Yawching to women: You too can fly!
This Sunday’s Bookshelf spotlights Wendy Yawching, a trail-blazing female pilot turned writer and a woman who has been honoured as a “Living Caribbean Legend” by the WI (West Indians) Global community. ( 2023) Wendy Yawching, the first woman Captain of T&T’s national airline, British West Indian Airways, (BWIA), started flying in 1986. Her career as a pilot spans 28 years, including flying with BWIA, LIAT, and finally, Caribbean Airlines, where she retired as captain of the B737- 800 fleet in 2014.
Yawching, also the first Trinidadian woman to hike the trail to Mt Everest Base Camp and the first Feng Shui consultant in T&T, is no stranger to pushing boundaries. Yawching is the author of what she calls a “powerful little book”, “The Courage to Fly”, self-published in 2022.
Yawching says she never intended to write a book and doesn’t consider herself a professional writer, leaving that accolade to her older sister, Donna, who she says knows how to turn words into magic. What changed? “During COVID-19 and the lockdowns which snatched lives and pushed people towards despair, someone asked me what I would say to my 18-year-old self if you could have a coffee with her today?”
When she began answering that question, Yawching had plenty to say not just to her younger self but to “anyone who needed some help to reconnect with their dreams, regain the courage to fly with their own wings again”. “The time was perfect, the book waiting to be born. I simply opened the door, and out it flew.”
The following is an excerpt from The Courage to Fly with full permission from the author given exclusively to The Sunday Guardian.
Chapter 1
“Imagine this ... A little girl, ten years old, lies on the grass looking up at a brilliant blue, almost cloudless sky. Way up high, a jet carves its way through the blue, its twin white contrails streaming out behind, hanging wide for a few minutes—then, slowly, dissipating into nothingness. In an instant, her childhood dreams of becoming a prima ballerina and a park ranger in Africa, raising lions and tigers and leopards as pets ... vaporize like the contrails into thin air.
From that moment, she knows. She wants to do THAT; she wants to make those trails in the sky. She wants to fly airplanes, high up there. She wants to be a pilot. Imagine this little girl excitedly sharing her new dream with the people she loves most: Her mum (gently reproachful): “A what? Honey, girls don’t do things like that. Her dad: “I thought you said you wanted to be a ballerina.”
“Don’t worry, Fatso (her family nickname), you’ll grow out of it. Girls don’t fly planes.” Imagine hearing the same message from everyone in her little world of siblings, extended family, best friends, school pals, teachers, and counsellors. They all agree on one important, immutable fact: Girls don’t do that. Their words vary— “A pilot? Get real, that ain’t ever going to happen. You ever heard of a girl flying planes?” “Who would ever hire a lady pilot?” “I’d never fly on a plane if a girl was in the cockpit!”—but their message always the same: GIRLS. DON’T. DO. THAT.”
EXCERPT 2 from Chapter 11
“Excuse me. Are you a little boy or a little girl?” The tiny old lady was blocking my path through the airport and looking me up and down. I was on my way to Toronto and in full captain’s regalia: hat, jacket, flight bag. I stopped and looked down at her. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” “Are you a little boy or a little girl?“ This was a first for me. “Could you please explain?” “Well,” she said, “I see your pilot’s uniform, so you must be a little boy. But you’re wearing lipstick and heels!”
For a moment I was taken aback, but then I got it. There I was, striding boldly across the airport, assuming that anyone could see that I was indeed a pilot (from my uniform) and a female (hair, heels and lipstick). To me, my female pilot status was self-evident. I had forgotten that, for some people, the idea of a girl becoming a pilot was inconceivable. This little old lady’s generation could never imagine a pilot looking like me. In her worldview, which comprised all she had ever known: Pilots were male. Girls couldn’t fly aeroplanes. Boys don’t wear lipstick and heels. That made her question perfectly sensible. Her eyes were telling her what her brain could never compute. I was disturbing her gender programming. I give her credit for coming right up to me and asking me. How many people over the years had just watched me and wondered?
I smiled, saying gently, “Ma’am, I am a little girl,” and continued on my way.”
End of Excerpt
Yawching, currently the environmental director of the Tobago-based Yahweh Foundation, is running a programme to build environmental awareness for secondary school students of Tobago. Yawchings’ mission as the founder and principal of Healing Spaces Caribbean, where she offers Feng Shui consultations, private mentoring, group workshops and motivational speaking, is to change lives through inspiration and empowerment and spearheaded the Global Feng Shui Summit of 2023.
IRA MATHUR is a Guardian columnist and the winner of the non-fiction OCM Bocas Prize for Literature 2023. (www.irasroom.org) Email irasroom@gmail.com