Fly me Day is getting close

Submitted by Michaela Sholes


I am so excited for my first Fly Me Day! The last few days have been spent getting invitations written for the communities we are inviting this year and familiarizing myself with the contact points along the way. This year, we contemplated involving the Queen Mothers from the area and having them identify children in their own communities that they think would benefit from this event. However, a recent visit to see Manye Esther gave us a superb idea! She suggested that the Queen Mothers might actually like to go flying themselves and chaperone the children, rather than just identify the kids to go and have to find a chaperone. So, what was initially going to be a quick meeting with Manye this coming Monday morning is now a full-fledged presentation with ALL off the Queen Mothers in the Lower Manya District in order to issue an invitation to each of them personally and give them the shpiel about what to expect and that sort of thing. First question Manye asked me when she invited me to speak with them….”Do you have a kaba and slit?” (a traditional style skirt/top ensemble). <happy sigh> I love the definition of “dress professionally” here!

Back to Fly Me Day, for those of you familiar with this event, you know why I am so excited…for those of you a little new to MoM activities, Fly Me Day is something that the team here looks forward to practically all year long! It is a day when about 100-120 school-aged children (typically girls) from all over the area are invited to come to the airfield and the team literally takes each and every child (if possible) for a short flight around the lower part of the lake. For many of these kids, it is not only the first time they have been on an airfield, but the first time they’ve ever been in a plane! How intoxicating of an adventure could one wish for than this?! I know that made no sense grammatically, but I don’t know how else to phrase it. I love my job!