Sugar Water

We have just got back from a ten day missions trip to Zimbabwe and Mozambique with a group from Sugar Creek Baptist Church in Houston, Texas.

We picked them up in Jo’burg and flew them to Bulawayo where they worked with an orphan programe run by African Outreach Ministries. In particular they worked with the ladies who look after the orphans by giving health talks and helping with the food distribution programe.

Then we flew on to Inhambane in Mozambique where they met five more people from another church in Houston. Now, being from Houston, a number of the group knew a thing or two about drilling wells. Enough in fact that some of them were also members of a ministry called Living Water International (www.water.cc) who demonstrate the love of God by providing desperately needed clean water and medical attention in third word countries, and who have sunk over seven thousand wells around the world. They had raised money to get drilling equipment driven in from Maputo and we helped with the drilling of a well in the village of Masavane just south of Inhambane. Whilst the lads did this the ladies gave health promotion talks and in the evenings we showed the Jesus Film to over 400 people on a big screen under the stars at the well site.

Cathy doing a talk to a group of care givers in Bulawayo.

While that was going on the lads played games with the orphans.

Then the food arrived. Each bag weighed 50 Kg.

The group with the food.

Cathy helping to share it out.

Then we flew 3 hours to Vilanculos, Moz. Lots of space in Africa.

And then 1 hour down the coast to Inhambane.

We flew in formation for a while.

Even the drive to the village was a bit of an adventure.

The next day we started helping with the drilling.

And found water at about 36 metres.

Paul went in search of coconuts.

And we had a dedication service on the last day.

And a night baptism in the sea to finish off.

Thanks

Mercy Air team

A long way home

Recently one of the Mercy Air pilots did his longest ever flight.

Monday morning he was up before dawn to eat breakfast and pre-flight the plane for the days journey. A short five minute flight later he was at the local international airport just before it opened to fuel up and clear customs and immigration. His first destination was two and a half hours away in the coastal town of Beira where he met a Canadian film crew who had been in Mozambique for two weeks and now wanted to go to Malawi to complete their work.

The crew were part of a church in Toronto that has a media ministry (www.livingtruth.ca). They film the work of local churches working in needy areas around the globe and then broadcast it on commercial channels worldwide, helping to raise awareness and money.

On this occasion they were on a follow up trip to assess and document the impact that their visit a year earlier had had. Then they had helped raise money for Hands@Work, an organisation that Mercy Air knows well as we have flown them many times in the past.

Their schedule was very tight and the cost in time and money of using a regular airline to get from Beira to Lilongwe would mean that they would have to change planes numerous times and lose a whole day and a night in transit. All this was made harder by the fact that they had a huge amount of film equipment. Using Mercy Air enabled them to get where they wanted in 2 ½ hours, save that day and a whole load of hassle - all for about the same price.

Not much of a hands on action mission shot, but the best we could come up with is this photo of us all at 11,000ft somewhere over northern Mozambique on our way to Lilongwe.

The two guys in the back are the cameramen and Charles Price is the pastor/presenter on the right.

Unfortunately the pilot only stayed one night with them in Malawi otherwise it would of been good to have gone with them to see the work first hand. He departed the next morning on his own for South Africa. We have recently upgraded the aircraft he was flying and one of the benefits is more payload and greater endurance – the latter enabling him to fly for over five hours, 1500km, and still land with 1 ½ hours fuel left in the tanks.

The bottom right hand figure is the flight timer in the plane when he landed, 5h 06m.

Thank you.

Mercy Air team

From bush to clinic

Five years ago we took a team from Times Square Church, New York, to a site south of Inhambane, Moz, where we spent a week clearing an area of land and digging foundations. Two of the only pictures we now have of that are of Ron attacking trees with his chainsaw and one Paul taking a coconut break.

Yesterday we flew a team of eight people representing the various medical donor companies out to the same site where they inspected the clinic and maternity unit that has recently been completed.

From the above photo to the one below - a complete contrast. Doctors for Life and Medical Mission International were the main partners.

Despite its remote location, the clinic has modern facilities - two consulting rooms, a pharmacy and a maternity unit.

One of the doctors attends to a local child.

