Oscar Lima India:
An airman named Oli
Namibia
An airman named Oli
Oscar Lima India:
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24° 45' 58.6" S 15° 18' 07.7" E
The call of the desert:
And an unconventional career move
A man, a flying machine and a manoeuvre you won’t read about in any book. One day, Oliver Braun packed up his things in Germany and started a new life. The print salesman from Bad Homburg became an African bush pilot who flies safari tourists across the oldest desert regions in the world. Meet airman Oli.
The dawn rises over Windhoek Valley. Oliver Braun, 59, awakens early. At 6.30 a.m., he drives through the gates of the small airport, stops right beside his Cessna, which is parked in the grass. White wings, gleaming cockpit, large propeller.
Braun has been flying small aircraft over southern Africa for 24 years. He acquired this model – a 1976 Cessna 210 – some 15 years ago. Its call sign, Oscar Lima India, is painted in large letters on white paint, mimicking the airman’s nickname: Oli.
Braun goes through the checklists. Today, he will be flying two customers into the vast Namib Desert, a land of sun and sand and scorpions scurrying for cover.
He starts the engine at 8 a.m. After a short radio exchange with the tower, he receives clearance to take off. The former printer applies thrust, and the Cessna races down the runway, lifts off and climbs easily into the blue sky. Windhoek quickly grows smaller, the houses, the parks, while in front of the cockpit, the 2,000-meter peaks move steadily closer. The Khomas Highland and Otjihavera Mountains surround the city like a cauldron.
Namibia is called the ‘Land of Open Spaces’. You don’t have to fly very far to understand why.
Braun banks, turning the Cessna south-west. And then it’s not long before the promise of ultimate freedom unfolds: unspoilt Africa in all its glory.
Namibia is called the ‘Land of Open Spaces’. You don’t have to fly very far to understand why. Just beyond the Gamsberg, the Hakos Mountains begin, a brown, austere world of stony plateaus and beige-coloured scree. Scattered settlements are visible, streets running in thin lines toward the horizon. Soon, the Naukluft Mountains appear; further to the south-east, the Tsondab, a dry riverbed, bisecting the ochre-coloured plain like a long scar. Up in the sky, a thermal tugs at the Cessna and shakes the aircraft briefly about. Braun is unperturbed. He knows the routes across the desert by heart, the watering holes, the distinctive landmarks by which he navigates. It almost seems as if he’s familiar with every air pocket, too.
After a 20-minute flight, we approach the Great Escarpment, the gateway to the central Namib Desert, the threshold to no man’s land. The sheer immensity is breathtaking. Bare earth, wherever you look. Reddish-brown slopes, desiccated salt flats, hollows criss-crossed with crazy patterns – the preserve of desert elephants, sand lizards and snakes.
It’s precisely this landscape that drew the German printer to Namibia. Plenty of nature, very few people, a dry climate, abundant wildlife. Braun stretches his arm across the instrument panel and passes his hand over the vast wilderness beneath him. He looks at me briefly from behind dark pilot’s glasses. ‘You understand what I mean?’
There’s no tower in sight, no terminal building. The airfield consists of a few sheds and a narrow landing strip. Plus, three antelopes trotting westward.
Namibia is the second most scarcely populated country in the world. Only Mongolia has fewer people and even more untamed space. The land beneath the aircraft’s wings stretches from Angola to South Africa, an area two and a half times the size of Germany but home to only 2.5 million people. Such immensity, such proportions create a singular sense of space and time as the tiny Cessna flies over a planet absolutely untouched by human hand.
There’s not a cloud in the sky as Braun throttles the engine and prepares for his descent an hour later. From an altitude of over 8,000 feet, the Cessna heads toward a chain of mountains rising from the plain like delicate cones. ‘The landing strip is beyond them,’ says Braun. ‘We’ll be on the ground in five minutes.’
There’s no tower in sight, no terminal building. The airfield in the sweltering hollow below consists of a few sheds and a narrow landing strip. There’s nothing else but the wind sighing through a rusty gate and three antelopes trotting westward.
The pilot banks another turn, the runway is now visible. Braun lands soft as butter, taxis briefly and comes to a stop. The Cessna is silent. A gust of hot air blows in from the desert. The sun is directly overhead. Braun says: ‘Welcome to the Namib.’
To become a bush pilot, Oliver Braun didn’t just have to learn to fly. He had to fly a steep turn in life.
How the printer from Germany became a bush pilot in the Namibian wilderness is a story in itself. Oliver Braun didn’t just have to learn to fly, he had to fly a steep turn in life.
