AviTech Reader

I have had many of my friends asking question like “Why did you top the country in Biology and want take an aviation career path?” I have answered this question in many ways giving a few reasons to justify the route I took. I have always been very scrupulous when it comes to making life decisions some of which have been endorsed by the people around me and some haven’t. Still, it all boils down to the fact that all I decide has been embodied in my personality and the way that I was brought up.

The main reason as to why I choose to take an Aviation path is that it is a dream whose dedicated arousal started much much long ago. As a preponderantly young optimistic boy grazing our cattle at our “kewa”-meaning land near river, a light aircraft flew very low just above me. The smiling pilot waved and I naively waved back before the plane with a KY… registration number that I still vividly remember climbed back to the skies towards Bungoma. Since then I developed an avid for Aviation especially to learn how this thing works and keeps itself up. Then, my dad, a primary school teacher used to carry home old newspapers from which I learnt about Maseno school that had just began offering Aviation Technology to High school students. So my focus was to work hard and join Maseno School after my primary School. Just a prop up to my struggle was the fact that in 2003 and 2004, Maseno school was doing very well in the subject and was among the very best in the country. So, I passed my KCPE with 443 points out of 500 from a very rural public school in Lunyito village. My parents really struggled to take me to high school where I worked hard to keep myself in the Aviation class whose selection was on merit. I was lucky to be among the best 20 students selected to do the subject. For four years I did Aviation Technology and was a beneficiary of bountiful amounts of knowledge that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. It really honed my skills in the field especially with the few practical attachments we attended through Kenya Aeronautical College at Wilson Airport. The flight experiences we had inspired confidence by the activated manner in which I felt while in the sky enjoying a beautiful view of Nairobi in the powerful 2-seater Cessna machine. I will not be fair to myself if I suppress my inner desire to fly a maverick jet! Flying…though I haven’t done it much due to financial constraints is surely my passion and If I had the finances just this minute, I would train to be a pilot and enjoy flying all over the world.

Something strange….I noticed about myself while modeling clay into vehicles, planes and cows as a young boy and also while “engineering” wire vehicles was that my innovative fecundity was more superior to any conservativeness I had so I could only make a good engineer. This is the inspiration to my engineering approach to Aviation. What’s more…technology is my thing and I would be very happy to be in a field that is rapidly advancing in technology because technology, especially electronics is my thing. Research, one of my favorite areas of Science is the engine that drives the Aviation industry. New technological concepts are first implemented in Aircraft-first military, then civil before it later trickles down to automotive applications. About the same, I always remember and keep in mind the fact that one has to plan a second move before he or she makes the first.

On leaving high School with good grades, I tried getting a scholarship to universities in USA: MIT, Lehigh, Stanford, Cornell, Princeton, Lafayette but I failed. Lehigh and Lafayette gave a chance if I could raise some amount of money which was too high so I let the chance go. I made a crucial decision to do Mechatronics Engineering then gain an entry level position into Avionics (my favourite branch of Aviation). Even though Mechatronics is not directly related to avionics, it is an applied field in Avionics and I made an effort to join professional memberships like SAE in USA to keep myself updated with the aviation developments as I continue to pursue my degree.

The forth reason why I chose Aviation was due to the fact that it is a global or international thing. I will describe it as a field governed by very strict rules that are followed and implemented to the letter. Any updates from any event are legislated to every corner of the world. Product supplier and manufacturers observe very stringent standards and are all regulated.

Finally, we do not need to descant upon the truth-this is the safest form of transport