A Flight Over Mt. Kenya: A Fathers' Day Special

In honor of Fathers’ Day, I decided to leap ahead in time to a report I filed in 1996 as we prepared to leave East Africa for Southern Africa. My own father was a pilot and one of the treasured possessions I have from him is the leather military flight jacket he wore during WW II. I took it and my eldest son Adam on a special trip over Mt. Kenya.

Anybody who has seen the film, Out Of Africa, will surely remember the flying scenes -- a biplane swooping low over a lake carpeted with pink flamingoes, dancing along the rim of a volcano, brushing through clouds billowing around Mount Kenya.

It was and remains an enchanted moment, one offering a portrait of an Africa untainted by conflict and poverty. It is a vision from this part of Africa that I choose to take with me.

As improbable as it sounds, a British-born, former US Air Force officer with a degree in dentistry who I first met three years ago while he was working for the United Nations in Somalia helped me achieve that goal. He is Andy Garratt.

“I've been involved in aviation since I was about 12, whether building model airplanes, working at airports, taking flying lessons. I got sidetracked into dentistry which I thought would probably be a more sensible career option but the lure of aviation has brought me back...I have to say it's really the culmination of a dream to be here and flying this aircraft."

"This aircraft" is the only Waco YMF-5 open cockpit biplane in Africa -- not an original like the ones first made 60 years ago but a modern-day replica, hand-built by a small company in the Midwestern US state of Michigan.

"Here" was a grass airstrip at the base of Mount Kenya, where Andy Garratt takes one or two passengers at a time, decks them out in leather flying jackets, silk scarves, helmet and goggles and gives them a taste of an older era in aviation. In so doing, he also gives them a glimpse of Africa that is unparalleled in its beauty.

On this day in May (1996), Andy's passengers are me and my 15-year-old son, Adam [who is now 26 and a computer specialist]. It is dawn. Mount Kenya, enshrouded in clouds the day before, has suddenly emerged uncovered in the sun's first light. Snow and ice cling to its jagged peaks, more than five thousand meters high.

Pilot Garratt does pre-flight checks of the gleaming red biplane in the chill of the early morning.

"The first thing in the morning you pull the engine through (engine noise) to make sure there's no oil that would be trapped (in the crankshaft)... it gives you a good opportunity to listen to the moving parts of the engine. Pulling wires to make sure they're intact and taught enough (wires twang). (Alex) Play it like a musical instrument? (Andy) Right. You then walk around to check the overall integrity of the airplane (to insure) nothing's become damaged inadvertently. When you operate in bush strips (bangs engine) (you need to) check the fly wires on the tail (another twang & banging). The controls are smooth, nothing is binding..."

He then climbs into the rear of the two open cockpits and starts the engine. My son and I scramble into the front cockpit and buckle in. I give a quick thought to my father, a former pilot who trained on a similar plane and who is with us in spirit this day. I am wearing his more than 50-year old Army Air Corps flight jacket, with his name and rank still visible. Then we start off.

I narrated the take off on tape: "I'm in the cockpit of a Waco bi-plane, taxing down a grass strip (runway) just at the base of Mt. Kenya. We're doing a kind of zig-zag because the nose points up so high you really can't see the runway in front of you. It's a beautiful dawn... the sun has just come up..”

With music from Out Of Africa piped into our earphones, we begin a long, slow, gently undulating climb. From rocky mountain faces to overgrown forests to cultivated fields to dry superheated plains, the terrain of East Africa opens up before us. It is a magic moment.

We fly for an hour, lazily circling Mount Kenya. We see tiny hidden mountain lakes, a herd of adventurous high-altitude grazing zebra, the smokey rustic cabins used by human climbers. My son Adam, who reached Point Lenana on the mountain with his classmates earlier this year, retraces the route he took.

I put aside my memories of a more violent and depressing Africa, and think to myself: this too is an enduring reality on this continent -- its spectacular, unspoiled natural beauty.

As we descend for our landing, Andy takes us through a series of steep winding turns. We pick up speed as the cold air rushes into the cockpit and the planes skirts through mountain valleys, brushing past rock faces. And then we land.

"We're coming in four our landing now, having just completed the circumnavigation of Mt. Kenya. (noises) Well, that didn't take much room did it? (Alex's son Adam) I guess not... (Alex) Well , you've just done a complete circumference of Mt. Kenya in a bi-plane. What do you think? How do you feel? (Adam) Wonderful."

Exhilarated, we later sit on the porch of the hangar and office building next to the grass airstrip. Andy Garratt has done this a thousand times over the past year. But he says he never tires of it.

"People ask me, don't you ever get bored doing the same thing going around the mountain? How can you stand listening to Out Of Africa one more time? I don't tire of any of it. It's so spectacular, so special, I finish a flight and I have to slap myself sometimes to make sure I'm here actually doing this."

His passengers -- who come from around the world -- tend to concur. One woman emerged from the plane at the end of her flight in tears because she was so moved. Most are just speechless, trying to hold on to the experience for just one more minute. That's how I feel -- not just about this one African moment, but about being in Africa at all.