When You work for Smiles...

Letters like this seem like a bonus check.

From Samyukta and Sanaa Saklani

My father is a student pilot @ WAASPS and he told us a few weeks ago about 'Fly Me Day' during which Mr. Jonathan, Patricia and other pilots from US and Ghana fly 100 children from nearby villages for free. He asked if we wanted to go there to help out. It sounded very exciting, so we said 'yes'.

We woke up very early on Saturday and got into the car half asleep for the 1 hr journey to Kpong airfield. When we got there, we felt like the sun had fallen on earth. It was like the inside of an oven there, but there were lots of excited school children and adults and we saw 4 colorful planes ( yellow, green, white and red) on the field parked behind each other. It got a little cloudy. After a while we didn't mind the heat.

We really enjoyed Fly Me day. We met lots of new people, for example Millicent, Rebecca, and Linda, (some of the village students we met.) We also met Melissa, Rex, and Jenny who had come from the US and Germany to help out. My dad's job was to take pictures of each student using a fun camera called polaroid where you get the picture immediately. We hadn't seen such a camera before! My mom was working with Jenny to fill in the children's flying log books with details of their 1st flight and paste their picture in it.

We very much enjoyed our job of taking the photos from my dad and passing them to my mom or Jenny (OK, maybe it sounds booooring, but try it out, it's kinda fun.). We took over 100 pictures. We also spoke to the children before and after their flight to ask them how they felt. It was fun to watch the kids live in a dream. The kids were scared and excited- mixed emotions. Some kids looked a little scared before their flight but everyone was smiling after they landed. My dad was trying to take pictures of the children with a plane behind them so that they can remember better. Some were smiling a lot more than others.

Unfortunately, it rained before all the children could fly, so then mr. Jonathan made a speech and thanked all those who had helped including our family!

We'd like to thank all the 4 pilots who flew over a 100 kids. Especially Mr. Jonathan, for being such a great 'n' humorous host. And our mom and dad for bringing us to the Fly Me day.  My dad says that once he has become a good pilot and got his license, he too wants to be one of the pilots to fly the children on  the next Fly Me day. We look forward to attending Fly Me day next year!