Wings

My dad earned his wings on May 6th, 1971 after passing the private flight test on his first attempt.
He had used 9 pages of his logbook and logged 62 hours and 5 minutes of flight time - nearly 12 of which was solo.
A man named McAuliffe signed him off.  His mount for the flight was 5Y-AJI - the same aircraft he took up solo for the first time.

East African Private Pilot Licence (Aeroplanes) No 2110 (K.1964) issued  May 10th, 1971. (Family Collection)

His private flight training was done exclusively on Wilken's fleet of Piper Cherokee 140s.
The men who sat next to him were Sinton, Lennox, Amos, Corner, and Coulson.
Each man had a hand in shaping my father as a pilot.
Sinton, by far, made the greatest impression.
My dad spoke fondly and often of Coulson.
He characterised Amos as "mean" because he was known to rap his students on the knees with a bony fist if they made a mistake.
Either Lennox or Corner carried a pen knife - reportedly as a way to swiftly and painfully bring a student back to reality in the event they ever froze on the controls and thus lessened the instructor's chances of  dying peacefully in bed as an old man.
These men have all receded slowly into the crawling abyss of the past but not before leaving an indelible mark.
The aircraft too are likely gone...
In the best case scenario, they are still flying - tended to lovingly by a pilot who has no idea of the role they played in this story.
Some are rotting in the African sun, pushed up behind a Quonset hangar in the corner of an overgrown field, the once shiny aluminium skin pockmarked and bleeding rivulets of reddish brown rust; registrations worn off, vinyl seats cracked and vomiting yellowish padding, windshields chipped, yellowed and cobwebbed.
In the worst case scenario, they've been melted down into kettles or garbage tins.
I know the certain fates of only two...and a tantalizing detail regarding two others.

PA-28-140 5Y-ALG breaking formation near Nairobi, 1970 or 1971.  Murray Sinton is likely riding right seat.  ALG was involved in an accident of an unknown nature on November 3rd, 1974. (Family Collection)

5Y-AGE was sold to the Seychelles Aero Club.  It crashed on the African island nation December 11th 1973 after running out of fuel during a cross country flight from Mahe to Praslin.  The pilot and lone occupant was killed.
5Y-ALG is the subject of a cryptic article in the Kenya Gazette from November 5th, 1974.  In it, D.C. Stewart, Chief Inspector of Accidents, solicits anyone with information regarding an accident at Savani Air Strip near Nandi two days prior to come forward. 
5Y-AJI also appears in the accident investigations section of Kenya Gazette.  On February 27th, 1975, it was involved in an accident 500 yards from a private strip owned by A. Roote. The government made the same appeal as it did in ALG's case.
5Y-AIB crashed into Tanzania's Rufiji River on September 11th 1985. The pilot, a 43-year-old man named Herring, was practising a forced approach into Mtemere Airstrip when he deliberately shut down the engine. The aircraft was destroyed. Herring lived.
It had been less than 70 years since Orville and Wilbur Wright gave up on bicycles to build flying machines and despite the soaring heights the industry had attained, flying could be dangerous. Aviators lived, and often died,  in spectacular fashion.
Three of my dad's friends starred death in the face - and two blinked.
The first flew into power lines while on a pleasure flight with his pregnant wife.
The other taxied into a small ditch while on a solo cross country stop at a remote dirt strip.  He tried to free the aircraft by pulling on the propeller...but he had left the magnetos on. The engine caught - decapitating the pilot.  They found him two days later - the aircraft standing silent guard over its former master.  Her tanks had run dry.

My dad, a friend and his sister with a Cessna 172 (likely 5Y-ALW) at an unidentified airfield.  ALW crashed  in September 2001 - killing two. (Family Collection)

Dad riding back seat. (Family Collection)

Despite the obvious risks, my dad took to flying with a voracious appetite.  As soon as he finished his private licence, he embarked on finding and mastering new airplanes.
He started with the venerable Piper Super Cub.
Then came the stalwart Chipmunk trainer and finally the graceful Fournier RF-5.

These experiences would be his first tastes of tail-draggers and aerobatics...which would, in turn, lead him to C-FFAM ten years later.