Morris Gachamba

Who is Morris Gachamba?

Morris Gachamba is a basement mechanic in Kenya, a country much more known for farming and poverty than engineering. Gachamba has a humble home in Kenya's Nyeri district where he rummages for industrial parts to use in his projects. He's built a security system for his property that blazes light and rings a bell when someone enters. A current project of his is using spare scraps of metal and an old automobile engine to build himself a Hummer.

In the 1960s, Gachamba became friends with an English tourist he would go out fishing with. The tourist owned a small plane and took Gachamba out for a short trip around Lake Naivasha. Gachamba became enamored with flying and soon wanted to build his own. Come the 1970s, he became the first Kenyan to build an airplane. It was a single-seater plane with aluminum sheets for the body and a Volkswagen Beetle engine. Testing it out at a local airstrip, Gachamba was surprised it flew. Once in the air, he decided to take advantage of the opportunity and fly the craft to his nearby home. Minutes into the trip, the engine overheated and the plane crashed. Gachamba walks with a limp to this day that he acquired from that test ride.