Mozambique Maintenance

It's hard to sum up the activity involved in planning and executing a two-week trip to Mozambique.

The need for the trip had been evident for a good while. Mission bases that had been established over 10 years ago were suffering from fatigue. The first was our own forward heli-base in Marromeu at the end of the Zambezi River. We converted five shipping containers into accommodation and storage before driving them up to central Mozambique (pcm-mercyair.blogspot.com/2012/04/accommodation-in-mozambique.html). They have served us well, but Mozambique is a hot and humid place, and this had taken its toll on the structure and electrics.

One of the team, Steve, had flown up to Marromeu the week before with the helicopter to get some local supplies sorted. Paul then flew the rest of the team up to join him and we set about effecting the repairs. The main targets were the roof, pluming and electricals, including the air cons. We thought that going in the winter would be a clever idea but looking back, we're not sure how well that worked out!

There are only so many interesting pics you can post of people working up ladders and the three bellow are probably two too many!

Fixing a roof and replacing an air con

Replacing another one

..and another one!

So, after a warm week of roofy electrical aircons, it was time to move north to even warmer tropical climes.

 

We crossed the Zambezi...

..and flew two hours to Nampula where we fueled and collected Cathy who had flown up the previous day. It was then a relatively short hop to Nacala where we were met by Martin before the two-hour bumpy dirt road drive to where he lived in Memba.

There are a few impressive hills near to Nampula - that are well worth missing.

 

Fortunately, the Kodiak comes with a handy 'hill missing app' on its Garmin 1000 that shows you exactly where they are and what they look like - so you can avoid them.

Martin and his family live in the coastal town of Memba.

So near the coast in fact that 20 meters walk to the left of the photo above, you get the photo below. Not too shabby! On a number of Paul's previous visits he has seen whales breaching in the bay.

The day we arrived coincided with the Champions League final. No problem - there's always someone's back garden you can cram into with 300 others. Watching from the back was equivalent to watching it on a cell phone at arm's length.

Buy there was work to be done - and quite a lot of it as it happened.

This was Paul's seventh trip to Memba. The first two he helped with construction and most of the others have involved maintenance of various sorts.

On the menu this time were ceilings, plumbing and electricals - and anything else we could find to do.

Water is scarce for nine months of the year, so martin has many tanks to collect runoff from the roofs. A new one needed to be plumbed in.

This would also allow for an upgrade from a bucket, to a cistern flush for the loo. Just had to fit the cistern.

Steve is an electrical sort of bloke and got the local workers helping him rewire almost everything it seemed.

Paul spent most of his time helping replace the ceiling...

..and when there was a lull in that, there were a few floor tiles that needed replacing.

Cathy came along to help feed everybody...

..but also got involved with some pregnancy and medical issues, so for now I will just include the photo below of her with one of her 'patients'.

Amongst the many supplies we bought up were a number of boxes of audio bibles. These are little solar powered Mp3 players with the spoken bible recorded on them in a local language.

 

 

Martin gave one out to a guy he'd got talking to because of Cathy's involvement with the above lady at the local hospital.

Martin explaining the use of the audio bible

I think it would be wise to focus on Cathy's side of the trip in a separate blog entry. We can then include much of the work she does in clinics in the area where we live in South Africa.

On the last night we had a barbecue on the beach - a whole 25 meters from their garden. The stars were brilliant.

After a pre-dawn start for the two-hour drive to the airport, all that was left to do was to fly home.

That was still six hours of flying and covered over 1600km. It takes Martin about a week to do the same distance when he drives it - a reminder of why we use aircraft in this part of the world.

Thank you

Paul and Cathy

Refugee Evacuations

I had a very different, but worthwhile week recently.

 

It started by taking an education team up to the Zambezi Delta, to help train teachers cope with a curriculum that had missed a whole year of school due to Covid. After just one night with the team, we got a call to say that Ambassador Aviation, whom we partner with, needed some help with their response to the refugee crisis in the very north of Mozambique.

Ambassador had been assisting with the evacuation of people fleeing the town of Palma following deadly fighting between government forces and insurgents linked with ISIL (ISIS).

 

The insurgents began a major offensive in late March burning the town, slaughtering hundreds of people and causing thousands of others to flee either into the bush or try to make it to the beach, in the hope that they could board a fishing boat to Pemba, a week's sailing away. The extremist attacks started in 2017 and international aid groups estimate that over 700,000 people had been displaced from their homes since the attacks began.

It's hard to explain what this involved for us, even using a map, but basically I flew more in a week than I had done in any other week in over 23 years of flying.

This amounted to:

37 hrs flying, 4700nm = 5400 miles = 8700km, or the equivalent of London to LA - which is quite a long way in a little plane!

The flights were done in collaboration with Ambassador Aviation based in Nampula and who raised funds to cover the costs. We worked in co-operation with the Mozambican military and a humanitarian organisation named VAMOZ (Volunteers Anonymous Mozambique), who vetted and prioritised people for evacuation. They also organised food aid which we took on the empty legs up to Palma.

On our first trip up we took 450kg of medical supplies.

 

I was fortunate enough to have a young Mozambican guy named Manny join me for the week. He was brilliant and did a lot of the running around on the ground liaising with everybody from the highest government administrators in the province, the military top brass and high-ranking police officials to the fuel bloke. He was perhaps most useful arranging the refugees at Palma, where spending the least amount of time on the ground was of the utmost importance.

Manny and I on our first flight with the meds and a guy who made sure they went to the right people

Initially there were often more people arrive at the plane than we could fit on. As Manny was explaining who could and couldn't get on, I saw the lady on the left push her child into the group of people who had been told they could go. That showed the desperation that even if she couldn't get out, her child might have a chance, and hopefully they might be reconnected in a few days - or weeks' time.

Many people had to be carried to the plane...

..or bought on a stretcher.

This guy was just left by the back door in the hope that we could find room for him.

On the flight back it was hard to work out people's emotions. Somewhere between being glad to be heading to somewhere safe, but perhaps also reflecting on what they had been through and thinking of family who were still there or still missing.

I don't think this guy could see or even knew what an aircraft was. We sat him down but when his seat started to wobble around as other people got on board, he got really worried. I'd have loved to see his face as we took off...

He looked a lot more composed when, an hour later, we delivered him to Pemba and safety.

Most times we landed in Pemba there was an ambulance waiting - or sometimes even two, to help the ill and/or injured get to the help they needed.

..while the other disembarked themselves.

Each time we went back up with supplies like maize or bread for those still there.

The one morning we heard there had been some more attacks in Palma the previous night, and on our first flight of the day we did see lines of people walking away from town along the beach, carrying what they could. For those that can get into a boat, it can take a week with no food to get to Pemba. For the few we can take each time, it takes an hour!

Wed had mixed weather but every now and then glimpsed a sight to prove that not everything was ugly up there.

 

On each leg we flew past seemingly idyllic islands oblivious to the turmoil happening only a few miles to the north.

So, at the end of a manic week we had flown 1.5 tonnes of supplies up, and over 100 people down to safety. We even cancelled the last two flights as intelligence suggested the insurgents might have upped their anti-aircraft capabilities.

A shout out must also go to Rui who was involved with VAMOZ. We spoke absolutely nothing of each other's respective languages, but got on like a house on fire. He ran around for us in Pemba providing lifts and making sure that anything we needed was there on time, including breakfast and lunch!

Myself, Rui and Manny

All that was left to do on the last day was to return Manny to his family in Nampula, and then fly back down to collect my passengers on the Zambezi before the relatively short three hour flight back to South Africa.

Thank you

Paul and Cathy