“Enrico,” I mumbled like a love-struck, deranged Othello revival crashing into a midlife aviation crisis, “you can’t be serious. This thing—granted, it has a certain deranged charm—can’t possibly fly. And even if it does, how could it fit a pilot, let alone a passenger? It’s minuscule. It looks like the unlucky offspring of a kite and a lawn chair after one too many drinks at an ultralight convention. If IKEA built planes, this is what they’d send you—flat-packed with two screws missing and a manual written in Swedish sarcasm.”
I was circling the poor thing like a hyena around a half-dead gazelle.
A gazelle with wings. Canvas wings. Bright yellow canvas wings. You know the type. The kind of plane that gives you the vibe of flight but also the creeping suspicion that a sneeze might snap a wing strut.
Enrico, of course, ignored me. That was his default setting whenever I opened my mouth. He was already poking around the engine compartment with the same solemn reverence Indiana Jones reserves for relics—or possibly for dead cats trapped in ceiling fans. I stood behind him, equal parts awestruck and horrified. The Cub was beautiful, sure. But so is a guillotine, and I wouldn’t fly one of those into the bush either.
Internally, I was spiralling. This wasn’t the dream. The vision involved a Stearman, a biplane so dazzling it makes vintage warbirds weep and retired aviators write poetry. I had envisioned myself soaring across African skies in open-cockpit bliss, wearing a silly vintage leather flight helmet, a silk scarf whipping in the wind like a WWII movie extra who tragically dies in Act II.
Not this.
Not this... lemon coloured bumble bee with wings.
“This can’t be it,” I muttered to myself. “This is not the aircraft that will lead a noble anti-poaching crusade across Africa. This is the sort of thing a retired dentist buys to ‘feel young again’ right before lawn-darting into a cornfield.”
Still, there was something charming about it. Something irrational. Something... suicidal. The Super Cub stared back at me with a goofy grin, as if to say, “Climb aboard, loser. We’re going crash-landing.”
An opening excerpt from this chapter remains available here.
The full manuscript is currently reserved for submission and publication.
Marcel Romdane,
—nearly declared a permanent landmark at the North Sea, signing off.
"Let's Fix Africa!"
Behold: Marcel Romdane — aspiring airborne philosopher, cashmere-wrapped capitalist, and freshly self-declared savior of the natural world — seconds after announcing, with full chest and zero shame:
“I fix Africa!”
No plan.
No funding.
No clue.
Not even an elephant within a 500-mile radius.
Just a dangerously seductive smile, a yellow Super Cub with undocumented ancestry, and the kind of swagger that should be banned under international law.
This, ladies and gentlemen, was the exact moment he confused being shown a taildragger with being handed the keys to continental salvation.
It wasn’t a plan. It was a prophecy. Written in exhaust fumes and espresso-fueled delusion.
Here we see Enriko — grizzled flight instructor, sworn disciple of aeronautical common sense, and everything Marcel Romdane is not — inspecting what, to the untrained eye, appears to be a simple Super Cub.
What he didn’t know:
He wasn’t just looking at an aircraft.
He was peering into a cursed time machine disguised as yellow optimism.
This wasn’t an inspection.
It was an accidental handshake with Satan’s paperwork.
He thought he was vetting an airframe.
In reality, he was greenlighting three years of chaos aviation, moral grey zones, mechanical malpractice, and Romdane’s espresso-fueled gospel of “How Hard Can It Be?”
That Cub wasn’t just parked.
It was waiting.
To bend physics.
To bankrupt logic.
To crash-land on the Maasai Mara like a flaming lawn dart packed with elephant diplomacy, unpaid favors, and dreams held together by duct tape and delusion.
What Enriko lit that day wasn’t a pre-flight checklist. It was a goddamn fuse.
Nicole Romdane — stoic, stylish, and still blissfully unaware she’d just been cast as co-star in an unscripted, high-stakes aviation disaster series — peers into the Super Cub for the first time.
Dragged into the hangar by Marcel like a border collie on Red Bull, she surveys the scene with a blend of curiosity, concern, and the faint, nagging suspicion that dating a man who wants zebra seat covers in an airplane might not end in a wedding, but in a mayday call.
There’s hope in her eyes.
And fear.
And the quiet inner voice whispering,
“This man just said, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’”
Spoiler: Everything.
This moment — innocent, quiet, bathed in the golden glow of delusion — marks the beginning of a long descent into:
-
questionably repaired aircraft
-
spontaneous engine failures
-
illegal landings in game reserves
-
and conversations like:
“Did you tighten the oil cap?”
“…Define tighten.”
Welcome to Part VII: Love at First Stall.
Also known as: The Last Photo Where Nicole Still Had Hope.
“The Cub, the Kraut, and the Check That Never Ends”
Enriko checked every nut, bolt, rivet, and spiritual alignment — twice. I checked my reflection in the prop.
Behold Enriko — the embodiment of German aviation paranoia, mechanical foreplay, and passive-aggressive competence.
Here he is, executing a preflight inspection so aggressive, so thorough, and so deeply personal that the aircraft itself briefly filed a restraining order.
This was the man tasked with teaching me to fly.
Correction: This was the man tasked with surviving my learning curve.
Every screw was interrogated. Every cable judged. Every rivet morally assessed.
And me?
I stood behind him grinning, blissfully unaware that this very aircraft would one day launch me into a 3 year-long detour involving goat meat, Land Rover trauma, and airstrips that doubled as elephant crossings.
Enriko didn’t smile much. But when he did, it meant you forgot something.
Probably fatal.
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