At the camp in the evening, he sits in the sand in front of the fire pit outside his tent. ‘See the oryx antelopes up there?’ he asks. ‘They’re far too thin, you can count their ribs. They know that without rain or food, they’ll soon be facing hard times, so they’re moving slowly.’
Once an expert on typography and embossing techniques, Oliver Braun knows lots of other things now. Over time, he not only became a bush pilot but also a flying expert in Namibia. He tells the story of how his life took a new turn. A routine manoeuvre it was not.
Braun was 30, and the family printing business was going exceptionally well. But then the computer age dreamt up something new called desktop publishing. This meant that documents containing text and images of any kind could be electronically typeset and distributed from any office, private home or anywhere else within just seconds. It was an incredible invention for some. And a devilish misfortune for others. Thousands of printers worldwide went out of business. They lost accounts, were forced to downsize and eventually disappeared from the market.
Druckerei Braun, the family firm, was also affected at the time. Braun had to rethink his life. Had to reinvent it. The idea to become a pilot came to him while on holiday in Namibia. The fundamental question he struggled with was this: What do I want from life? Is now the time to start something completely new? He entertained the thought: Him? A pilot? In Africa?
Druckerei Braun, the family firm, was also affected at the time. Braun had to rethink his life. Had to reinvent it. The idea to become a pilot came to him while on holiday in Namibia. The fundamental question he struggled with was this: What do I want from life? Is now the time to start something completely new? He entertained the thought: Him? A pilot? In Africa?
Instead of collecting points at the supermarket, he racked up flight hours in the sky.
What a bold, crazy idea! But then things started falling into place. Finally, Braun screwed up his courage and followed his heart – the heart of an airman. In May 2000, he put away his briefcase, sold everything he owned in Germany and flew to South Africa. He started his pilot training the next day.
He completed a crash course. Earned his PPL, his private pilot licence, then his CPL, his commercial pilot licence, racking up flight hours in the sky. Departures, landings, navigation, night flights, checklists, protocol.
And he performed banked turns. Soon afterwards, he achieved his goal. Braun was a pilot. In an old, used VW Golf, he drove 3,000 kilometres across southern Africa to Namibia, where he knew that pilots were very much in demand.
The rest is history. His story. He applied for a job and began flying over Africa. Every day, every week, every month. He flew into the Kalahari and landed at remote lodges. Took customers to Angola, to Botswana. One day he purchased his own plane. Oscar Lima India. After 24 years in Africa, with 5,800 flight hours under his belt, Braun says: ‘I know I made the right decision. I built a new life for myself. And after all: I really love to fly.’
Braun also knows that no little invention will ever take this job away. Computers don’t have wings.
The early light of dawn finds him standing beside his aircraft the next morning. At 7am, as the sun creeps over the horizon, the Cessna takes off, heading west toward St Francis Bay and Black Rock on the coast. Then on to Sossusvlei, the world’s oldest sea of dunes, which comes into view like a wall of peaked waves, towering ridges and pyramids of orange sand. Some of the most famous formations have names, like Dune 45 or Big Daddy.
Within a minute, a unique world opens up beneath the plane, a labyrinth of lee and sickle dunes, blown into sandy arches, crescents and parabolas. Spread out below us in the balmy light, the drifts resemble a sculptured relief created by the wind.
Braun banks the plane. Up here in the sky, you want to reach out and stroke the dunes, lose yourself in their beauty. The eye surfs the waves of sand, exploring the soft, unending lines and shapes that it has never seen before.
Braun has seen it all before, of course, but it amazes him again and again. ‘That’s the wonderful thing about flying in Africa,’ he says. ‘The landscape is staggering. You fly over this wide, empty land, leaving you speechless every time.’
And, best thing of all: very few aircraft fly above the desert here. So, when you want to bank a turn, you do.
Marc Bielefeld
Author
From a balloon to the desert, out to sea, into the ice: in twelve captivating reports and podcasts, the author describes fascinating places around the world and encounters with remarkable people.
marcbielefeld.de
Jens Görlich
Photographer
Great moments, peaceful bliss, poignant scenes: the photographer from Frankfurt always has his camera ready to capture what words can’t express.
jens-goerlich.de
Lufthansa
Aluminium Collection
Travel companion
The perfect trolley for Namibia. Material: adventure-ready aluminium. Chassis: low-friction whisper-quiet dual spinner wheels. Look: as elegant as the desert itself.
worldshop.eu/alu
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