📸 ACT I: The Trigger

In 2009 I was still a well‑fed German businessman with more camera lenses than sense — a wildlife photographer who thought a Nikon could fix the world, like duct tape on a sinking cruise ship. Africa had already sunk its tusks into me years earlier on my first safari to Botswana, but something shifted in the Maasai Mara that year.

Elephant carcasses — though carefully hidden so as not to upset emotionally fragile Jack‑Wolfskin‑clad tourists — started outnumbering tourist buses. Poaching was back. Ugly. Organised. Bazooka‑to‑the‑skull efficient.

I came home steamed, cursed the sky, drank too much, played miserable rounds of golf like a man swinging at his own dignity, booked another flight, went back. Same story. Third trip — I cracked.

Something had to be done, even though I was the least qualified hero imaginable. I couldn’t fix a car, couldn’t ride a horse, hapless at shooting, unable to start a campfire even with a flamethrower, a nuclear device, and three Cub Scouts on standby. My only proven skill was making bad decisions look cinematic — the kind of decisions you narrate with a gravelly voiceover just before the explosion.

And yet — stupid, delusional, and privileged enough to believe I should be the one — I decided to try.

 

 

🛩️ ACT II: The Aviation Delusion

Or: How to Torpedo Your Life in 60 Flying Lessons or Less

I decided to become a pilot.

Because obviously, when the world is falling apart and elephants are being slaughtered, what you really need is a freshly unhinged German businessman with fifteen hours in a logbook, a mild fear of heights, and a savior complex duct-taped together with espresso shots and unmedicated optimism.

January 2011: Flight school begins.
April 2011: Flight school ends.
That’s four months of high-speed cramming, altitude-induced nausea, and bureaucratic turbulence. I ping-ponged between joy, panic attacks, and full-body regret like a cracked-out hummingbird at a caffeine tasting.

I almost died. Repeatedly.
Came this close to ejecting my instructor mid-flight with a crowbar and a handwritten apology.
By week two I had already sacrificed my mental stability. By week six, my savings. By week ten, my self-respect. And by the end? My business was circling the drain like a flaming cocktail umbrella.

But fate, that vindictive little gremlin, wasn’t done yet.

Before I even had my pilot license laminated — still damp from the printer and streaked with my instructor’s tears — I stumbled into the back of a hangar.
There it was.
The next catastrophic decision.
Lurking. Glowing. Whispering sweet financial ruin in aviation fluency.

A bright yellow Piper Super Cub — rebuilt, overconfident, and radiating the kind of charm usually reserved for stolen Ferraris or cult leaders.
It didn’t just “call to me.”
It screamed.
Like a drunken coworker at 2 a.m. armed with a half-empty tequila bottle, a karaoke mic, and a folder labeled “Unrecoverable Mistakes.”

So I bought it.
On the spot.
No therapy session. Just raw impulse and a death wish.

Nicole looked at me like I’d just purchased a baby hippo and asked where to park it.

See, her vision of “adventure” involved something mildly thrilling, but Instagram-friendly — rum cocktails, hammocks, perhaps a leopard sighting from the safety of a luxury tent.
What she got instead was a full-spectrum aviation breakdown, bolted to a midlife crisis, hurtling toward bankruptcy like a flaming wheelbarrow full of expired passports.

While Nicole fantasised about beach sunsets and frozen daiquiris, I sprinted toward financial ruin like a DMV employee at 4:59 p.m. on a Friday —
in flip-flops,
on fire,
clutching a paper map of East Africa and a half-built aircraft.

 

 

🧨 ACT III: Blood, Sweat, and Aviation Glue

Or: How to Build an African Bush Plane with Elbow Grease, Bankruptcy, and a Half-Drunk Mechanic

In the U.S., we scavenged plane parts like meth-fueled raccoons at a hardware store clearance sale.
Bigger tanks. Tundra tires. Landing gear strong enough to survive marriage.
Navigation systems that didn’t rely exclusively on prayer, shouting, or celestial guesswork.

