Rwanda's first female pilot takes to the skies at 24

Esther Mbabazi trained to fly Rwandair regional jets despite her aviator father being killed in a plane crash when she was eight

Esther Mbabazi was eight years old when her father was killed in a crash as the plane he was flying in overshot the runway landing in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So when, a few years later she announced her intention to train as a pilot, the planwas not well received by some of her family. But at the age of 24, Mbabazi has made history as the first female Rwandan pilot – although as a woman she says she doesn't make flight announcements because it scares the passengers.

"Some people questioned why I wanted to do it, they thought I wanted to be a pilot to find out what happened to my dad, but that didn't have anything to do with it," Mbabazi said.

"Being a pilot really was my childhood dream, I don't think anything was going to stop it. It started when I travelled with my family and we would get the free things for kids, like the backpacks. I really liked that and I just liked to travel. The whole intrigue of this big bird in the sky, I was amazed. That and the free backpacks planted the seed."

Mbabazi, who is fluent in five languages, trained at the Soroti flight school in Uganda before being sponsored to continue her training in Florida by national carrier Rwandair. She now flies the company's CRJ-900 regional jets across Africa.

The death of her father has influenced the way she flies. "It has moulded my character as a pilot, and I think what happened to my dad makes me a little more safe. It could have stopped me, but an accident is an accident. If someone is knocked over in a car you don't stop driving. As a pastor's child I know that you have to let stuff go."

One person who never questioned Mbabazi's plans was her mother, Ruth. A strong farmer and businesswoman, she wasn't fazed to see her daughter take to the air after what the death of her husband, who was a Pentecostal pastor before his death.

"I didn't get any resistance from my mum," Mbabazi said. "In her time she was the only girl in her electricity class, so she doesn't have any issues with what I do. She has five children and whether we want to do fashion or aviation, as long as we're doing something we're interested in, she's happy."

Mbabazi was born in Burundi, where her family had moved in 1994 before Rwanda's genocide. The family moved back to Rwanda in 1996.

While not without its critics, particularly on human rights issues, Rwanda is now a secure and rapidly developing country. GDP grew by 7.7% last year and the government claims to have lifted one million people out of poverty in five years. Particular progress has been made towards gender equality. Women make up more than half of MPs.

"Things are changing in Rwanda," says Mbabazi. "Before you wouldn't find women driving taxis here, and now you see it. There are men who cook now in Rwanda, when, in an African culture, women have to cook. So I think eventually things change. If you really work hard and you prove that you can do something well, I don't think there's a question of you being a woman, it doesn't come into the equation.

"There are not so many male Rwandan pilots either. So even though I am the first female, my colleagues are the first male Rwandan pilots to be flying commercial planes. So I think it's a big change for all of us Rwandans and something that should be celebrated

http://www.guardian.co.uk

Photograph: Sean Jones for the Guardian

How I became a doctor at 21 –Ola Orekunrin

MAY 27, 2012 BY NKARENYI UKONU

http://www.punchng.com

Nigerian healthcare entrepreneur and founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, an enterprise providing urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services across West Africa

Propelled by a personal tragedy and driven by a passion for better healthcare, Ola tells us her ups and downs in her incredible story of becoming a medical doctor at the tender age of 21 and founding Nigeria’s premiere Air Ambulance Service.

So much has happened in her life that you would not believe she is just 26 years old. Hers is synonymous with innovation, success and excellence. It started with a resignation from a high-flying job in England, and relocation to Nigeria. So determined to make a difference in medical practice, Dr Ola Orekunrin decided to set up, The flying doctors, the first air ambulance service in West Africa. Her journey to setting up such a capital intensive and delicate business was prompted by a death—her younger sister died of sickle cell anaemia.

“She was always in and out of hospitals but eventually died for lack of the availability of air ambulance. This more or less propelled my interest in medicine because I really wanted to make a difference in the same way doctors had done to her. Setting up the company was a direct result of my fascination for helicopters, trauma medicine, motor accident kinematics and pre-hospital medicine. I knew it was something that I had the skills and experience to do,” she reminisces.

The flying doctors eventually came to fruition about two years ago and it basically provides critical care transportation solutions to both the private and public sector by selling yearly air ambulance cover plans to states, companies and individuals.

She says of the company, “The first time an air ambulance service was suggested for Nigeria was in 1960 and nothing was done about that idea. Having studied the models in Kenya, Libya, Uganda and India, coupled with my growing passion to help improve the health care system in Nigeria, which I believe is poor, I became even more determined to bring a similar service to Nigeria.

“We are completely physician-led and adhere to the highest standards of medical practice supported by the East Anglian Air Ambulance in the United Kingdom. Our mission is simple— to provide the best possible standard of health care to all.”

Wondering if the low income earners would benefit from such high end service? She says, “What I do hope is that more states will take up cover as well as making it increasingly available to the common man. I know that as Nigeria starts to take health care reform more seriously, this will begin to happen.”

But the road to achieving the appreciable level of success was anything but smooth. Ekiti State-born Orekunri recalls:

 “I quit my job, said goodbye to my political aspirations for the position of the president of the British Medical Association and minister for the conservative party, I sold my car and my house, and bought my one way ticket to Lagos. I was rejected more times than I can remember.

“Sometimes I would spend hours waiting in an office only to be told to come back the next day and then be turned down.

