A Difficult Flight

10 days ago we got a flight request to try and locate a vehicle that was missing after it had been washed into a river. Unfortunately we had to turn down the flight initially because we were still waiting for my license to be renewed by the authorities. But by the end of the day, with licence in hand, we called the organisation back and arranged to do the flight the following day. We agreed to take the families of the missing people from N'Djamena to the nearest town to where the accident had happened and then start the search. 

On the morning of the flight, N'Djamena was experiencing heavy rain and we had to delay the departure until the skies had cleared. When we arrived at the destination the weather was closing in again, making a survey flight impossible. We landed and I secured the aircraft to the ground in case the weather got worse, or we needed to stay overnight, while the families went to see the governor. 

Weather 20 minutes from destination

Locals had begun searching before we arrived and shortly after lunch we heard that the missing car had been found and, sadly, the two occupants had both lost their lives. As a search was no longer required, it was decided to return to N'Djamena that afternoon, with the family and one of the deceased men. The family acquired a coffin and we returned to the Capital. On the flight down there had been a glimmer of hope that the men would be found alive, but the wailing of the passengers saying goodbye to all who had come to see the plane off told a tale of hopelessness. Please pray for this family, especially the mother of the deceased, that she will be comforted in this difficult time.

Loading the coffin onto the plane

Flying back to N'Djamena, even a difficult day can have moments of beauty.

On a more positive note, the week also marked the start of the school year at Wellspring, and Luke's first day at school. Luke has settled into school really well and has rated it 10/10 so far, enjoying being tasked with ringing the school bell for the first week and building marble runs with his classmates.

Cake and Propeller Balancing

Last week, if you follow us on Facebook, you will have seen that I celebrated my birthday with a fantastic engineer cake. Apparently I spent much of the summer telling everyone we met that we really need an engineer here in Chad, so Matt and the children decided to make me one. 

Unfortunately Playmobil people don't qualify to get licences here, but I did also have a temporary engineer from Kenya with us for my birthday and we spent the day balancing the propeller on our Cessna Caravan (technically Vincent and the rest of the team did the balancing, I just had to keep starting and stopping the engine). How and why do you balance a propeller I can hear you all ask?!

Vincent fitted a new propeller last week and so it needed to be balanced to ensure the blades move evenly through the air when flying. To do this we first ran the engine with a propeller balancing machine fitted to the engine cowling. This machine senses any unbalance and suggests where to add the weights. Behind the propeller is a big disk with holes all around the rim and weights are added to this rim. The weights are screws and washers, which are carefully weighed, then added. The final task is to run the engine again and see if the propeller is balanced, if not the machine gives new holes to put weights in. This time it took three runs to get the balance within limits. 

Nekob, Vincent and Arsene with the balancing machine

Machine, weights and scales

Vincent adding the weights

On the compound we have been busy painting our bin lids to help separate things we can compost or recycle here from things that still need to be collected by the refuse company (mostly just plastic). Once I had got the paints out, the children were quick to join in and do their own paintings. 

Thursday was a public holiday to celebrate the country's independence. There was a flypast over the city which we caught a glimpse of, and at the compound we had a BBQ together.   

There has been rain almost every day since we have been back and last week saw some particularly heavy rain, which turned our compound into a lake!

Finally, on Saturday there was a "welcome meeting" before the start of school, for families of children who attend. It was nice to catch up with families who we haven't seen for a couple of months and meet families of children who are starting this term. Luke had a good look around his new classroom and all the children enjoyed exploring the new play equipment that has been installed during the summer break.

Back in Chad

 We have already been back in Chad for a week, it has passed so quickly! After queuing for hours to check in at Heathrow on Saturday evening and being concerned we might not make our flight, we flew through the night and made it to Chad on Sunday afternoon. I hit the ground running, needing to be in the office at 7am on Monday morning. Our temporary program manager had left the country before we arrived, and an airworthiness inspection was scheduled for our aircraft with the aviation authority. As it turns out the inspection was cancelled and rescheduled for two weeks time.

Queuing outside Heathrow - it took over an hour to even reach the door at the entrance to the airport

Both kids crashed after arriving in Cario at 4:30am

The aircraft are currently in maintenance, Vincent has come over from Kenya to help out and I've spent the week doing engine runs on our Cessna Caravan, as he does the scheduled maintenance and replaces the propeller. I've also been catching up on things that have built up in my absence. 

Nekob, Vincent and Dieudonne preparing the new propeller

On the compound Matt has started the challenge of taming the jungle that our garden has become, due to the heavy rains at this time of year. We have been enjoying watching some baby chameleons which recently hatched, and the children have been spending a lot of time playing with their friends who currently live next door.

Can you spot the baby chameleon?

