Born in an Afghan refugee camp, Shaesta Waiz says she remembers being painfully shy and afraid of airplanes. Now, the 29-year-old is the first female certified civilian pilot from the war-torn country.

She has her sights set on becoming the youngest woman to complete a solo flight around the world, and she wants every young girl to see how she beat the odds to be able to accept such a challenge.

Weather permitting, Waiz will stop in 18 countries across five continents to complete the over 40,000 kilometre journey. She started the trip in Florida on Saturday.

“I thought my role was to become a house wife and have kids. My mom had six girls,” she told CTV News on Monday in Montreal. “I have these moments where I take a step back, even if I’m in the air, and realize this is really happening.”

Through her non-profit dubbed Dream Soar, she hopes to inspire a new generation of young women to consider careers in male-dominated technical fields like aviation and raise money for a scholarship. She hopes to meet with as many youngsters as possible along her route.

“When I see the young kids … they are shocked to see the airplane and touch it,” she said. “When they actually feel something and see something. That’s when they get excited.”

Waiz’s family fled to Richmond, Calif., at the height of the Soviet-Afghan war in 1987. She and her five sisters attended school in an underprivileged district, where she remembers not being able to finish her first novel until the tenth grade.

“I was a very shy girl. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself,” she said. “I didn’t speak English. I grew up speaking Farsi and Pachtun at home.”

Her first flight at age 18 was terrifying, she recalls. But once she felt the thrust kick in and the wheels leave the tarmac, she says she knew her future was in the skies.

“A lot of people in aviation have this moment when they discover it. It’s so magical. It’s amazing,” she said.

Waiz enrolled at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and started dreaming about a round-the-world trip. She eventually worked up the courage to knock on the door of aviation legend Jerrie Mock, the first women to fly solo around the world in 1964. The pair spoke for three hours.

“The one thing she did say is the airplane does not know if you are a boy or girl. It’s a machine. It reacts to how competent you are as a pilot. That gave me a lot of confidence,” Waiz said.

Unlike Mock’s 1953 Cessna 180, her Beechcraft Bonanza A36 is packed advanced avionics to help keep her safe along the 90-day journey.

While Waiz now feels at home in the cockpit, she says she will never forget the obstacles she had to topple to get there.

“I often tell kids, sometimes your biggest fear in life can be your passion, but you will never know unless you go out there and face it,” she said.

With a report by CTV’s Quebec Bureau Chief Genevieve Beauchemin