A Busy Day, and an Unexpected Stay
Mercy Ships aims to leave a legacy in the countries they visit, not only through changing individual peoples' lives through free surgery, but also through providing basic equipment and training in hospitals throughout the country. The ship's Medical Capacity Team have been using MAF's Cessna 182 to visit hospitals in 16 different regions. They will visit each one twice while the ship is here in Madagascar. Having finished their initial training in all 16 regions, I am now flying them around the country to have follow up visits and do some training with the staff and equip them with Lifeboxes.
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| Two of the team (in blue) with a local doctor |
Wait a minute, what is a lifebox? A lifebox is a pulse oximeter, which is provided by an NGO called
Lifebox (It's amazing how many charities and NGOs actually work together on so many projects. The flight is a partnership between MAF and another organisation, but there are usually between one and three other organisations involved in supporting the work being done). Anyway I digress, a lifebox pulse oximeter clips onto your finger during surgery and raises an alarm if the oxygen level in your blood drops, warning the doctors that they need to take action before it is too late. In many hospitals, you are more likely to die from unsafe surgery than the condition or disease that you've got!
On Monday 8th February, I flew the team of three to Maintirano, on the west coast of Madagascar, to conduct a follow up visit at the hospital there. The flight over was uneventful, but after landing it became apparent that a thunderstorm would soon be upon us. The rain arrived more quickly than I hoped and mid-way through refuelling we had to scurry into the nearby hanger and wait it out. Heavy rain during refuelling can cause the fuel to get contaminated with water and it also means the pilot who is sat on the wing, gets very wet! The local people went back to herding their cattle along the runway as it was clear that the aircraft wasn't leaving.
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| Waiting out the rain in Maintirano |
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| leaving Maintirano |
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| en-route to Mandritsara |
An hour and a half later than expected, I managed to depart from Maintirano and we flew for nearly 3 hours North East to Mandritsara, dodging the cumulonimbus clouds en route. The aim was to refuel and collect a passenger, then continue on to Sambava, where I would stay the night. Well I ticked the first two boxes, but having got 20 miles into the final flight it became apparent that the thunderstorms between Mandritsara and Sambava were too big, I couldn't go over them, under then or around them so we opted to return to Mandritsara and try again in the morning.
After spending the night listening to the heavy rain and wondering how wet the mud/grass airstrip in Mandritsara was going to be, I woke in the morning to low cloud and rain. I pulled up the satellite picture on my phone and it looked like there was a tropical depression sitting over us but I was still optimistic that it would move away later in the day. That optimism faded as the afternoon continued to be just as cloudy and wet as the morning! Another night was to be spent in Mandritsara. The unexpected time on the ground did give us time to do a little shopping for local specialities, including some delicious lychee honey. The expat staff working at the hospital in Mandritsara are mostly from the UK so with it being Shrove Tuesday, pancakes and a variety of condiments were on the menu that evening.
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| Not great weather for flying, there is a mountain ahead under all that cloud! |
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| Buying honey in Mandritsara |
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| Pancake preparation |
Thankfully, after another night of heavy rain and some concerns about whether or not the river would be high enough to flood the bridge, we managed to continue our flight to Sambava on Wednesday morning for another hospital visit with another NGO.
