With the door shut firmly behind them, Betty and Doreen looked at each other. The woman sitting on the bed beckoned for them to sit with her. With the use of hand signals and the tiny bit of Arabic she could speak, Betty was able to learn that the woman was Said Hilmi’s wife. Soon other women arrived, each one wearing the same long garb and veil. They greeted each other and spoke rapidly in Arabic, laughing as they did so. Betty wished she could speak more Arabic. None of the women could speak any English, since women were not permitted to go to school or learn other languages.
After an hour had passed, the door to the room swung open again, and Nada walked in carrying Said Hilmi’s baby son. The women all began speaking excitedly, and they all wanted to hold the baby at once. Betty got to hold him for a while, too.
After holding and admiring the baby, Betty assumed they would all be joining in the celebration with the other guests. Instead another hour dragged on until Nada reappeared at the door and made an announcement. The Sudanese women, who had been half sitting and half lying on the beds, sprang to their feet. Betty also stood up and straightened her linen jacket. She and Doreen followed the others out onto the balcony, where a table laden with food had been set up. The Sudanese women all sat down, making room for Betty and Doreen, and began to eat. The meal seemed to last forever, and Betty began to despair about getting to mingle with any of the other guests. To Betty’s dismay, when the meal was over, Nada gestured for Betty and Doreen to follow her. She led them back downstairs and outside to where Ernie Krenzin was waiting for them by the pickup truck.
Apart from Said Hilmi, Betty had seen no other man throughout the whole celebration. She had been kept separate with the women of the household. And while she didn’t like it one bit, she knew it was the normal course of events for women in the Sudan, unlike the lunch she’d enjoyed with the male government officials at the airport in El Renk.
Betty spent five months flying the De Havilland Rapide before word finally came that the replacement Cessna 180 was waiting in England. There was just one catch: The plane had been shipped from the United States in pieces, and it needed to be assembled. MAF-UK decided that Betty should fly the Rapide to England, where it could be sold, and when the Cessna 180 was finally assembled, she could fly it back to the Sudan. Stuart and Phyllis King and their two-year-old daughter Becky accompanied Betty on the trip. Phyllis was expecting another baby and wanted it to be born in England. As well, Stuart would be able to help reassemble the Cessna. He had served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, not as a pilot but as an airplane mechanic. Indeed it was Stuart’s skill at fixing aircraft that had kept the Rapide flying safely all over the Sudan.
The four of them took off on their four-thousand-mile journey to England on August 10, 1956. As Betty prepared the Rapide for the flight early that morning, she saw the local air traffic controller unlocking the door to the control tower. “Today is the big day?” he called. “And it looks as though you’ve got great weather to fly.”
“Yes,” Betty replied. “I’m just checking everything one last time, especially the long-range fuel tanks.”
“You will be back, won’t you?” the controller asked.
“Yes,” Betty said with a smile, “but not with this plane. We are going to replace it with a new Cessna. I should be back with it by October or November at the latest.”
“We’ll all be following your progress,” the air traffic controller said, opening the door to the control tower and then adding before stepping inside, “If you need anything, you can count on us.”
On the first day of the journey, Betty flew the Rapide north above the Nile to Wadi Halfa, located on the border between Egypt and the Sudan. There they spent the first night. Early the next morning they took off on the next leg of their journey, which would take them to Cairo, with a refueling stop at Asyut along the way. Next they would fly on to Mersa Matruk on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, where they planned to spend their second night. By 1:45 P.M. the Rapide was flying over the great pyramids and was soon safely on the ground at Cairo Airport for another refueling stop. All went well on the journey until they attempted to get permission to land at Mersa Matruk. Stuart King, who was operating the Rapide’s clunky radio on the trip for Betty, had tried several times to inform the airport at Mersa Matruk that they were ready to land. But there was no reply.
It was then that Betty realized how closely the air traffic controllers back in the Sudan were following her journey. Two minutes after getting no reply from the airport at Mersa Matruk, a crackly voice came over the radio. “Rapide Victor Papa King Charlie Victor, this is Khartoum. We have picked up your message and will relay it for you. Over.”
Betty looked at Stuart. The controller was twelve hundred miles away in Khartoum, but he had been monitoring their frequency the whole time, just in case they needed help. Betty smiled in amazement at how kind these staunchly Muslim men were toward a group of Christian missionaries.
“Roger, Khartoum. This is Rapide VP-KCV. Please advise Mersa Matruk airport we will be landing in twenty minutes. Thank you. Over and out,” Stuart replied into the radio microphone.
Betty was glad when the airplane finally touched down at the airport. It had been a long day. She had flown for eight and a half hours over unfamiliar territory, causing her to pay close attention to her maps each step of the way.
The following morning they got another early start. Betty guided the Rapide westward along the Mediterranean coast to Banina, located on the eastern side of the Gulf of Sidra in Libya. From there she headed in a straight line for Tripoli, Libya’s capital. This meant flying over the Gulf of Sidra for two hours, during which time they were out of sight of land. The Rapide had been outfitted with water survival gear, however, just in case something went wrong.
