By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
I have been in more deadly dangers in my journalistic travails than a suicide bomber.
When I look back, I can only wonder and laugh that I am still here on Planet Earth, very much alive and kicking and having a good beer.
Some of my close friends can never ever stop looking at me with bad wondrous eyes over my survival escapades against damnation laden principalities and powers, to use the term of the newfangled folk of modern-day religion.
Its in the throb of the New Year that I hereby recall a helicopter flight that nearly put an abrupt full-stop to my life.
This poor poet does not own a helicopter, but one happens to be so highly wired that I sometimes enjoy graces that some rich aristocrats can only dream of.
So dont cry for me, Nigerians, for I can do and undo much to the annoyance of the powers that be.
It takes a measure of class to make a clandestine helicopter trip to an oil platform in an island off the coast of Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
The mid-morning oozed ambient softness as a chauffeur drove me to the Nigeria Air Force Base in Port Harcourt.
The helicopter crew took me to a somewhat narrow room where I received pre-flight safety instructions.
Everybody around treated me like royalty, especially as I was the solitary personage to be airlifted.
I did not bother to listen much to what the safety man was saying, save to put the proffered helmet on my head.
All I wanted was to get into the chopper, fly into the island, get my job done and fly back to good old Lagos.
It took just 15 minutes flight to land on the helipad on the oil platform near the town of Idama in Rivers State.
I had to descend a very steep staircase into the main building before getting into a boat for the journey into the town.
The Idama traditional town square was dominated by the statue of the ancestral mother of the town, known as Mother of Wealth, from whose redoubt one could clearly set eyes on a Generator House built by the Idama Regional Development Council under the sponsorship of an oil company.
Its not in my constitution to advertise the oil company here, a rendering company that also powers the community with a 36.5 KVA soundproof generating set such that there is no darkness here!
Exploring the town was a joy that lifted the spirit and inspired the Muses.
Most of the locals are laid back, enjoying their lives as best they can in a bucolic spirit of admirable camaraderie.
It was easy to strike friendship with the young and old, even as I was loath to disclose my mission in the place.
The time sped so fast given all the people I had to meet and the scenes I had to explore.
When it was time for me to leave in the evening, I boarded the boat for the short journey to the building and the platform.
As I got to near the building bearing the helipad I found to my horror that the sea had dried up, and there was no way I could get the boat to the steep staircase I would use to climb up to the helipad.
I was stranded!
I saw the helicopter waiting for me, but there I was no way I could get past the sprawling mud that had swallowed up the waters.
What is to be done? I did not know.
It was eventually suggested that I should get to the nearby Joint Task Force (JTF) camp where a gang of soldiers put a very long plank for me to climb over the muddy water to an embankment.
The narrow plank was about 50 metres long, and it was incumbent on me to walk on it before I could get to the building bearing the helipad and the helicopter.
I feared I could fall off into the sea or the mud.
But the real danger was that if I failed to walk the death-trap the helicopter would fly off and leave me marooned in the island like the pirate Ben Gunn in Robert Louis Stevensons Treasure Island.
I could not but walk the plank – without falling into the sea!
To say that it was more than scary is the greatest understatement ever!
As God would have it, I survived the unimaginable horror until I got into my helicopter seat, panting.
It would not have been such a good story that the poor poet failed to kick the bucket via a helicopter crash but only ended up perishing in muddy water!
That would have been a very evil suffocation plot.
Dear Reader, you are reading this story only because I survived to make the 15-minute flight back to Port Harcourt.
It stays written that no power can shut up me and my big mouth!
Uzor Maxim Uzoatu is the author of God of Poetry.
