From Riches to Rags: An African Odyssey, Part XIV / Dead on Arrival: The Flightless Messiah Arrives

“I am going to soar over the open savannahs of the Maasai Mara like a flaming cartwheel of revenge with a Lycoming engine on fire. Marcel Romdane is my name, pilot from Germany,” I declared—arms flaring with the righteous fury of a televangelist high on jet fuel, dripping in purpose, delusion, and enough bravado to start a small war with a spork.

“And I will send elephant poachers screaming like nursing home residents mid-Bingo—when the fire alarm goes off, the WiFi dies, and someone turns off the oxygen.”

It was a strong opening statement. Bold. Heroic. All that was missing was me wearing a crucifix, a Templar helmet, and standing on a burning soapbox while a lion nodded solemnly behind me in moral approval. Slightly racist, potentially actionable, and, of course, completely unsupported by intelligence, strategy, or any trace of mental stability.

Also—I should mention—I had absolutely no idea where the poachers were actually coming from.

Mental note: Google that before someone else quotes me on record. Preferably before Interpol shows up with zip ties and a tranquilliser dart.

Chris—possibly Christian, maybe Christoph, could’ve even been a rogue Christoffel (honestly, I wasn’t even sure)—blinked slowly.
He said nothing. He just stared at me with the quiet, paralysed horror of a man watching someone bite into a live wire while reciting My fair Lady dialogue in Arabic.

Was I deranged?
Was I armed?
Was this a hostage situation disguised as a pitch?
Possibly all three.

You see, Chris was the owner of Yellow Wings, a modest safari shuttle operation perched on the confused fringe of Wilson Airport—Nairobi’s chaotic aviation compost heap. A place where aviation rules went to drink, and bush pilots, airborne tourists, and semi-legal aircraft came to play aviation roulette. His office sat above the madness like a control tower designed by Salvador Dalí and furnished by IKEA’s “Regret & Dust” collection, circa 1998.

Inside: outdated safari brochures from the ’80s, enough dead flies to trigger a biblical plague, and a wheezing fan that had been gasping for help since the British left and forgot to unplug it. The air smelled like ambition that had been left in the sun too long—curdled into something bitter and quietly resentful.

I believe Chris was either Swiss or Austrian—though in Kenya, that distinction matters only if you’re at a cheese-tasting competition or trying to apologize for colonialism.
What truly mattered was that Chris wanted to be a Kenyan cowboy. Badly. He had the attitude. He had the weathered boots. He had the leathery tan and the kind of dehydrated squint that said, “I’ve personally wrestled a dik-dik and lost.”

And he was wearing the sacred four golden 747 stripes—sewn onto his shirt like he was about to command the Luftwaffe’s comeback tour or lead Kenya’s first manned space mission to Venus aboard a repurposed crop duster.

Those embroidered epaulettes that, in Africa, appear to be handed out like participation trophies to anyone who’s ever made a plane turn left on purpose. It had become a full-blown pandemic of delusion: from bush pilots to baggage handlers, bartenders to baristas—anyone who’d ever seen a runway was strutting around with epaulettes like they’d personally landed the Concorde on a fishing boat.

I’d seen the fuel guy wearing two.

I once saw a man sweeping the hangar floor wearing three stripes and a clipboard. By that metric, the air traffic controller’s dog was probably a certified flight instructor.

Chris leaned back in his chair—the kind that squeaked like it remembered the good years—and fixed me with a gaze sharpened by decades of surviving white-saviour PowerPoints and Dutch missionaries with drone footage.
A look that said:
I’ve heard it all—every deranged pitch from every wide-eyed expat who thinks aviation is just a matter of willpower and snacks. But this one… this one’s got flair. The kind that usually comes with sirens. Go on. Impress me.

And then, the inevitable question:

“How many hours? 2,000? 5,000? 10,000?”

An opening excerpt from this chapter remains available here.
The full manuscript is currently reserved for submission and publication.

Marcel Romdane,

signing off—
still smouldering, slightly unstable, and somehow cleared for takeoff.