# Ghana's first female pilot **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [August 20, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409 "2011-08-20T05:29:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409/1 "2011-08-20T05:29:05Z")
[Article](http://www.aopa.org/aircraft/articles/2011/110818ghanas_first_female_pilot.html?WT.mc_id=110819epilot&WT.mc_sect=tts) > [@](#): > > Patricia Mawuli Nyekodzi was cutting trees in the bush of her home country, Ghana, when she saw the airplanes flying low overhead. > > The aircraft piqued her interest but frightened her. She had never seen an airplane come so close. Why were they chasing her? > > She hid, but the image of those aircraft stayed with her. Mawuli Nyekodzi set out to the nearby Kpong Airfield one day and asked why the airplanes had been chasing her. They weren’t, the workers at the airfield told her; they were practicing touch-and-goes, she later recalled… Good story. A girl goes from gathering wood to becoming Ghana’s first female pilot, an engine technician, and flight instructor. I haven’t had a chance to watch the video yet. I’ll do it mañana. ---
**Author:** ![code\_grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@code\_grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/code_grey)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409/2 "2011-08-21T05:34:36Z")
so, when the lady does a poor job of her training, will African men cover it all up all the way until she crashes and burns like the military bass did for her American sista [Kara Hultgreen - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Hultgreen) ? Or do African men fly planes so poorly (at least according to Desmond Tutu amidst the “awful turbulence”) that she wouldn’t really stand out one way or the other? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2011, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409/3 "2011-08-21T05:41:49Z")
WTFO? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 11:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409/4 "2011-08-22T11:10:00Z")
Interesting story, and I like that it’s prompted the organization she works for to start training other people. The school is “geared towards women” but I take that to mean they favor recruiting women, not that they exclude men. They barely mention this, but when she started working there she was “waiting for her grades”: that means she had ‘schooling’, but all her schooling hadn’t given her a chance to do anything else than what her uneducated sisters did. That’s a problem with school systems all over the world, how to get people trained in ways that will actually pay - both for them and for society. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [August 22, 2011, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ghanas-first-female-pilot/593409/5 "2011-08-22T19:03:35Z")
> [@code\_grey](#): > > so, when the lady does a poor job of her training, will African men cover it all up all the way until she crashes and burns like the military bass did for her American sista [Kara Hultgreen - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Hultgreen) ? Or do African men fly planes so poorly (at least according to Desmond Tutu amidst the “awful turbulence”) that she wouldn’t really stand out one way or the other? You’re seriously off-topic here. If you want to talk about some other pilot in some other country, start a new thread. **twickster** , MPSIMS moderator