For three months straight, Nicole and I played Aviation IKEA — minus instructions, minus Swedish calm, and with way more flammable glue. A grumpy—but loveable—, nicotine-scented mechanic took pity on us. Or maybe he just stuck around to see if we'd catch fire. Either way, he helped.

By the end of that greasy fever dream, the Super Cub had transformed:
From showroom princess to Mara-grade flying cockroach.
Still smelled like solvent and bad decisions — but damn, it was beautiful.

December 2011: We crammed the Cub into a 40-foot container, slapped on a shipping sticker, and waved goodbye like guilty parents sending their hyperactive child to military school with a sandwich and a helmet.
January 2012: Nicole and I landed in Nairobi. Wide-eyed. Jet-lagged. I still vaguely believing I was the main character in a heroic documentary that hadn’t been filmed yet.

In reality?
I was one flat tire away from total collapse — linguistically confused, bureaucratically doomed, and about to enter a Kenyan aviation system that made Kafka look like a motivational speaker.

 

🛂 ACT IV: Bureaucracy, The True Villain

Or: How I Mistook Elephant Conservation for a Paperwork-Based Suicide Attempt

Reality didn’t greet us.
It drop-kicked us in the kidneys with all the grace of a drunk rhino in stilettos.

Kenyan aviation law?
Imagine doing your taxes.
In Latin.
While blindfolded.
On a rollercoaster.
Inside a blender.
That’s also on fire.
With your wallet already screaming.

License conversion, aircraft registration, work permits, company formation — it was less “Welcome to Kenya” and more “Welcome to Level 99 Bureaucratic Dungeon, where your soul goes to rot and your paperwork multiplies like rabbits on Viagra.”

Nicole, in her usual brilliance, did what any sane person would do:
She flew back to Germany — land of orderly sidewalks, edible bread, and plumbing that doesn’t cry at night.

I stayed.
Alone.
First time in years.
Just me, my yellow aircraft full of dreams, and a credit card that, back in Europe, had the power to open doors, get reservations, and command champagne.
In Nairobi?
It ranked somewhere below a donkey with arthritis and no legs.
I might as well have tried to bribe immigration with Monopoly money and a firm handshake.

I moved into a soggy, questionably vertical cottage in Limuru — a place so damp it rained inside.
The mosquitoes didn’t just bite — they mocked me.
In fluent German.
One even asked for sauerkraut.

And so I sat.
Staring at the sky like it owed me an apology.
Waiting for a sign.
Or a refund.

Then — just before I declared moral bankruptcy and used the Cub as kindling — fate tripped over its own shoelaces and landed in my lap.

Nicole and I met one of the directors of the Hemingways Collection.
He liked our madness. Or pitied it. Either way, he introduced us to Ol Seki Camp in the Naboisho Conservancy.

And for the first time…
the dream didn’t feel completely moronic.
Just moderately ill-advised.
Which, by my standards, was practically divine intervention.

 

 

🛬 ACT V: The Plane Arrives. Sort Of.

Or: IKEA Kit with Wings, Assembled by Delusion and Duct Tape

February 2012.
Our glorious Super Cub finally landed in Nairobi.
Well—“landed” in the loosest, least aerodynamic sense.
It arrived by sea, wedged inside a 40-foot container like a war crime committed against aviation.
It didn’t so much resemble a plane as it did a Swedish bookshelf that lost a bar fight and came home missing five screws and its self-esteem.

March 2012.
With help from half a hangar, a bribe-scented breeze, and at least one prayer whispered into a leaking fuel line, the Cub slowly began to resemble something vaguely airworthy again.

But fly?
Oh no.
That would require paperwork.
Kenyan paperwork.

A system so slow it made continental drift look like a Formula 1 race.
A bureaucratic black hole where logic goes to die, and ambition is processed at the speed of a snail on sedatives dragging a fax machine through wet cement — unless, of course, you pay.

And pay we did.
With money.
With time. With migraines.
With our sanity.
At one point, I considered selling my leg. Not even the good one. Just a leg. Whichever was less emotionally attached to flying.