The following day was Sunday, and they spent it resting in Tripoli. On Monday morning it was back into the airplane. This time they headed out over the Mediterranean Sea in a northwesterly direction toward Tunis, located at the northeastern tip of Tunisia. There they stopped for lunch and to refuel before heading due north for Ajaccio on the island of Corsica, tucked between France and Italy on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. That night they ate dinner at the Napoleon Restaurant in Ajaccio, named in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte, the famous French general who was born on Corsica.
On Tuesday morning Betty flew the Rapide on to Lyon, France, where they spent the night and prepared for the final leg of their journey, 430 miles north to Croydon, England.
Having never piloted an airplane into England before, Betty looked for large landmarks to guide her. Crossing the English Channel, she spotted the white cliffs of Dover, made famous by a wartime song. She knew exactly where she was as she crossed over them and began following a railway track that led her all the way to Croydon, a large suburb at the southern edge of London.
“Rapide Victor Papa King Charlie Victor, you are cleared for landing,” came a voice over the radio.
Betty smiled at Stuart King seated beside her.
“We made it!” Stuart said. “All four thousand miles of it. How many hours did it take?”
Betty looked at her watch. “I’d say just about thirty-nine hours,” she said, “though I’ll have to add it up in the logbook when we land.”
A group of cheering well-wishers was waiting for them at Croydon Airport, and they were soon whisked away to the Foreign Missions Club, where they were to stay until the Cessna 180 was ready.
Betty found plenty to keep her busy. She prepared the De Havilland Rapide for sale and attended a missions conference in York, where she did what she loved most, talking to young people about using their talents to help spread the gospel message. However, there was a holdup with the Cessna, and it was not until just before Christmas 1956 that the crates containing the plane were finally released by British Customs.
Both Betty and Stuart King were concerned for the missionaries in the Sudan, since they had been without air service for several months now. They both hoped that the Cessna could be put together in about a week and be flying in the Sudan by early February. The Kings abandoned their holiday plans, and Stuart and Betty stood ready to work nonstop assembling the airplane.
It was an exciting moment as the first crate was jimmied open in the Hunting Clan Airways hangar at Heathrow Airport. But the mood soon turned to shock when Betty and Stuart realized that the wings and undercarriage had been taken apart without anyone labeling the parts. Putting the plane back together without the parts being labeled was going to take much longer than planned, especially since neither of them was particularly familiar with the Cessna 180. Despite the setback, they went to work. A month later, the plane finally was in one piece, had been inspected, and was ready to fly.
By now it was nearly the end of January 1957, and another problem, which had nothing to do with the Cessna, had arisen. During October 1956, a war between Great Britain and France and Egypt had erupted. Egypt had gained control of the Suez Canal and intended to nationalize it, using the money earned from running the canal to finance construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River. Great Britain and France opposed Egypt’s action and sent troops to invade the country under the guise of assuring the safe passage of ships through the Suez Canal. In response the Egyptians sank forty ships in the canal, blocking it completely. The United Nations intervened in the fighting, and a truce was established in November. The British and French troops were then withdrawn. However, given the tense situation in the area, there was no way Betty could fly back over Egypt to the Sudan following the route she had come. She would have to map out another course to get her back to Malakal.
Betty weighed things carefully and eventually decided the best way back to the Sudan was to fly down the coast of West Africa and then swing east inland to Malakal. It was twice as long as the other route, but it was safe. Betty filed her flight plan at the Civil Aviation office in London. She was promptly told by a Mr. Fuquay, the office director, that in his opinion it was madness to fly a small, single-engine airplane over such a route, and he would not approve the flight plan. Betty was surprised and disappointed. She had not expected to be turned down, and the rebuff would delay her return to the Sudan.
Betty decided that the best way to overcome Mr. Fuquay’s objections to her flight plan was to present him with enough information to make him change his mind. She set to work typing him a three-page letter outlining the work of MAF, the flying experience she’d had, and the safety equipment and features of the airplane. Finally, after two weeks of waiting, she received word that Mr. Fuquay had relented and approved her plan.
On Friday, March 1, 1957, five people—Betty, Stuart and Phyllis King, their daughter Becky, and their new baby, John—crowded into the Cessna 180. After takeoff, Betty headed the plane toward Paris and then on to Bordeaux in the south of France, where they spent their first night. The next day they continued on to Madrid, Spain, and then to Tangier, Morocco, on the northern tip of the African continent. From Tangier they hugged the coastline to Casablanca and on to the port town of Dakhia, Western Sahara. The next day they continued south along the coast to Saint Louis in northern Senegal, and then to Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Monrovia, Liberia.
As they reached Monrovia, the halfway point of the eight-thousand-mile journey back to the Sudan, it was time to take a break from traveling. Phyllis King had a lot of diaper washing to catch up on, and Becky needed time to burn off some energy after sitting and playing quietly on the floor of the Cessna hour after hour. They spent two days in Monrovia. The break suited Betty well. Her missionary friends the de la Hayes were now stationed in Monrovia, and Betty visited and stayed with them. Her first night there, the de la Hayes invited Betty to go along with them to a special reception for American Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, who were visiting West Africa. The reception was lavish, the best the government of Liberia could put together, and Betty enjoyed the evening very much.
