Beryl Markham was born in Rutland, England in 1902. She grew up in Kenya. Her memoir West with the Night is a vivid account of her African experiences as a race course trainer and bush pilot. In 1936 she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, from England to North America.
Beryl Markham died in 1986 in Nairobi.
West With The Night (1942)
“Under ordinary circumstances I should have been at the aerodrome ready to take off for Nungwe in less than half an hour, but instead I found myself confronted with a problem much too difficult to solve while still half asleep and at one o’clock in the morning. It was one of those problems that seem incapable of solution — and are; but which, once they have fastened themselves upon you, can neither be escaped nor ignored. A pilot, a man named Wood who flew for East African Airways, was down somewhere on the vast Serengeti Plains and had been missing for two days. To me and to all of his friends, he was just Woody — a good flier and a likeable person. He was a familiar figure in Nairobi and, though word of his disappearance had been slow in finding attention, once it was realized that he was not simply overdue, but lost, there was a good deal of excitement. Some of this, I suppose, was no more than the usual public enjoyment of suspense and melodrama, 
though there was seldom a scarcity of either in Nairobi.
Where Woody’s misfortune was most sincerely felt, of course, was amongst those of his own profession. I do not mean pilots alone. Few people realize the agony and anxiety a conscientious ground engineer can suffer if an aeroplane he has signed out fails to return. He will not always consider the probability of bad weather or a possible error of judgement on the part of the pilot, but instead will torture himself with unanswerable questions about proper wiring, fuel lines, carburation, valves, and all the hundred and one things he must think about.”
