Two years before the end of the decade, with so many accomplishments already bagged, Kenya took to the skies to set the standard for other East African countries. This was the year when the expression, ‘the sky is the limit,’ took on a literal meaning in our nation.
On 28th October 2018, Kenya Airways inaugurated a new ultra-long-haul flight from Nairobi to New York. The significance of this maiden flight was indubitable. With this new service, KQ had become the first airline in the world to launch a nonstop flight connecting East Africa and the United States.
Promptly at 11.30 pm on this Sunday night, the plane took off from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The commute was 14 hours 45 minutes long, and the flight transversed approximately 12,000 kilometers to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport just in time to catch the New York sunrise. In every sense of the word, Kenya was soaring.
Upon landing, KQ’s Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was greeted with a water salute. The water salute is a customary airport tradition which involves two firefighting rigs spraying arcs of water over an arriving or departing flight. In this case, the salute was a way of congratulating Kenya Airways on its new service.
The crew and the passengers on board the flight were welcomed with a ceremony to celebrate the success of the flight. And indeed, there was much to celebrate. In addition to being a pioneer flight service, this new nonstop transit shaved several hours off the existing commute between Nairobi and New York. Previously, anyone travelling between these two cities had no option but to endure 22 hours of flight time due to layovers in Europe or the Middle East. To date, Kenya Airways maintains bragging rights for being the only airline to get people directly from Safari Park to Central Park.
This wasn’t all from 2018. Before etching her legacy onto international airspace, Kenya was already making international headlines thanks to Thimlich Ohinga.
Thimlich Ohinga is an archaeological site located in Migori County. The site is a dry stone-walled enclosure was built in the 16th century. During its time, Timlich Ohinga served primarily as a line of defense against intrusion for the community that occupied this region of the Lake Basin.
On 29th June 2018, Thimlich Ohinga got inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Inscription onto this list simply means that Thimlich Ohinga has been acknowledged as a place with outstanding universal value to humanity. As such, the site cease to be Kenyan property and becomes global property, therefore more stringent measures are taken to protect its existence.
Thimlich Ohinga is the seventh site in the country to be added to the World Heritage list, after Fort Jesus, Lamu Old Town, the Sacred Mijikenda Kaya Forests, Kenya’s lake system in the Great Rift Valley, Lake Turkana National Parks, and Mount Kenya Natural Forest.
In 2018, Kenya received acknowledgement for preserving a facet from her past and embracing progress into the future. For these accomplishments, we give ourselves a pat on the back. Hongera, Kenya!
