Paul has done a number of short trips (a new pilot at Mercy Air has been flying some of the longer ones as part of his familiarisation). He has flown to Moz a few times and on one occasion he stayed less than an hour!
This was all part of the plan though as the previous day we had received news of a man who needed urgent medical evacuation to Jo'burg.
Flight permits were obtained, plans made and Paul left early Sunday morning with the paramedic.
He patient turned out to be the Captain of a ship that was delivering supplies to Beira. We picked him up after a three hour flight to Moz and then flew him another four hours to Jo'burg where an ambulance met him at the plane.
Another flight two weeks ago involved taking an elderly couple to Pretoria for urgent medical tests.
Paul spent last Thursday in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He managed to talk to a number of people whilst waiting for his passengers and it seems that things are as bad there as we are led to believe. One lady wanted to know when he was coming again and said he should bring food and bibles. With the elections less that a week away, many seem to think that the campaigning might be in vain, as the votes have likely already been counted.
Paul passed his Medical a few weeks back. Not such a major event in itself, but one that could certainly change the immediate outlook if it didn't go well.
Reminiscent of the dark days (nights) of 1971 and the coal miners strike in the UK, South Africa has been experiencing major Power Cuts recently. Many a time we have shared a romantic candlelit dinner - of sandwiches. The reason is load shedding which basically means Eskom, the power company, hasn't got enough capacity to supply everyone at the same time. Unfortunately the future's looking pretty bleak as they don't reckon they'll have the problems sorted this side of 5-8 years. The joke, 'Eskom are sorry to announce that the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off to conserve electricity' would be funny if it wasn't so true.
The upshot of this is that electricity prices are set to go up by over 50% soon, to help fund the construction of new power stations. This is on the back of a 50% rise in the price of petrol in the last year. The pound is quite strong at the mo but we don't know how long that will last.
We wrote to you about Matthew's visa, which is a real weight off everyone's mind. Thank you so much to all who prayed, and then wrote to us about it - it was possibly the biggest response we have had from any of our news updates. One of his first photo shoots while he has been back with us, was to photograph the water birth of a baby for which Cathy was doing the delivery. Cathy has done three deliveries in the last two weeks - two of which have bee water births.
Mercy Air's helicopter is back in SA now for some routine maintenance on the tail rotor gearbox. Routine maintenance in this case involves shipping the gearbox off to New Zealand for overhaul. When it returns the heli has one more trip to make back up to Moz to finish off with the Zambezi flooding and then it will go to Lesotho to help Mission Aviation Fellowship transport materials to build a remote clinic in the mountains.
Lastly, and talking about Lesotho, we shall be there this coming Wednesday as we are driving down to Grahamstown to attend Matthew's graduation, and will stop off for a night on the way. His graduation will surely be a 'my, where has the time gone' moment for us, as we are now coming upon 14 years in Africa. On a practical note, we would appreciate your prayers for the 17 hour long journey. SA has just been congratulating itself on the fact that this Easter there has been 27 fewer deaths than last year, but the total still stands at 120 - over a four day period. As far as I can work out, the UK would have 35 deaths over this time but SA has half the number of people and about ten times more roads. We return next Monday.
Thank you again for your prayers and support which make things like the above possible.
Paul, Cathy and Matthew
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