Piccadilly Circus

The last few weeks have felt like Piccadilly Circus on the compound, all four houses have been full and there has been a constant stream of airport runs. Three weeks ago our new program manager and his wife left for Morocco to learn French, a few days later the Henderson family left for a two week break to visit their eldest daughter in Kenya, leaving us as the only permanent MAF family in town.

Before the other families left an IT team arrived from Ashford and spent 10 days installing our new server and security cameras, and also bringing chocolate and TV shows so we could catch up on The Crown! While they were here a short term pilot Eivind arrived to help me out with the flying. He needed some refresher flying and a supervised flight on each aircraft before being released to fly solo so we took the IT guys up for a flight before they left.

Steve and Sam joining Eivind and I in the C182

Eivind and I flying in the C208 to collect passengers in the south

Since the end of January we have also had Hans, a Cameroonian communications contractor who is spending six weeks in the program writing stories about MAF in Chad for donors and the magazines. He was able to join me on a 2 night trip up to Bardai where we visited the hospital and took a walk out of town to see ancient rock carvings.

Rock formations in the Tibesti

By the beginning of February both our aircraft were due for scheduled maintenance inspections, so Geoff Linkleter from Uganda kindly squeezed a two week visit into his busy schedule and came to join us on the compound too. As well as completing the maintenance tasks due on the aircraft he was able to start training up our new apprentice.

Theo and Dieudonne working on the aircraft

Last but not least, we had two pilots from Uganda join us for a night as they flew one of MAF Uganda's aircraft 5X-SCO from Liberia to Uganda, meaning that our hangar was as full as our compound. 

TT-BRT, TT-BER and 5X-SCO parked in the hangar overnight

Sharing a meal with some of our visitors