Paul was out just about every day last week. He was mainly flying for another mission organisation doing relatively local flights.
For the digit heads (like Paul) that all equated to about 3500 miles and 400 gallons of fuel.
It was a hard week not only for the long hours, but also that most of them were spent battling huge amounts of smoke. Our area and the north of Swaziland have had the worst forest fires in 60 odd years and huge amounts of land were simultaneously ablaze.
Hundreds of thousands of hectares have been mentioned which is probably half the size of Wales, but the consequence for us has been visibility down to a few hundred feet in places. Some routes that we would usually fly at 3500ft could only be run at 12000ft. The smoke covered the eastern side of South Africa from top to bottom and drifted over Mozambique to the coast.
Out of the smoke it was great, but the airstrips are in the valleys and finding them was a bit of a mission at times, especially when the sun was low.
The week ended with a long overnight haul up to Moz with a group that are developing a work in a remote area between Beira and Zimbabwe.
Cathy has had three deliveries since we last wrote, one of which turned out to be an emergency C section. She has continued her work with Africa School of Missions mainly with teaching and assessing the students in the local Government hospital, which is operating 'normally' since the strike finished.
We had a good time with Matthew at the Arts Festival although his girlfriend's Dad has been very ill recently. He's finishing up his fourth year at Uni and will be spending a few days in Cape Town with the photo journ department while we are in the UK.
Talking of which... Just to remind everyone that we are coming back to the UK for two months from 23rd August - so just over two weeks. We are hectically behind schedule in getting all our ducks lined up with regard to when we'll get round to visiting everyone. Some have written expressing a preference and we'll be getting round to arranging something as soon as... we can!
Someone has kindly lent us a car and a projector for Power Points etc. We still need to borrow a laptop though. It's actually about time we bought one of our own, so if anyone knows where we can get a good deal, then perhaps we could get it in the first few weeks of being home.
See you soon!
P n' C