We saw the sun set over the remoteness of Mozambique on the way back...

And landed in the dark at Maputo to drop the passengers off and refuel before flying back to South Africa.

It was good to go back and see the transformation from what we had experienced five years previously. It bought a sense of completeness having seen the contrast of the finished product, a product that will now give so much more to the community.

Thanks again to those of you who help make things like this possible.

Mercy Air team

And now for something completley different...

International Passenger Tax when flying out of Mozambique is US $30. Had we of been charged this amount for today’s flight we would have had to fork out $33,000.00. Fortunately today’s passengers were classed as cargo, and so the 11,000 Nile Crocodiles we had on board our two aircraft traveled tax free.

It was a hectic couple of days. We started in dripping 35 degree humidity and flew two and a half hours north to Beira and then on to Caia on the banks of the Zambezi, where we were met by an enthusiastic crowd of locals.

We loaded 550 boxes of crocs.


Each box contained 20 of the cute little creatures!


Half way through loading, we had some weather which made some of the boxes quite wet. This was not good.


There's not much to do in Caia, so we went to bed at 7:30 and were up at 4:30 the next morning to fly back. The weather still wasn’t brilliant and delayed us, but we got back to Beira to find that things weren’t as they should be…

We had to do some search, locate and recovery.


After a lot of official paperwork and a top up of fuel we were back up into the weather and on our way to South Africa. In heavy rain the view forwards was bland for most of the way.


The view to the passengers in the back wasn’t so great either!


Eventually we got back on the ground this time to the welcome of more officials than you can shake a stick at.


And more absentees to be located and returned to their allocated boxes.


So, the end of an interesting and very novel experience. Not the kind of thing one gets to do each day.

Mercy Air team

Zimbabwe Medevac

A week ago Friday we got a call that a man was ill and needed air lifting out to receive urgent medical attention. Although he didn't need medical attention during the flight, it was important that he got some treatment as soon as possible.

Nothing hugely unusual in that, but the situation was complicated by the fact that he was in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and the medical help he required was in Cape Town, 1100 miles away.

Permits were hurriedly obtained, a stretcher was loaded and the plane readied to leave the following day. He was, however, Zimbabwean and an emergency visa was not granted for travel the following day so we delayed our departure until we had word of the visa. This was finally granted on Tuesday, so we flew up to Francistown, Botswana, for fuel and then on to Bulawayo that day.

Our plan then of course was to fly out early the next day but just before we drove out to the airport we got another call to say that although the visa was in the passport, the passport was still in Harare, and Harare was five hours drive away – but no one had any petrol, or transport. So, a day of planning and waiting ensued with regular phone calls for updates, with the passport finally arriving via a delayed internal flight at nine o clock that evening.

'Inflation'

We were back at the airport, one day late, at seven o clock the following morning to get the plane ready. The patient arrived two hours later on a mattress in the back of a small truck, we were almost ready to go except… immigration hadn’t yet arrived at the airport (they said they would be there at 06:00). Their phones were down but we eventually managed to get a message though and after a small bout of negotiation we were told that if we put the paperwork under their door at the airport, we were free to leave.

The six hours of flying to Cape Town, with a stop in Johannesburg for fuel and customs, was now relatively straight forward with only about two hours ‘weather’ to deal with. It was still a long way but we were at our destination by five in the afternoon where a minibus was waiting to take the patient to the hospital. We were very tiered and ready for some food and very grateful to the couple who opened up their house and put us up for the night.


But now Cape Town and Nelspruit, where we live, are at opposite ends of a big country, so the next day still meant seven hours of sitting looking out of the same Perspex window at the ground slowly slipping past underneath us. More weather caused us to divert, adding to the journey, but we finally made it home after four days, over 2500 miles (4100 km) and 16 hrs of flying.


Again, thank you for your prayers and support that help make a difference to people like this.

Mercy Air team

Time - Slip Sliding Away

Well there you go, we thought we’d have loads of time to catch up with things over Christmas, including this blog, but it seems life the universe and everything just got in the way.

Not long after we last blogged we took some people to Inhambane on the east coast of Mozambique. (Mozambique actually only has an east coast so that is stating the obvious really – a bit like saying a long necked giraffe). Anyway we were there for a few days with them whilst they sorted some details of a project they were involved in.

