back in the air after an hour. I saw a spectacular sunset while I waited for the plane to be unloaded and loaded. At about 8 PM local time we were over Lake Victoria on final approach. I sat behind the co-pilot in what I guess would be the navigators seat if in fact they carried one. I would imagine that this seat was occupied by travelers such as I most of the time. As we were coming into view of the airport on our final approach, the airport lost power & lost all its lights, which according to the crew is a routine experience around here, so the pilot had to go around until the back-up generators got the lights back on. It was about a half an hour before the lights finally came back on and we just circled over the lake waiting. The crew telling me tales of backwoods cargo pilots. On our second approach the pilot was much too far to the right and while I watched in terror, nearly took out the small terminal and control tower. He powered up when he realized what was happening and so we missed approach number two. We climbed back into a landing pattern and breathed a sigh of relief and calmed down for another landing. On our third time at a final approach from over the lake with no visual reference below, the control tower called to the pilot, “You are too low, pull up!!!” To which the Captain replied, “Don’t worry, I know what I am doing.” The captain very calmly and professionally brought the plane down towards the runway. Or what appeared to be the runway. About 5 KM short of the runway, we hit the water. Thank god we had on our seat belts, because the impact forced us all forward at a great rate of speed while the plane failed to keep up. We immediately readied ourselves to abandon ship, and we turned on all the lights hoping someone would come out looking for us. Finally a fishing boat found us courtesy of the taxi light and other lights we had on. The plane seemed to be floating, but we really didn’t know for how long, so we grabbed what we could and came ashore with the fishing boat. We managed to find the fish exporter’s facility somewhere around 2 am, but no one was to be found, so we curled up on some chairs and called it a night. At first daybreak, the pilots got up to see what happened to their plane they left floating out in the lake. I could not help but tag along. We could see the plane out there a ways and so we found the biggest boat around and went out to see the plane. In the daylight we could see that the water landing tore off all four engines and the landing gear, but apparently didn’t puncture the fuselage. So the plane kept a float. We decided to tow it into shore, and when the plane finally ran aground about 100 meters from shore, we left it there. I spent three great days learning about Lake Victoria and her people and problems, but that’s fodder for another story. As we took off there was my ride into Mwerza, well almost, in the shallow water near the air-port, where it will probably be a beacon for many years. Even from a thousand feet up, the plane, where I had one of the most incredible escapes from death, was clearly seen. I will never forget that plane as it sat in the lakebed.