Name Morris Gachamba | ||
Known for First Kenyan to build an airplane | ||
Morris Gachamba (born 1932) is a basement mechanic in Kenya, a country in East Africa. Gachamba has a humble home in Kenya's Nyeri district where he manages to find industrial parts to use in his projects. He's built a security system for his property that blazes light and rings a bell when someone enters. His current project is using spare scraps of metal and an old automobile engine to build himself a Hummer.
In the 1960s, Gachamba became friends with an English tourist he would go out fishing with. The tourist owned a small plane and took Gachamba out for a short trip around Lake Naivasha. Gachamba became enamored with flying and soon wanted to build his own. Come the 1970s, he became the first Kenyan to build an airplane. It was a single-seater plane with aluminum sheets for the body and a Volkswagen Beetle engine. Gachamba tested it out at a local airstrip, and it flew. Once in the air, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and fly the craft to his nearby home. Minutes into the trip, the engine overheated and the plane crashed. Gachamba walks with a limp to this day that he acquired from that test ride.
Education
Gachamba dropped out of Kenya's Standard Four after Ambrose Wambugu, a Maths teacher beat him for not being able to answer a question on addition of fractions. He has commented on his education experience, "“I was never one to remember things easily and that made me a bad student." But, that hasn't turned him off the idea of becoming a teacher. He's said, “I would really like students to come and learn from me. I have a lot of practical knowledge and I want to leave it to them.”