Finally, at 2 A.M., Betty stepped off the plane into the warm, humid air of Kano. She could make out Soddy Soderberg waving at her from behind a wire fence at the edge of the tarmac. She waved back enthusiastically. She had made it! She was once again an active missionary with Missionary Aviation Fellowship.
As Soddy’s car sped west through the old city, Betty peered up at the clear, starry night sky. There was the Southern Cross. She hadn’t seen it since leaving Peru.
Before long, Soddy announced they were entering the SIM compound. Betty was impressed as he pointed out the eye hospital, health clinic, print shop, church, and guest houses. But Soddy saved the best for last. Swinging the car left, he pointed out the aluminum hangar that gleamed in the moonlight. Parked safely inside were MAF’s two airplanes stationed in Nigeria.
The first thing Betty needed to do was to get a Nigerian pilot’s license. The next day, Soddy flew her south to Nigeria’s capital city Lagos on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Everything went without a hitch, and on the return flight, Soddy suggested they fly into the SIM center at Jos. This was a huge complex with a large hospital and guest houses. Compared to the runways in Peru, those in Kano and Jos were a dream to land on. They had no high mountains or tall jungle trees around them, and no stray animals had wandered onto them. They were just long, hard, well-defined stretches of dirt.
A week later, Betty said farewell to the Soderbergs as they left to take their furlough and threw herself into the work of flying for SIM in Nigeria. There was always something that needed to be done—medical teams to be flown into remote areas, the children of missionaries to be ferried to and from boarding school, and sick people to be transported to the hospital.
Betty enjoyed the challenge of flying in Nigeria, especially over the southern reaches of the Sahara Desert that spilled into the north of the country. Here, where there were few landmarks, it was easy to become disoriented and lost. In fact, only two years before, the pilot flying an Italian airliner on a scheduled flight from Rome to Kano had become lost. Disoriented, he finally landed the plane in the desert a thousand miles west of his destination. The pilot was killed in the ensuing crash, but the passengers were rescued by a passing camel train. Betty soon learned that as in the jungle, the best way to scout out a new route was to follow something on the ground, such as a riverbed, a road, or even a camel track.
It was not long before Betty had learned about one of the more interesting weather features of northern Nigeria—the harmattan. The harmattan occurred when winds blew from the north in the dry season. With it came thousands of tons of sand from the Sahara, whipped up and driven south in enormous sandstorms. It was very difficult to fly through these ferocious storms, since the wind-driven sand made it nearly impossible to see a foot in front of the airplane.
Betty experienced her first harmattan in May while in Sokoto, 230 miles west of Kano. She had flown to Sokoto to collect an expectant mother and take her to the hospital at Jos to give birth. She landed in Sokoto, and although she wanted to leave her Cessna airplane parked in a hangar overnight, the airport attendant insisted she leave it in the open. He assured her he would tie the plane down extra tightly using extra weights. Reluctantly, Betty agreed.
After a meal at the Johnses’ home, where she was staying for the night, Betty looked out the window and noticed the wind was picking up. The palm trees in the yard were flapping about, and Betty began to wonder whether the Cessna was okay. She was thankful that the Johnses understood her concern and offered to drive her to the airport to check on the plane. However, the offer proved harder to carry out than expected. The wind continued to steadily pick up, and Mr. Johns had to stop the Chevy pickup several times and get out to check that it was still on the road. It took two hours to reach the airport, and by the time they arrived a howling harmattan was blowing.
Mr. Johns pulled the pickup to a halt near the Cessna. The scene made Betty’s heart pound. The Cessna was still there, but with every gust of wind its wheels lifted off the ground and then thumped back down again.
“Come on,” Betty yelled to Mr. Johns over the howl of the wind. “We have to lift the back of the plane up, or it’s going to take off without me!”
“I’ll stay here and pray,” Mrs. Johns said.
“We’ll need all the prayers we can get,” Betty replied. “See those six weights tied to the wings and tail? They weigh a hundred pounds apiece, and they’re bobbing around like they were made of cork!” She pulled the collar of her jacket tight around her neck. “Are you ready?” she called to Mr. Johns as she opened the door of the pickup and climbed out.
The wind-blown grains of sand felt like needles as they pelted against Betty’s exposed face and hands. Betty and Mr. Johns dashed toward the airplane.
“We have to wedge the tail of the plane up. There’s too much lift on the wings when the wind blows the way she’s sitting. We have to change the aerodynamics on the wing,” Betty yelled against the wind.
Betty quickly looked around for something that would do the job. A pile of concrete anchor weights sat by the side of a nearby building. “Over there,” Betty called, pointing in their direction.
Betty and Mr. Johns worked together to pull two of the one-hundred-pound blocks from the pile over to the Cessna. At one point, Betty’s legs collapsed under the enormous weight she was dragging, but the sight of her airplane flailing about in the wind got her up and moving again.
Twenty minutes later, the pair had managed to prop up the tail of the Cessna with the weights. Sure enough, this changed the flow of air over the wings, and the aircraft no longer bounced into the air with each gust of wind. Instead it stayed sitting firmly on the ground. Satisfied with their effort, Betty gave Mr. Johns the thumbs-up, and the two of them dashed back to the pickup. They all sat in the pickup for an hour until the wind died down enough for Betty and Mr. Johns to push the Cessna into the hangar, where Betty had wanted to park the plane in the first place.