Celebrating the Platinum Jubilee in Chad

Two weeks ago we spent the afternoon with fellow Brits celebrating the jubilee with our own pudding competition in N'Djamena. In the two weeks leading up to the competition, Matt had us sampling various mango jelly and mango custard concoctions and even trialled one variation on our visiting guests and asked for feedback! In the end we settled on 'Meringo' - a fresh mango base, followed by mango custard, crushed meringue and topped with whipped cream and spun sugar. We made the mango and meringue parts in advance and on the morning of the competition, I sweltered whilst trying to spin sugar in 40 degrees (turns out working with melted sugar is even more frustrating than working with chocolate). We then had a slight disaster on arrival at Guinbor as the cream was off and it curdled as Matt tried to whip it. Luckily friends had some spare cream and our desert was rescued.

Bethan also designed her own desert, going for the ultimate challenge of an entirely ice-based desert in the middle of the day during hot season! Her creation featured ice lollies consisting of pineapple (dyed blue), mango and watermelon & mint, made to look like the Chadian flag. They were seated on a disc of ice, on which she attempted to carve and colour the union jack with food colouring so that the whole thing looked (somewhat) like a crown.

In total there were 10 deserts in the competition, including a Tower of London inspired cheesecake, ice-cream filled cupcakes and an impressive construction of mango filled profiteroles formed into a 3D crown. An independent panel of judges from the USA (who conveniently live at Guinibor) assessed the taste, appearance and use of local ingredients before declaring the winning dessert to be a Mango and raspberry baked cheese cake.

This week we had a rare night out, making the most of willing babysitters living next door to us, to attend the British Embassy's Platinum Jubilee event. There were about 150 people attending the celebration at one of the local hotels. The entrance was decked in arches of purple and white balloons (and plenty of security so we wimped out of trying to take a photo of the entrance). An evening of canapes, live music, speeches, and an enormous cake followed. 

It was the first event to be organised by the British embassy and they pulled out all the stops to make it a memorable night. We mingled with members of the armed forces, Chadian government ministers and foreign ambassadors..well we could've done, mostly we enjoyed the company of our friends and people  that I know through work! 

Visitors, Flying and Planning

Yet another two weeks have flown by in a haze!

Visitors: On Saturday 14th our look-see visitors arrived to see the program they are planning to join later this year. They were with us for 6 days which we filled with visits to various places in Chad. We took them for a tour of a hospital so they know what sort of medical care to expect, a trip to the market and supermarkets so they had an idea of what foods are available here, a trip out to Orca (a big chain store across Africa similar to Habitat) to see what things they don't need to ship over because they can buy them here. On Sunday Matt drove them out to see the retreat centre and I took them along to volleyball to meet some of the other families in the mission community. We also took them along to meet the team that run Acacia Vulnerable Women's Ministry and to see Oasis centre running it's English classes.

At the same time John and Tracey Feil arrived in Chad (from MAF South Sudan) to help in the office for the next few weeks. John got stuck in straight away training our staff on the latest development of the Wingman flight management tool that we use for booking our flights. Meanwhile Tracey was able to tag along to some of the look-see trips and orientate herself a bit around the city. They have already discovered a patisserie nearby that we didn't even know existed! It is a real blessing to have them living next door and helping out in the office, meaning I am not the only manager in program. Tracey has also been persuaded to help us in the role of communications, writing up stories of flights in recent weeks. Luke thinks this means she is publishing lots of books about flying the Caravan!

John joined me for the medical evacuation flight

Flights: We haven't had many flights in the last two weeks, but they have been some fairly long ones. On Wednesday I flew a medical evacuation to bring a lady into N'Djamena after she had a heart attack. Last week I flew a team to Abeche for a Swedish organisation looking to start funding projects in the region. We met with a local team to hear about the work currently being done and to find out about the needs of people there. Possible proposals include a project to prevent women getting into prostitution,  a project preventing teenagers turning to drugs and alcohol and a school that teaches in Arabic but follows a Christian curriculum. Please pray that these projects will come to fruition to offer young people in Abeche a greater hope for the future. 

On Friday I flew the full breadth of the country, entering Cameroon briefly on departure and then seeing the border with Sudan and CAR in the East. The flight route took in Abeche, Goz Beida and Haraze, and whilst this is one of our more scenic routes past the mountains in the East it was also rather bumpy as we arrived in the midday heat. 

