You didn’t hear this from me… but on Thursday evening, certain carpeted corridors in Nairobi were practically vibrating with adrenaline and not the kind from evening coffee. Word had wafted in that an AMREF aircraft had gone down, and for a tense sliver of time, some of Kenya’s most iron-nerved security mandarins looked like they’d accidentally swallowed their own passwords.
Why? Because a very senior, very secretive gentleman ,the kind whose job descriptions are filed under “If we told you, we’d have to deny it”, was believed to have been booked on that very plane. Cue a flurry of encrypted calls, frantic manifest checks, and one or two aides who might have started Googling “national crisis protocol” on their work phones.
The craft in question, sleek and swift enough to kiss Somali airspace in just 45 minutes, has a rather interesting side hustle. Officially, it’s a humanitarian bird. Unofficially? Let’s just say it’s been moonlighting on “covert flights to meetings” where handshakes are discreet, conversations are in low tones, and nobody signs the visitor’s book.
By midnight, the relieved sighs could have powered a small wind farm, turns out the boss was safe and nowhere near the ill-fated trip. Still, for a few breath-holding minutes, the thought that Kenya’s security command chain might have been clipped mid-air was the sort of plot twist even seasoned spooks don’t like rehearsing.
And somewhere, the next time an AMREF jet taxis out for “a meeting,” a few in the know will watch it climb and wonder: is that mercy mission carrying medicine… or messages?
