Flying over Africa

This month, I had the incredible opportunity of visiting Africa with my dad and his wife. We were in Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa (and I stood in Zimbabwe for 5 minutes, too).

Of particular interest to this newly-minted commercial pilot (I passed my commercial flight test two days before the trip) was the time we spent in Zambia. My father is an organizational consultant and he has worked for several years with an aviation mission based in Zambia. For him, this was a work trip and his wife and I were tagging along. During the three days he worked with them, we stayed at the mission compound in the countryside outside of Lusaka. The compound was beautiful and the guesthouse was charming and quiet.

It wasn't safe to leave the compound to walk on the country roads but one of the staff members mentioned to me that their grass runway was 1000 metres long and I noticed that people would sometimes go out and walk along the edge of it. So I made it my morning routine to walk briskly up and down the runway to get some fresh air and exercise. I did 4 kilometres the first day, then 6 and 8 the next two days. It turned out to be a transcendent way to start each day. It was, for me, almost a spiritual experience to be walking in the warm morning African sun and to be standing on a runway, which is usually not allowed but represents to me the heart of flying.

One day, I was poking around the hangar, looking at the planes, and the chief pilot told me he was taking a visiting VIP up for a flight and that he had room for me if I wanted to join. Did I?! We went for a short local flight in a Cessna 206. I was amazed at the beauty of the landscape. It was great to get the lay of the land around Lusaka.

When it came time to leave Lusaka and move on to the next leg of our trip, the general manager of the mission, also a pilot, gave us the ride of our lives! He flew us in a Cessna 210 from Lusaka to Victoria Falls, a flight of a little over 1.5 hours. The early morning flight over southern Zambia was stunning, taking us over misty rivers, scruffy bush, and verdant farmland. Our pilot let me have the controls for the whole flight. Once we arrived at Livingstone, he flew us over the breaktaking and magnificent Victoria Falls before giving the controls back to me and letting me land the plane at the Livingstone airport. That flight was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

All in all, these three days in Zambia were heavenly for me!