Educational, Medical, Mechanical

In some respects we felt a bit like a Swiss Army Knife during the last trip, doing a bit of everything in one small, neat and efficient package.

The initial call was to take Rick, a Canadian motor mechanic, up to Mozambique so that he could continue to develop an auto workshop training facility at a mission base that Mercy Air is connected with.

To help him fund this there were also people connected with Mercy Air/YWAM's education ministry who contributed and traveled up for meetings. We had also received a call a week earlier asking us to transport a missionary who had been involved in a car accident and who had head and spinal injuries.

For Paul this meant a lot of parallel planning and initially spending two days in Nelspruit helping the car mender man shop for all manner of tools - boy shopping in the extreme.

The result was not only a shed load of tools, but a huge tool box for them all to live in. Rick's penance was that he had to dismantle the tool box so it could fit in the plane.

The following day people and cargo were inserted into the plane like a 3D jigsaw and delivered to Chimoio in Mozambique. Paul then flew on another 1h45 up to Quelimane on the coast where some missionaries took him to the local hospital to meet Elias. Elias was part of a team that had been driving up to Nampula in the north of Moz three weeks earlier when he had had an bad accident resulting in injuries to his head and spine. After stabilizing he was now faced with a two day drive on dirt roads in the back of a minibus, or a 1h45 flight with Paul.

The next day they went to the hospital where they transferred Elias onto our stretcher and wheeled him outside...

where he was loaded into the back of a pick up truck...

and driven at 5kph, due to the heavily pot-holed roads, all the way to the airport.

After loading him on the plane they flew the 1h45 back to Chimoio...

Any passenger with his thumbs up is a good sign!

where he was met by friends and family.

Paul then picked up his original passengers and returned to South Africa via Beira where they landed after heavy rain, resulting in an interesting picture of the plane 'floating' on the apron.

Paul and Cathy