Generous pilot who won’t fly solo

Joan Barsulai

She boasts a successful career in flying, an industry that is still male dominated.

Despite the challenges 28 year-old Kajuju Laiboni has faced, she has managed to emerge as one of the most visible and outstanding female pilots in the aviation industry. Since her return from Sweden in 2008, Kajuju is going through conversion, awaiting ranking in Kenya as a First Officer. Currently, she is doing corporate bush flights at Wilson airport.

Getting to where she is today has been no easy feat. She had her first flying experience when she was only 17, in what started out as a volunteer service at the Wilson Airport when she was a Form Four student at Makini School.

During her brief tenure at the airport, her interest grew stronger with each passing week, and she somehow managed to get her first solo flight in 1999. The experience was life-changing.

However, aviation training is very expensive and her parents, with a family of seven children, of which she is the first, could not afford it. Furthermore, her parents separated, so they have been raised by their mother for the better part of their lives.

Unhappy and unfulfilled

She had to forego her ambition for a while to allow her siblings to also get an education. She attended the United States International University, but while there she felt unhappy and unfulfilled.

"I was glad to have the opportunity to study, but I knew that flying was the only thing that could make me happy," she says.

After a year of agonising, she made up her mind to pursue her career ambitions through whichever means possible.

She went to Sweden, learnt Swedish, and from there studied computer science. Afterwards, she landed a piloting scholarship.

"Most young people I know usually give up on flying too soon because they have no idea how many scholarship opportunities there are for those who would like to study aviation," says Kajuju.

While practising flying in Sweden, she attended a conference in September, 2008, by an organisation called The Women in Aviation International, the same group that had afforded her the opportunity to study flying, and one which has given thousands of dollars and mentorship to women all over the world who are interested in flying.

She spent three days with inspirational women, who were among the top pilots in the world. This, she says, was really the turning point in her career. She realised there and then that a similar concept was needed in Africa.

Gradually, she networked with 28 like-minded people in Nairobi and, in December 2008, she organised a charity dinner.

During that event they raised money to sponsor a girl from Kibera to become a flight engineer. From this event, Women Aviator in Africa (Wafric) was born.

She planned for the first conference in August last year. There were 60 participants from the US, Sweden, China, Uganda and Kenya. During that conference, they asked students from Dagoretti Children’s Rehabilitation Centre to write an essay about their dream, and sponsored a record 15 students.

Mentors Youngsters

Kajuju has always harboured an ambition to enable and inspire young girls, especially those from poor and rural areas to achieve their dreams.

Even before she founded Wafric, she had already started an aviation club in 2008 at Dagoretti Children’s Rehabilitation Centre, a home that caters for orphaned and needy children, which her mother has long been offering volunteer services to.

She taught the children how to use the Internet, because she was aware that through this kind of literacy, their world would be opened up a lot more. What’s more, she is tutoring the KCSE candidates at the centre during her spare time, because they hardly get enough attention.

Says Kajuju: "Most of these students can barely afford to register for exams; some have to do menial jobs in construction sites to pay fees. They come for tuition classes having eaten nothing. It is a lot easier to give them money and not have to deal with all the hardwork, but we have chosen to give them so much more; love, hope, mentoring and advice."

She also reached out to children in various rural schools in Murang’a, Meru and to a children’s home in Nakuru.

She asked the children there to write essays about their interest in flying, and from this arranged for winners of the essay to visit the Wilson Airport, and also attend an aviation conference that was being held in Nairobi at the time.

Some of the minors, she says, were so inspired that they went back and started aviation clubs in their own schools.

Just a month ago, she got sponsors to enable the children make a trip to the Wilson Airport.

"The joy on their faces was priceless. I get such a sense of fulfilment when I help inspire these children so that they know that they can do it, just like I did, even without the money," she captures her joy.

Because of the great success these Wafric conferences have managed to bring forth, Kajuju is planning for yet another conference — dubbed Diversity of Aviation Industry — on September 27 this year. She says that the conferences have since diversified, to fit aviation lawyers, doctors, and several other careers in the aviation industry.

Notes Kajuju: "I realise that the aviation industry does not only consist of pilots. We have flight engineers, dispatchers, and many others, and the children that attend need to see that there is such a variety."

She plans to arrange for women in the aviation industry to give inspiring pep-talks to pupils.

Kajuju does not take the kind of privilege life has accorded her lightly. "I see all these innocent orphans, and it makes me realise I have to make a difference in their lives," she says.

Free sanitary towels

As a mentorship programme, she has started an organisation called ‘It Takes a Village’, which gives sanitary towels to poor girls.

She conducts monthly meetings with family and friends, during which she also collects food, clothes, books and toys that can also be distributed to these needy girls, who mainly live in slums and children’s homes.

She has also started aviation mobile libraries, and though this initiative to raise children’s awareness about flying.

She usually insists that they write essays afterwards, just so that she is sure that every child has had the opportunity to read these books.

She has also set aside several days a year for aviation clubs to present what they have done.

"One time one of children made a moving plane from wires and scrap materials; it was so moving. These children have so much life in them. I’m happy when I see the vast difference in confidence and communication skills between the first time I meet them and after I give them access to information and hope.

That is what keeps me going, and motivated. I just hope that they can pay it forward. I have paved the way, and I hope they can do the same," says the selfless aviator.

Kajuju’s message to girls out there is to stop wasting time worrying about how to get to where they want to be, and instead focus on their dreams and believe in themselves.

"Find your purpose, and do something that you love. Believe in your dreams and never let anyone laugh at them; after all, who are we without our dreams?" she asks.