My Heart is in Africa

A Flying Adventure by Scott Griffin

Thomas Allen Publishers : $26.95

Anyone who thinks that the soul of Denys Finch Hatton was lost forever on the rugged plains of Kenya seventy-five years ago had better read My Heart is Africa by Scott Griffin - another privileged but restless adventurer who has written a surprising but poignant account of a two year aviation journey throughout Africa.  It deserves to be coupled with Beryl Markham’s classic account of life in colonial Kenya West with the Night.  Markham made the first solo trans-Atlantic flight from east to west.  Her book is almost on a par with Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa.  Ernest Hemingway thought so highly of Beryl Markham’s book that he told his Scribner editor, Maxwell Perkins, that “she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer ... This girl ... can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers.”  The same can be said of Griffin’s inspired writing and the dramatic account of his decision to fly his single engine Cessna 180 solo from Toronto to Newfoundland and then to Nairobi, where he was joined by his wife Krystyne and set about reorganising Africa’s Flying doctor Service that heroically provides medical assistance to some of the more remote corners of Africa.  His thrilling first solo flight over the Atlantic was only the beginning of an often hair-raising adventure where he eventually flew twenty-three thousand miles, circumnavigating the African continent, and dealing with some of the most brutal African terrain and some of the most terrifying flying conditions: thunder-storms, sand-storms, zero visibility and ice.  He then flew back again, east to west, as Markham did.  His book is also a lyrical love letter, both to Africa and to his wife Krystyne - who shared more than her fair share of danger.

Griffin clearly discovered the heart-breaking humanity of Africa - an almost neglected continent.  “What was life-changing was the discovery of Africa, the characters of Africa, the beauty of Africa, the horror of Africa and above all the humanity of Africa” Griffin explains.  “It opened my eyes and I saw what is more human about us all - what is more meaningful about the human condition.  It made me value the other point of view and refocus less on results and more on the human qualities that exist in each of us.”

Mercurial decisions often landed Griffin in trouble.  A Christmas Day landing on remote South Island, in crocodile-infested Lake Turkana, caused Griffin’s Cessna to sink into the soft black lava beach, badly bending the propeller and almost certainly damaging the crankshaft.  It required a messy helicopter assisted rescue.  A thirteen day safari in the Chalbi Desert in north-east Kenya then created perilous encounters in an insecure area where the Kenyan army and bandits were constantly fighting.  Three people were killed in a small village only hours before their arrival.  African bush flying is a hazardous experience anyway but a similar spur-of-the-moment decision to land in Tanzania without proper papers or passports resulted in imprisonment.  They were undeservedly lucky to get away before nightfall and a much lengthier unpleasant confinement.

By 1998, with most of the reorganisation of the Flying Doctors Service completed, the Griffins flew down the east coast of Tanzania and Mozambique to South Africa, and then up through Namibia and Botswana to Zimbabwe and Malawi, before heading back to Kenya.  The ensuing three chapters are a geographical lesson in themselves and worth the price of admission.  Descriptions of the varied and spectacular country, together with the sometimes hilarious chance meetings, make for entertaining reading.  We yearn for more.  And when finally Griffin, alone again, braved the eight thousand mile flight home to Canada over jungle, desert and ocean, we are treated to more hair-raising experiences - none more so than a losing battle with an ominously dark thunderstorm covering the Ruwenzori Mountains and Lake Albert on the Zaire (now Congo) border.  Somehow he survived.

Readers will understand perhaps for the first time, by reading this superb narrative, the Western World’s moral obligation to Africa.  It is a continent “stripped of its people, wealth, and culture, despoiled and impoverished.”  It is a wonderful thing that this single, slim but stunningly beautiful piece of literature has allowed Scott Griffin to share his vision of a still magnificent continent.