“One time, on my way to Ondo State, I was robbed of all I had and was told by my companion, who was travelling with me, not to speak or else my accent would give me away and be the basis for my kidnap. Even in the face of difficultly, I was able to get some funding in addition to what I had saved up.

“In all of these, I was able to learn a great lesson— when you need something, people tend to avoid you but when you don’t need anything and seem to be making profit, they tend to become your best friend. The attitude towards me has changed immensely.”

She attributes her can-do and never-die-spirit to her love for her country.

 She says, “I really do love Africa and Nigeria in particular because it is my identity. I have since realised that the earlier I re-integrate myself back to my roots, the better for me. I grew up in all-white environment and went to an all-white university. To be honest, until I moved back to Lagos, I never ever thought that Nigerians were capable of doing or achieving anything on their own.”

Born and raised in England, Orekunrin recalls: “I grew up in a seaside town called Lowestoft in the east of rural England, a completely white community. I went to a primary school run by Catholic nuns and was raised by foster white parents. We didn’t have much money even though it was a working class family and we sometimes struggled to make ends meet. Against all odds, I passed my A-Levels with flying colours, started my degree at the University of York at 15. I supported myself all through, working. I wrote my final medical examinations at 21, thus emerging the youngest medical doctor in England.”

She admits that her foster mother, Doreen, has significantly shaped her life.

“She’s a great, spiritual wise woman, who taught me so many valuable skills. I still think over some of the things that she told me when I was a child. They are all finally beginning to make sense to me now.”

She was one of the many recipients at the 2012 Thisday award. This is one of other numerous awards she has received for her work in research and clinical evidence.

“I used to think people who win these kinds of awards were politicians or people with the right pedigree so it came as a shock to me. I feel really humbled and overwhelmed and it will simply propel me to do more.”

She is afraid to experiment with colours and considers her style to be, “very casual, fresh and classy. I wear things that I think are reasonably stylish. I am not one to experiment with colours,” she says.

http://flyingdoctorsnigeria.com/team.htm

China Opens Longest High-Speed Rail Line

HONG KONG — China began service Wednesday morning on the world’s longest high-speed rail line, covering a distance in eight hours that is about equal to that from New York to Key West, Fla., or from London across Europe to Belgrade, Serbia. Trains traveling 300 kilometers, or 186 miles, an hour, began regular service between Beijing and Guangzhou, the main metropolis in south eastern China. Older trains still in service on a parallel rail line take 21 hours; Amtrak trains from New York to Miami, a shorter distance, still take nearly 30 hours. Completion of the Beijing-Guangzhou route — roughly 1,200 miles — is the latest sign that China has resumed rapid construction on one of the world’s largest and most ambitious infrastructure projects, a network of four north-south routes and four east-west routes that span the country. Lavish spending on the project has helped jump-start the Chinese economy twice: in 2009, during the global financial crisis, and again this autumn, after a brief but sharp economic slowdown over the summer.

The hiring of as many as 100,000 workers for each line has kept a lid on unemployment as private-sector construction has slowed because of limits on real estate speculation. The national network has helped to reduce air pollution in Chinese cities and helped to curb demand for imported diesel fuel by freeing capacity on older rail lines for goods to be carried by freight trains instead of heavily polluting, costlier trucks.

Each passenger car taken off the older, slower rail lines makes room for three freight cars because passenger trains have to move so quickly that they force freight trains to stop frequently. But although the high-speed trains have played a big role in allowing sharp increases in freight shipments, the Ministry of Railways has not yet figured out a way to charge large freight shippers, many of them politically influential state-owned enterprises, for part of the cost of the high-speed lines, which haul only passengers.

The high-speed trains are also considerably more expensive than the heavily subsidized older passenger trains. A second-class seat on the new bullet trains from Beijing to Guangzhou costs 865 renminbi ($139) one way, compared with 426 renminbi ($68) for the cheapest bunk on one of the older trains, which also have narrow, uncomfortable seats for as little as 251 renminbi ($40).

Worries about the high-speed network peaked in July 2011, when one high-speed train plowed into the back of another near Wenzhou in southeastern China, killing 40 people.

A subsequent investigation blamed flawed signaling equipment for the crash. China had been operating high-speed trains at 350 kilometers an hour (about 218 m.ph.), and it cut the top speed to the current rate in response to that crash.

The crash crystallized worries about the haste with which China has built its high-speed rail system. The first line, from Beijing to Tianjin, opened a week before the 2008 Olympics; a little more than four years later, the country now has 9,349 kilometers, or 5,809 miles, of high-speed lines.

Flights between Beijing and Guangzhou take about three hours and 15 minutes. But air travelers in China need to arrive at least an hour before a flight, compared with 20 minutes for high-speed trains, and the airports tend to be farther from the centers of cities than the high-speed train stations.

By KEITH BRADSHER

Control the weather in the Rain Room at the Curve, Barbican Centre, London

For many of us, it may be raining outside but if you visit the Barbican you could find that it is raining inside too. The Rain Room, developed by artists in London, uses special movement sensors to make sure visitors do not get wet despite "walking in the rain".

BBC London's arts correspondent Brenda Emmanus talks to artist Stuart Wood, who created the installation along with fellow former Royal College of Art students Hannes Koch and Florian Ortkrass. Visitors walk through an art installation called the Rain Room in The Curve gallery at the Barbican Centre in London. The Rain Room is a 100 square metre field of falling water which visitors are invited to walk into. Sensors detect where visitors are standing, and the rain stops around them, giving them an experience of how it might feel to control the rain.

Picture: Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features