His role model Elon Musk … a seven-year-old dazzles Uganda with his flying talents (photos + video)

The media has highlighted a 7-year-old Ugandan boy who has become admired in his country thanks to his early knowledge of aircraft and his emerging flying skills.

The local television interviewed the boy, Graham Shema, and newspapers and social media reported his name preceded by the title “Captain”. The German ambassador and transport minister invited him to meet with him.

The student, in love with mathematics and science, has flown three times as a trainee on a Cessna 172.

Graham says he wants to be a pilot and astronaut and one day travel to Mars.

“My role model is Elon Musk … I love Elon Musk because I want to learn from him about space, to travel with him in space and shake hands with him,” said the boy, who wore a pilot’s uniform consisting of a white shirt and black pants.

Musk founded SpaceX, and the private rocket company recently sent two Americans into space, hoping to someday carry humans to Mars.

But the boy’s passion for flying was linked to a strange incident. When he was three, a police helicopter flew so low that it toppled the roof of his grandmother’s home on the outskirts of the Ugandan capital Kampala while Graham was playing outside the house.

“It triggered something on his mind,” said his mother, Shamim Mwanaysha, a travel agent. Soon he began showering her with endless questions about how airplanes worked.

Last year she contacted a local flight academy and Graham began taking home lessons about plane parts and flying terminology. After five months of theoretical study, the mother paid for her child to take flying lessons.

“It was like a flying bird,” Shema said of his first flight.

The boy flew three times as a co-pilot between January and March, before the Corona pandemic prevented him from continuing his passion.

Since then, he has focused on the theories of flight and has watched many video recordings of aviation and space exploration.

Source: Reuters

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