We had a romance in TEA Wave I.  Marty McCall (1-C) and Dick Lemke (1-B), met in September 1961 and were engaged by December.  Marty asked me to be her maid of honor in a wedding scheduled for June 1962.  However, by February, staffing pressures at their Bukoba schools had forced an advance of the wedding date to March.  Because of this change, none of their family members could come, and three of Marty’s TEA bridesmaids could not get away from their Ugandan and Kenyan schools.  However, the wedding weekend was a three day holiday in Tanganyika, and checking the various train, boat and plane schedules, I thought that I could attend and make it back to Morogoro in time to meet my classes the following week.  I said that I would be there.

The day before the wedding, I was supposed to take the train from Morogoro to Dar es Salaam.  But my train was cancelled by record flooding caused by heavy rains.   So my headmaster drove me the 120 miles to Dar in time to catch my day-long East African Airways DC-3 flight to Mwanza.  The route was very indirect.  Half the passenger area was filled with cargo including crates of live chickens.  Although I was headed north, we first flew south to Iringa where we had a long layover.  I was ticketed on a connecting EAA flight from Mwanza to Bukoba, that evening putting me in Bukoba on the night before the wedding. 

Despite the delays, we landed in Mwanza about an hour before my next scheduled  flight.  I was waiting for it to be announced when I realized that the man at the EAA desk was getting ready to close down the airport.  I asked him about my flight.  “Oh,” he said casually,  “that’s been cancelled.  Flooding at Bukoba.  Last flight went today at 9 a.m.”  I expressed surprise and showed him my ticket.  He said “We must have called you this morning.”  I pointed out that I was already airborne at that time on a connecting flight of his airline.  He did not care.  

With rising panic I said, “But my friend is getting married tomorrow in Bukoba and I am her maid of honor.”  He continued to shut down the facility.  He was so uninterested in anything I said and so gruff and dismissive in his occasional responses that I began to cry.  I have never seen such change in a human being in my life. 

“No!  No!” he said.  “Don’t do that!  We’ll figure out some way to get you there!” 

He took me into town, stopping at the home of one bush pilot on the way to see whether he would make the flight.  He refused, saying that not only was Bukoba flooded, Mwanza airport was closed the next day for repairs.  From the hotel the EAA guy checked me into, I called Marty to explain the situation.  Throughout the evening I received call after call from him as he tried land rovers (lake too high, roads flooded), boats (same problem with docking facilities), and more pilots.  Finally, he called at nearly 11 p.m. and told me that a pilot who worked for the UN on a rural mapping mission would take me.  

The next morning, I called Marty just before the pilot arrived and told her I was on my way.  He  took me to the airport, where I climbed into the seat next to his in his two seater plane, while he walked out to a big caterpillar tractor actually on the runway and asked the operator if he would just move it over a little so that his plane could take off.  The plane’s wheels cleared the driver’s head by less than ten feet, and we were on our way. 

Once we got out over Lake Victoria, the pilot put the plane on auto-pilot.  He then handed me a very fine hand-drawn map of the lake.  He pointed out exactly where we were by showing me various islands below us, and told me to tell him when we had reached a point on the map  near Bukoba.  Then he began to read a movie magazine.   When we reached that spot, about an hour later, I told him so.

Meanwhile, Marty had gone down to the Bukoba airport and told an official that a plane was coming in from Mwanza.  He told her it was not – that Mwanza was closed for repairs and Bukoba was flooded and could not land planes.  She was still arguing with him, when they heard our plane.  He said, “Son of a bitch” and ran for the control tower.

Back in the plane, as we approached, it was clear that the runway was under several feet of water.  We landed with sheets of water shooting up on both sides of the plane.  As we taxied to a stop on dry land, I said to the pilot, “So how are you going to get out of here?” and he said, “I don’t know.”

But I got to the wedding!