At the beginning of December we flew a missionary family to Vilanculos to start a month of missions work. We were due to collect them again tomorrow but three of them got malaria (one of them got it twice) and they actually needed fetching on the 26th December

There have been a number of other flights during December and then a whole run of flights during our two week Christmas shutdown, most of which seemed to involve more than a fair share of inclement weather. One involved going in and out of Jo’burg International which always keeps you on your toes but what should have been less than two and a half hours of flying turned into over four due to the weather, but at least the plane was clean afterwards! Another was a long two days collecting some guys from the SA/Moz border and flying them to Pretoria and back and the last one was a medivac from Mozambique which we have blogged about separately.

So, Christmas came and went but not much rest was had. We hit New Year still running from last year.

Lastly, and the subject of another blog, was a whole week and a half’s planning for a flight that never actually happened. It was delayed till later in January and was supposed to involve taking a load of water purifying chemicals from Malawi to Zimbabwe.

Mercy Air team

Merry Christmas and a Busy New Year

We got a call between Christmas and New Year to do a medical evacuation off an island in the Indian Ocean just off the coast of Mozambique. We couldn't go straight away because of the weather but went at first light the next day.

The cloud that lifted just enough for us to get the plane to the local international airport on the Monday afternoon, enveloped it on Tuesday morning and we took off with minimum visibility. First stop was Maputo where the cloud was at a 1000 ft but adequate for an instrument approach. We did customs and immigration and were soon on our way back up through the cloud for the island of Bazaruto two hours north.

After landing there, an old door less Land Rover doubled as an ambulance labouring along a heavily sandy track to where the patient was and where we spent an hour with her before she was ready to make the return trip to the plane. It was then only a 20 min hop to Vilanculos, the small international airport on the mainland. A satellite phone call here revealed that the weather back in South Africa was still grim and that the airport was closed. Our only feasible option was to divert back to Maputo where there was medical help. Our flight was relatively straight forward although we did have to alter course slightly to the west for an hour to avoid a shed load of thunderstorms that had ganged up to form a system about 100 miles long. In Maputo the patient was taken to the local hospital for further checks and we had to find alternative accommodation for the night. The next day dawned slowly through the overcast and it wasn't until mid morning that we received word that the cloud had lifted enough in Nelspruit for us to attempt an approach. The patient joined us again and we flew right down to minimums before landing back home just after midday on New Years Eve.

The ambulance and plane after landing back in Nelspruit.

Thank you to those of you who pray about these things for us. In the conditions we had the last few days, we certainly notice the difference.

Mercy Air team

Hope for Zimbabwe

Just before Christmas we were contacted by a couple of mission organisations to fly some water purification chemicals into Zimbabwe.

Thing is, the chemicals were in Blantyre, Malawi and they need to get to Bulawayo in Zim.
Driving them in was impractical and in any case the need was immediate but we planned to do the flight as soon as we could get the flight permits and other paperwork sorted.

We managed to get the flight permits for entry into Malawi and Zimbabwe fairly quickly and verified that that the airports we need to visit in Malawi and Botswana had fuel. The customs import/export paperwork was a little more awkward to arrange so we delayed the trip by a few days as the last thing we wanted was to have the aircraft (and ourselves) impounded in Zim.

We planned fly up to Blantyre where we would load the chemicals. The next day we would fly to Bulawayo and deliver them to churches who would arrange for transportation to those in need. We thought we might spend one night in Bulawayo and then return to SA the next day. The whole trip would be about 1700 miles and involve five different countries.

We wrote many letters to customs officials in Malawi and Zimbabwe stating that the cargo was a gift and will not be sold and we arranged for clearing, and access for a vehicle to the plane for loading and unloading at the respective airports. There wasn’t much more to do except get in the plane and go. The weather has even cleared up in Nelspruit where we live although we were expecting to have to deal with a bit of weather on the way up to Malawi.

All that was required was two sets of funds. One for us for the cost of the fuel for the plane and one to cover the export and import duties of the supplies. These had been raised in Canada and wired to South Africa at the beginning of the week but didn't arrive. We delayed the flight a day and then another day waiting for the money to come, but it didn't. The warehouse in Blantyre closed today and wouldn’t open again till after New Year, so we ran out of time.

