Aerial collecting trips in northeast Africa

Some Moringa localities are so remote that the most feasible way to reach them is by small airplane. When I first saw the planes I would be flying in, I thought it was funny that the tails all had lots of dents and there were many junked airplanes in the area (photos 1 and 2). Then I found out why there were so many dented airplanes: landing in remote places is hard on them. Photo 3: South Island of Lake Turkana, Kenya; 4. Landing on a dirt road near the Galana River in southeastern Kenya; 5. Brake line broken as a result of landing on a dirt road near the Galana River; 6. Flying at a spire of the Samburu Hills in northwestern Kenya; 6; brushing same spire. Over the time of my field work, we knocked various lights off of one plane (before it was finally destroyed by an impact with a termite mound on takeoff) and lost various parts of the other plane (e.g. note the lack of a brake caliper in photo 5.).

I found skimming past mountaintops and flying in the smoke, clouds, and dark unnerving. But the rewards were enormous: seeing thousands of flamingos ringing a seasonal lake in northwestern Kenya (8.), spectacular formations like the steep spires of the Samburu Hills (seen from a safer and more relaxing distance in 9.), and the incredible solitude of remote places, like the South Island of Lake Turkana (10.) or a vast field of heliotrope near Mt Baio, a mountain not seen by botanists in 30 years (11.). I was so impressed with the incredible insights into plant distributions and the possibility of gaining efficient access to remote localities that I earned my private pilot licence in 2000 (12).

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.  

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