Every muscle in her body ached as Betty lay in bed that night, and her skin stung from the sandblasting it had received. Still, knowing her plane was safe, she slept soundly. The next morning, Betty flew the expectant mother to the hospital at Jos, where the woman gave birth to a baby boy the following day.
About three months after her experience with the harmattan, Betty experienced another world—that of the sultan. She was flying Dr. Helser, SIM’s director of leprosy medicine, and two of his staff to Sokoto to discuss the doctor’s work with the sultan there. As they flew, Betty asked Dr. Helser all sorts of questions about the sultan. She was fascinated by the answers Dr. Helser gave. The sultan, a man in his mid-thirties, was the great grandson of Usman dan Fodio, a legendary Islamic teacher and writer on Sufi doctrine. In fact, Usman dan Fodio’s body was buried in the grounds of the palace where the present sultan lived. By the time Betty had brought the Cessna to a halt at the airport in Sokoto, Dr. Helser had come up with an idea.
“Betty, you sound as though you’re very interested in the sultan. Would you like me to see if I could get you clearance to come with me and my two aides?”
Betty’s heart leapt with excitement. “That would be very kind of you,” she said, trying to keep her hopes under control. After all, sometimes there was miles of red tape to go through to get even the most simple of things done in Nigeria.
Dr. Helser talked to the guards at the palace, and amazingly, within ten minutes it was all arranged. Betty would finally get to see a real sultan.
Betty, Dr. Helser, and his two aides were ushered into a long, dark corridor, lighted only by oil lamps hung high on the solid stone walls. With each step, Betty felt as if she were going back to medieval times. Suddenly, the guard leading them stopped abruptly.
“You must remove your shoes and proceed in bare feet,” he said in very correct English.
Betty slipped off her shoes and put them neatly against the wall.
“Come, now, it is time to enter,” the guard said.
Dr. Helser and his two aides walked ahead of Betty as they made their way through gilded doors and into an immense, darkened room. Betty squinted as her eyes adjusted to the low level of light. She followed the others, her feet scarcely making a sound on the plush Persian rug.
Soon they stopped in front of a platform. On the platform, a man dressed in white sat on a throne draped with a beautiful leopard skin. Dr. Helser bowed to the man, and Betty followed his lead.
“Ah, I see the doctor of lepers has come back to see me!” the sultan exclaimed with genuine pleasure in his voice. “And who is it you bring with you?”
Dr. Helser introduced the group and told the sultan all about the work Betty was doing in the region. The sultan was surprised but pleased to see a woman pilot, and he questioned Betty about the plane and her flying experience.
The doctor talked to the sultan about his work treating leprosy, and everything went well. When it was time to leave, the sultan even got off his throne and walked the missionaries back through the corridor to the entrance of the palace.
“So are you flying out right now?” the sultan asked.
“Yes,” Betty replied. “We’re hoping to get back to Kano before dark.”
Dr. Helser joined in. “We will fly over the palace for Your Majesty, if you would like,” he offered.
“I would like that a great deal,” the sultan said.
As the Cessna gained altitude, Betty steered it east over the palace. She dipped its wings and looked out the side window. She could see the sultan waving enthusiastically below.
A month later, Betty found herself in another palace. This time she was accompanying her friend Helen Dixon. Helen ran the SIM guest house in Kano and had been teaching the wives and concubines of Kano’s emir how to sew. When Betty told her how fascinated she had been to meet the sultan, Helen invited Betty to go along on her next scheduled sewing lesson at the emir’s palace.
As Helen parked the car and walked across the courtyard toward the palace, she explained to Betty that although she taught the women to sew, she would much rather teach them to read. This was impossible, however. Females in the emir’s palace were forbidden to learn to read for fear they might read something that would corrupt them. Sewing and embroidery were considered safe skills for women to learn.
Just as at the sultan’s palace in Sokoto, there were many guards at the emir’s palace. They all recognized Helen Dixon, and soon she and Betty were safely inside. Helen led the way through a series of twisting corridors deep into the palace until they came to a heavily guarded door. The guards nodded at Helen and opened the wooden doors that led into a large, richly decorated room. In the center of the room stood an enormous mahogany canopy bed overlaid in gold and mother-of-pearl. Betty had never before seen such a beautiful piece of furniture.
A tall woman stepped from the shadows and warmly welcomed Helen. Several velvet-covered couches lined the walls of the room, and the woman, obviously one of the emir’s wives, invited Helen and Betty to sit. Soon they were surrounded by three of the emir’s four wives and about half a dozen of his concubines. The women were all eager to show Helen the progress they had made with their sewing, but they were even more eager to hear any news of the outside world that Helen might be able to tell them.
Helen introduced Betty and told the women she was a pilot. For a moment there was stunned silence, and then the women started up with a rabble of questions. “Surely you mean you have only sat in an airplane?” “Helen is not saying a woman could drive an airplane as a man drives a car, is she?” “Aren’t you afraid to be up so high?” “Do you take a man with you in case something goes wrong and you need help?” “What does your husband say about this?” “Does your father allow it also?”