Nicole, ever the optimist, tried to stay positive.
I, on the other hand, was developing facial tics while I sat in the corner whispering to the tailfin like a war veteran who never came back from the paperwork front.

But then, one miracle, seven breakdowns, and at least three rage-induced nosebleeds later —
It. Flew.

First flight: a shaky takeoff from a tea plantation in Limuru.
The airstrip was more of a suggestion than a surface.
The wind was not in our favour.
Neither were gravity, God, or physics.

But up we went — a banana-colored dot wobbling above the Maasai Mara like a drunken mosquito with a GoPro and grandiose ideas about elephant diplomacy.

We weren’t fast.
We weren’t graceful.
But we were airborne.
And in that moment, I became the most dangerously overconfident idiot in East Africa.

 

🐘 ACT VI: Introducing the Dream

or: How to Save Elephants Using Nothing but Aviation Glue, Unpaid Madness, and a Glorified Lawn Mower With Wings

 

The concept was idiot-proof.
Or so I thought.

Fly.
Be seen.
Scare poachers.
Support the rangers.
Make noise. Save elephants. Maybe your soul.

We weren’t building another NGO, we weren’t trying to fundraise with PowerPoint decks, and we sure as hell weren’t asking anyone for money.
All we wanted was fuel.

Just fuel.
That’s it.
But even that made us suspicious.

I offered our aerial patrols — free of charge — to every conservation group, NGO, and donor darling between Nairobi and Nanyuki.
Their response?

A cocktail of indifference, forced smiles, and enough bean-counting to make an IRS auditor climax.

Apparently, the only thing more terrifying than poachers with AK‑47s…
…is an unsanctioned white guy in a banana-colored airplane who doesn’t play by committee rules.

No mission statements.
No gala dinners.
No branded Land Cruisers with four social media interns and a “chief impact officer.”
Just us —
The aviation equivalent of a street preacher screaming into an empty parking lot.

We weren’t a project.
We were a disturbance.

The kind that doesn’t get invited to conferences —
but ends up crashing them anyway,
covered in elephant dung, smelling like Jet A1,
and asking who stole the rangers’ salaries.

 

 

🐘 ACT VII: NGO Apocalypse

or: How to Build a Bush Air Force with Duct Tape, Charity Rage, and One Hell of a Tent

By June 2012, after being ghosted by every khaki-clad nonprofit from Nairobi to Namunyak, we said the magic words:
Screw it.

No more handshakes with smiling vampires.
No more “we’ll circle back” emails from salary-heavy do-nothings in branded Land Cruisers.
We founded our own damn charity.
Fly4Elephants — Germany-based, pay-your-own-way, break-even-or-die-trying aviation absurdity.

🛩️ No salaries.
🍸 No gala dinners.
🚫 No brochures with baby elephants and suspiciously white volunteers.
Just one rule:
Keep the Cub in the air. Keep the elephants alive.

By some divine twist of fate (or cosmic prank), Hemingways backed us again.
In return, we built them a taxiway and apron in the middle of nowhere — the Naibosho Conservancy, where the airstrip was more wishful thinking than actual infrastructure.

And then came Ol Seki Camp.

Let me be clear:
After Limuru — where the roof leaked, the fungus had houseplants, and the bedbugs paid rent —
Ol Seki was heaven.
The kind of heaven with canvas walls, warm duvets, actual food, and showers that didn’t electrocute you.
Bush luxury.
The dream I never dared dream — now zipped up in mosquito netting and delivered on a tray.

While Nicole exhaled for the first time in months, I stood on the tent deck, surrounded by lions, hyenas, and baboons with attitude issues, and thought:
This. This is it. This is what I sold my life for.

We launched patrols straight out of paradise.
From a conservancy teeming with poachers wielding AKs and bush mechanics held together by shoelaces and shared trauma.
The Cub buzzed the Mara like an angry banana with wings — loud, low, impossible to ignore.
We weren’t official.
We weren’t blessed by the NGO priesthood.
But for once — just for a moment — it felt like we were doing something that mattered.

