Over coffee and homemade cookies, two couples sat talking Thursday at a home on the Lake Stevens shoreline.
Denny and Darlene Brawford are retired. He was a 747 pilot who flew for Pan American and United Airlines. Their friends Dieudonne Kamate and his wife, Stephanie, are young newlyweds. They are visiting the Brawfords this week from Mali, in West Africa.
The road that brought them to the Lake Stevens couple’s table has been long and complex, as is the relationship between Denny Brawford, 70, and 28-year-old Dieudonne Kamate.
When they met in Mali about seven years ago, Brawford was flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship, which operates a fleet of planes used by Christian and humanitarian organizations for relief and ministry efforts and other work.
Doctors Without Borders, Catholic Relief Services and the United Nations are among many groups that have used the service, Brawford said.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as the economy soured and air travel suffered, Brawford lost his job with United Airlines. Back then, commercial pilots were forced to retire at 60, but Brawford had stayed on as a temporary pilot until he was hit by a layoff Nov. 1, 2001.
Mission Aviation Fellowship offered new adventures to the pilot who had thrived on global travel. The experienced Boeing 747 jumbo jet pilot was trained in California to fly a Beechcraft King Air 200 turboprop plane.
“I’ve been on the road all my adult life,” said Brawford, who graduated from Everett High School in 1957, studied business at the University of Washington and served in the Air Force. The military took him to Africa in 1960 during the struggle for independence in the Belgian Congo. Later in the 1960s, he flew with the Air Force in and out of Vietnam.
“God kind of prepared me,” Brawford said of his work with Mission Aviation Fellowship. Before Mali, he flew in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003. There, he helped civilians during the early years of the war against the Taliban. Always, wherever he went, he brought soccer balls as an offering of friendship to children. He said he once piloted a plane carrying the brother of Hamid Karzai, now the Afghan president.
In Mali, Dieudonne Kamate had endured a tragic boyhood. An orphan by age 12, he lost both parents to cancer and was left to care for three siblings. The family was helped by an aunt. For years, Kamate was separated from his sister and two brothers.
The American first met the young man at an evening church service in Bamako, Mali. It’s a city of about 2 million people where Kamate grew up and still lives. He is Christian in a country that is largely Muslim.
Kamate was a university student living in primitive housing when he met Brawford, but diligent studies and Brawford’s help have paid off. They have become business partners. With a $16,000 investment in an ice cream machine, Brawford helped Kamate start an ice cream business at a gas station in Bamako. The business now has three employees.
Kamate continued his education at the Leonardo da Vinci University in Paris, where he took master’s courses in marketing. He, too, now works for an airline. Kamate is employed by Air France in Mali, where he oversees marketing.
Once before, in 2007, Kamate came to visit the Brawfords, but this visit is special. He and Stephanie are on their honeymoon. They’ve been treated to splendid weather, good company and lunch at the Space Needle.
French-born Stephanie Kamate, 30, came to Mali with a Catholic outreach organization. Their love bloomed after Dieudonne was asked to show the French visitors around. She now teaches young children at a French school in Mali.
They were married Dec. 23 in Brittany, the French region where her family lives. The Brawfords couldn’t attend the wedding, but the journey with their young friends is far from over. In April, the Kamates will go back to France to celebrate their marriage with a church ceremony. The Lake Stevens couple will be there.
“Denny is going to be best man,” Darlene Brawford said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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