So, since the 20-year rule (the period that has to elapse before I can tell embarrassing engineering stories where my clients were involved) has lapsed in some cases, here is one of the stories.

I was working for FW. Empersa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos de Moçambique (ENH) had decided that the solution to Mozambique’s energy problems was to transport gas from the Pande gasfields, in the northern part of the country, to Vilankulos, a town near the Bazaruto Archipelago.

ENH asked FW to bid on the contract. Thus, it was that three of us – say, Tom, Dick and I – flew to Maputo and thence caught a small aircraft to Vilankulos. The pilot, a handsome young man, took off and climbed to a height of 8 000 ft. He asked me if I knew anything about flying. I said well, I could fly but had no licence, so he said, great, take the controls. He then adjusted his sunglasses, told me to wake him in half an hour and stretched out and fell asleep. He woke up himself after about 25 minutes and stretched and muttered about it being a heavy night before and took the controls.

After some time, Vilankulos came into view, being a strip of concrete with a control tower. During the bush war, the tower and the strip had been under mortar attack. Vines grew out of the holes in the control tower and goats lapped rainwater from the craters on the strip. After a low pass to clear the goats, we landed, missing the craters. Tom and Dick, unused to bush flying, were pale and nervous.

We were loaded onto a military Land Rover that had an armed escort (an open jeep with twin machine guns) and drove off. There had once been a road but now no longer. The road was so ruined that it was too broken to drive on, so we drove on one side of the road, occasionally crossing over to the other side. There was not much to see at Pande other than a huge gas flare which, the driver told me, had been burning for as long as he could remember. He was about 30 years old.

We communicated in French. Badly. On the way back, we stopped for lunch at a tented military base. The first course served was soup. It was boiling hot. After a discussion with the driver, I explained to Tom and Dick that the soup was served very hot to prevent cholera transmission. They pushed their plates away. A woman came with a jug of cold liquid inside. She poured each of us a glass. I explained to Tom and Dick that it was made with cassava wine, fermented by the process of chewing the roots and spitting them into a bucket. They pushed their glasses away. The main course was served: spinach, rice and meat. I told Tom and Dick that the vegetables had been boiled in water and were probably cholera free. The meat would be fine, I said, nothing wrong with stewed goat. They pushed their plates away.

We returned to Vilankulos and took off for the short hop to Bazuruto Island Hotel. The pilot’s decent to the airstrip was terrifyingly steep. We landed, bounced, landed, bounced and pulled up ten yards from a smashed-up Beechcraft. The pilot told us that he was unlucky; he had run out of wind. We had not run out of wind because of our steep dive. But, he tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger, he was also lucky. That night, Tom and Dick almost finished the whole buffet by themselves. The hotel had to restock. The following day, as the pilot slept, I flew us back to Maputo. I was not surprised that he slept – I had last seen him the night before with two lovelies, nailing shots of rum.

Back at FW, I reported that the project could work – but there were some, uh, issues. Important to send a site engineer who could fly. With a strong stomach. Ex-army would be good. Ex-reconnaissance battalion, perfect.