Even if it killed us.

 

 

🐾 ACT VIII: Into the Fray

Or: How to Wage War with a Banana, a Map, and a Prayer

We flew.
Low.
Every day.
Recklessly.
Like we were being chased by unpaid taxes and flaming karma.

We called in vets to rescue injured elephants.
We coordinated with rangers who looked like they hadn’t slept since colonial times.
We snapped aerial photos of carcasses before the hyenas turned them into abstract sculptures.
We made noise.
The kind of noise that annoys everyone — especially the ones doing something wrong.

And somehow... it was working.

The poachers were still there, but they started looking up more often.
The elephants weren’t dying — at least not like before.
People started noticing.
Reporters showed up. NGOs didn’t. Figures.
We got into newspapers. On the radio. TV.
I took camp guests on scenic patrols so low we collected bug splatter from both sides of the wing.

Tourists shrieked.
Children cheered.
At one point I’m pretty sure we photobombed a BBC documentary mid-flight.
Even the squirrels were filing noise complaints.

This wasn’t organised.
This wasn’t funded.
It was one yellow airplane, a maniac behind the stick, and an escalating war against silence.

But it felt like purpose.
Which is the most dangerous drug of all.

 

🧃 ACT IX: The Comedown

Or: How to Suffer Death by Grant Application While Being Stabbed with Eco-Friendly Cutlery

And then...

Reality bit back.
Not with the clean efficiency of a poacher’s AK, but with the slow, paper-cut sadism of a donor-funded conference room.
Harder than I ever imagined.
Harder than any enemy with a weapon.
Because this time, the bullets wore lanyards and carried PowerPoint decks.

What blindsided us wasn’t the bush.
It was the backroom board games of the “conservation community.”
The holy trinity of doom:

• Backstabbing with a recycled smile
• Grant hoarding like it was post-apocalyptic toilet paper
• Paperwork dense enough to deflect small arms fire

We were hemorrhaging hours on proposals, compliance forms, MOUs, LOIs, NDAs, KPIs —
Acronyms so demonic they might as well come with trigger warnings.

All the while, our fuel bills piled up faster than NGO mission statements.
We weren’t heroes anymore — we were liabilities.
Loose cannons.
Uncertified.
Uninvited.
And worst of all — unprofitable.

One veteran Mara guide, old enough to have seen the first tourist get eaten by curiosity, warned me early on:

“Nobody here really gives a sh*t about elephants.
A few tourists might cry. Some tree-huggers might blog.
The rest? They’re just following the money.”

I ignored him.
Because I was still high on righteousness and aviation glue.

But eventually, I hit the wall.
Face first.
At 90 knots.
Wearing my optimism like a parachute made of wet toast.

The real enemy wasn’t poaching.
It was the suffocating, smiling, spreadsheet-loving machine that claimed to fight poaching —
while scheduling their next impact meeting in a five-star safari lodge with complimentary cocktails and mosquito nets thicker than their moral backbone.

 

🔚 Epilogue: Fly4Elephants Was Never Just About Elephants

It was about rebellion.
About punching through silence with wings and noise.
About showing up where spreadsheets said we shouldn’t.
About flying so obnoxiously low that even the bureaucracy had to look up.

It was never about being polite.
It was about presence.
Proof-of-life.
In a world of donor-funded ghost projects and photo-op activism.

We flew because someone had to.
We flew because noise mattered.
We flew because somewhere between the poachers, the paperwork, and the passive-aggressive grant refusals,
we remembered what courage sounded like.

And even now — singed, broke, bug-bitten and one aviation medical away from a straitjacket —
I’d do it again.

Minus the rain in Limuru.
That miserable swamp-goblin of a town can burn in the soggy basement of hell.

 

— Marcel Romdane
Founder, Crasher, Elephant Air Support Unit,
Unpaid Sky Scream Technician,
And Occasional Sanity Evacuee