This time Africa wasn't to blame. Basically the funds had been sent from Canada with a note for the bank to check back with the donor before being transferred. That had been done but when it got routed through New York the note popped up on someone's computer again and the transaction was delayed and unfortunately no one realised until it was too late.

So, there we sat at home with a lot of unspent energy after a week of almost constant planning and anticipation

We are terribly disappointed for the people of Zimbabwe that we could not bring this life-saving Christmas present to them. We did however resolve to go in the New Year. It will mean a lot of phoning, faxing, emailing and re-applying but if it helps a whole bunch of people it will be well worth it.


Mercy Air team

Pemba Medivac

"It's a go", crackled the voice on the telephone.

These were words that meant we could spring into action but three 'o' clock in the afternoon was now a bit late in the day.

We had been advised of the possibility of doing a medivac at midday and had got ourselves and the plane ready. The patient had been admitted to hospital and the doctors had suspected meningitis or cerebral malaria, either of which could lead to death within a day or two if immediate treatment wasn't given. But the patient was more than half way back to the equator from where we were and getting to them that day was now out of the question. Pemba is on the very north coast of Mozambique more than a thousand miles from Mercy Air and even in a plane that does over 170 mph, it was going to be a long way.

We have friends a third of the way up in Beira and a quick phone call secured us a lift from the airport and a bed for the night - we were very grateful. We arrived after dark and were up again before dawn to continue up to Pemba. The patient in question was actually a friend of ours from previous mission trips and had asked for a nurse to come along to monitor him during the flight. In a way it was good to see him again although not quite under these circumstances. After airport paperwork and waiting for the patient to arrive from the hospital we were back in the air and on our way home, this time loaded up with his wife and two kids, one of which was just nine months old.


There's not much you can say about seven hours of flying at 10,000ft, and the haze from the bush fires meant that the view was only slightly more interesting than the hour and a half of dark after the sun went down.

We landed safely in South Africa last night just after 19:00 and they rang us this morning to say that he had been kept in hospital till two in the morning after extensive tests. So far things are looking good but they will stay here for at least the next week for observation and treatment if necessary.

So, it was another of those occasions where your whole day is changed by a single phone call. We were privileged to be the ones who were able to practically offer assistance but without the prayers and support of people like yourselves, Mercy Air would not be in that position.

Thank you.

Mercy Air team

The Perfect Romantic Coup

Fly your wife to Mozambique for our anniversary and have a candlelit dinner in the evening.

And that's exactly what happened for one of Mercy Air's pilots, although as you might guess, that was only the tip of the iceberg as far as the story was concerned.

The reason they were actually flying to Mozambique on their anniversary was to take a doctor team to Marromeu on the Zambezi River. The candlelit dinner was courtesy of the fact that the missionaries at whose house they found themselves that night don't have electricity, and candles were the only way to light up the rice, beans, chicken and green veg they had for dinner.

It was apparently still romantic, and a very worthwhile trip. We have flown this group many times before and they had asked Cathy to accompany them as she knows about a lot of things that many doctors from the US haven't even heard of. The missionaries there have been working into the Delta region of the Zambezi for many years. They used to travel three days by dugout canoe to get there, stay a week, and then three days back often traveling at night to catch the tides. Our helicopter does the trip in 20 minutes and so each day it made a number of flights in order to get the doctors and translators to the remote village of Ibo. Paul stayed in Marromeu to fuel the heli each time it returned.

Whilst walking around in Ibo Cathy spotted a two month old baby which had diarrhorea and was severely dehydrated. The mother had died during childbirth and a young girl of 15 was looking after it. The team were able to put up an IV and give antibiotics and the next day the heli bought the baby to a care centre in Marromeu where it will stay until it is strong enough to survive. If this baby had not been seen and treated it would likely of died in a day or two.


The work in the delta is a pressing one. There are huge amounts of people who don't have access to any medical care whatsoever.

It is your prayers and support that help us go back to bring Christ's love to those people in need.

Thank you.

Mercy Air team