Medical evacuation

Looking across to Central African Republic

Planning: It is now just under 4 weeks before we come back to the UK for our home assignment and a short break. You can catch up with us on any of the following dates:

Sunday 19th June - 10:30 service at Martock Christian Fellowship, Somerset

Sunday 3rd July - 10:00 service at Emmanuel, Lower Weston, Bath

Sunday 10th July - 10:30 service at Bovey Tracey Baptist Church, Devon

Sunday 10th July - 18:30 service at Emmanuel Plymouth, Devon

Wednesday 13th July - 15:00 Cream Tea at Buckland Chapel (Free Ticketed Event)

Sunday 17th July - 18:00 service at St Thomas, Exeter

Saturday 23rd-Monday 25th - St Andrew's Parish Camp, Devon

And so we are into May already

The last two weeks flashed past so quickly I didn't get time to write a post at the end of last week. In the office, we are busy making preparations for our next set of visitors. A couple will come for a look-see visit, which gives them a chance to view the program and see N'Djamena before hopefully coming to join us permanently later this year. We also have a couple coming to visit from South Sudan to assist with the running of operations while our temporary program manager is back in South Africa to see his family. Having visiting staff to cover management positions is vital to enable us to continue to fly. 

Last week I flew our C182 (for the first time in over a month) to Koblague. We re-opened this airstrip a few years ago and since then we have used it regularly to fly the missionaries in the nearby town, and  for our medical tour. This time I was dropping off two ladies who assist with translating the Bible into the local language. The following day I flew to Am Timan to drop off someone on a vision trip, who hopes to return to Chad in 12-24 months to work here permanently. In Am Timan the wind usually favours the runway that is furthest away from town but on this occasion I needed to fly over the town and land at the end where all the people gather. There were a lot of children, people and animals all trying to cross the runway and the team on the ground did a fantastic job of persuading them that they really must wait until after the plane has landed.

Koblague from the air

Refuelling in Am Timan where people riding donkeys, bicycles and a horse and cart are some of the potential hazards every time you land.

This week I went back to Am Timan to collect the visitors, leaving at sunrise to avoid having to fly back in the afternoon when there would be a lot of turbulance. We took a short detour on the way back to overfly a town that they were also interested in visiting and would have seen had they travelled by road. Flying from Am Timan to N'Djamena takes just under 3 hours whereas a road trip would have taken two days (in 40 degrees Celsius), giving them much more time in situ. 

On Wednesday we held our MAF "Day of prayer", a day when all the programs and support offices around the world pause for the day and pray for each other, the countries we serve in and the work of our partners. This time, one of our national staff arranged the use of a venue outside of town, far enough out of town that we saw the nomad camps on our way. A friend of ours came to lead the worship music and the day finished with a meal together outside. 

Nomad camps

Sand shop - in Chad you really can 'sell ice to the Eskimos'!

On Friday, a doctor, who had previously flown with us when his mum was sick, came into our office to arrange for a medical evacuation. There was just enough time to be able to fly to Moundou, collect the patient and fly back before sunset. The patient was a 33 year old man suffering with hepatic encephalopathy, requiring oxygen and an IV line to be put in during the flight.

Patient being loaded onto the ambulance after the flight

Last weekend we headed to one of the hotel pools with our friends - at least that was the plan. Just as we were leaving the guards told us that there was a big leak at one of our water reservoirs and Matt had to stay behind and spend the day working with the plumber to get the water back up and running. This weekend it was Matt's turn to have some time away from the compound as he joined a group of friends to celebrate two big birthdays, at the local golf course. Yes, you read that right, you can play golf here in the middle of the desert - you just have to take a patch of grass around with you to tee off from! Meanwhile at home we made chocolate brownies with the cocoa powder that we made from cocoa pods that we brought back from a spice farm in Zanzibar.

Bring your own grass for the tee

After fermenting the beans in banana leaves in the hot sun we roasted them and removed the outer layer

The resulting cocoa powder

One year on - 12 months since the president died

Last week marked one year since we heard that there were rebels advancing from the north, that there was fighting 200km north of N'Djamena, near the town of Mao, that tanks began to appear on the streets, that we hunkered down on our compound and held daily meetings to discuss the situation with MAFI, that the British Embassy issued advise to its citizens to leave the country, that school closed and people started to leave the city. Last year we flew flights around the country to evacuate people to safer places, and on the 20th April, president Deby was killed. 

To commemorate his life, a ceremony was held in the capital and one of the main roads, Avenue Mobutu, was renamed to the much more catchy 'Boulevard du Marechal du Tchad Idriss Deby Itno'.

This week our compound also got a lot quieter, as we said goodbye (or see you again soon) to our visitors and the Henderson family. That leaves just our family and the temporary program manager here for the next four months. As we are blessed to have a small pool on the compound I am sure it won't be entirely peaceful here in the coming weeks.

On a more positive note, we had a really encouraging meeting with a partner who has been working in Ghana and doing short term trips to Chad but has now set up a permanent team in the north. We are looking forward to being able to begin working with the team to bring help, hope and healing as they live there permanently ministering to the local population, and as visiting teams of doctors, eye surgeons and dentists begin to set up clinics in this isolated region. I also finally made it to the tailor to get a dress made, shopping is not my favourite thing to do so it has taken over four years and the encouragement of a friend to actually find the shop and order an outfit!