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