Mercy Air recently did a flight with Flying for Life, based out of Johannesburg, but working into the rural Limpopo area of South Africa.
We have been working with them for a number of years (see previous posts) but went this time to meet with the authorities who govern the various projects to find out how they think we are doing, and to see what else we could get involved in next year.
Again, the 1h10 flight up over the escarpment to Tshikondeni saved an eight hour drive.
Even with the saving by flight time, once we were there there were still plenty of rural dusty roads to negotiate.
After meeting with members of the Tribal Council our first visit was to the Karel Nngigideni primary school, where class sizes are often 60+.
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| The kids were happy to see us |
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| The school kitchen and the cook. It used to be a classroom. |
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Not very exciting from a photo point of view but most of the visits
involved sitting down in meetings to review the last year and plan for
the coming one.
Next stop was the Takuseni special needs school where volunteers look after children to enable their parents to go to work. We had visited here a number of times in the past, on one occasion taking a dental team.
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| Nigel and Samantha in the kitchen |
After a number of other visits including The Makuya Clinic and a secondary school, we flew to Thohoyandou (toy and oh) to spend the night before visits the following day. On the way we passed over the area we had just visited.
Whilst waiting for our lift, there were a few curious guys desperate to see and sit inside an aircraft for the first time.
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| Everybody wanted their picture taken |
The next day we went to a hospital where we fly the eye cataract team every two months. Again more meetings and a quick tour of the facilities.
After lunch it was time for the flight back to drop Flying for Life in Jhb...
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| The only shade on a 37 deg day! |
...before the return to Nelspruit.
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| landing at Mercy Air |
Thank you
Paul for the Mercy Air team
