On-flight twins on their way home to Kenya

GRACE Ndanyu, the headline-making mother of twins born prematurely on board a Gulf Air flight above Cyprus on February 28, was set to leave the island yesterday, taking little Joseph and Lucia with her.

Grace, 30, had been on her way home to Nairobi from an extended stay in London when she went into labour on the Gulf Air Jet. Completely unaware she was expecting twins, Grace had her babies delivered by five doctors who happened to be aboard on their way to a medical conference, and the flight was diverted to Cyprus.

The twins, who were born three months early, have since been in incubators at Makarios Hospital. Unemployed Grace, who had been staying as a guest of Gulf Air at Nicosia’s Excelsior Hotel, had been due to return to Kenya with her children last week, but the babies had not yet gained enough weight and were kept in for another week.

When she finally returns to Nairobi, it will be the first time Grace’s boyfriend Joseph, a school caretaker, has seen his children, as he could not afford the trip to Cyprus.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.