2 pilots, 1 paraglider tell their stories on Glo-powered CNN African Voices

A paraglider, Hans Joachim from Mauritius, a hot air balloon pilot from Kenya, David Eris Nguruga and a South African commercial pilot, Tumi Carter Katisi are guests on this week's edition of African Voices, a magazine programme broadcast on the Cable News Network (CNN).

The programme sponsored by Globacom will offer viewers a peep into the trajectories of the trio and their coping strategies. 

The first guest David Nguruga talks about what motivated his love for hot air balloons and flying adding “I had developed a liking for flying airplanes when I was a kid. I remember, we were having lunch and this fighter jet came out. I stepped on my food just to see this plane. I was like, ‘whoa’. I said I want to be in one.  So, I think I developed that from my childhood but never thought that I could do it”. 

The second guest Tumi Carter Katisi said her love for flying was ignited in the tenth grade when she got an assignment to shadow a professional in the workplace. Falling back on her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, she chose to carry out the assignment in a hospital. Though she reached out to many hospitals, none replied. Wary of failing her assignment, she decided instead to visit her aunt who was a staff member of South African Airways.

Katisi recalled that she would be at the airport at every opportunity she got after that first visit until she became familiar with pilots who shared their secrets with her and allowed her to share in their simulator time. Her big break came when she received communal help to pay her huge fees up to last year when she got her commercial licence.  She has since elected to use her experience to train other young South African females who may wish to toe her path.

The third guest, Hans Joachim indulges in the recreational and competitive adventure sport of flying lightweight, free-flying, foot-launched glider aircraft with no rigid primary structure.  He sits in a harness suspended below a fabric wing from which he has ruled the Mauritius skies, flying like a bird for years.

“The development of our ability to identify these rising, warmer and therefore lighter air bubbles allows us to paraglide across the island – from North to South and from East to West”, Joachim added.