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