Vaccine Flight

Many of the villages we fly to every day can be reached by other modes of transportation, however it's typically a combination of both boat and car or moto. A trip like this is expensive, dangerous, and quite time consuming. We know of two villages that are only 15 miles apart, but it can take up to a full day of travel to go through the deteriorated jungle trails on a motorcycle. 

Every couple of months, we partner with a local doctor to deliver vaccines to some isolated clinics in the interior of the Congo. I was able to go on this most recent trip where on the first day we landed at 6 villages. On the second day, we delivered to 4 more villages. And on the third day, we offloaded vaccines at 3 more destinations.

One of the other pilots who was on the trip with me.

Visiting these 13 villages using a method other than an airplane would have taken several weeks to accomplish. Also consider that most of the medicines we were transporting require a "cold chain," or constant refrigeration, and it would have been an impossible trip without the small aircraft. The medication would have gone bad.

Over a ton of medications, syringes, and other
miscellaneous medical supplies

Every day, we would begin at our home airport and load roughly 1,000 kilos (2,200 lbs) of medications, syringes, and medical supplies in to the airplane. After making our rounds, we would return to Ndolo and prepare the airplane for the next day.

Everything loaded and ready to go

All in all, over 3 days of travel, we were able to deliver 5.5 tons of vaccines to fight Polio, yellow fever, pneumococcus, and a few other diseases.

Unloading the supplies

In Kinshasa, we see the effects of Polio every day driving down the street. We also recently had a yellow fever outbreak that we helped combat. These are not vaccines of convenience, or something to do just in case. There is no "herd immunity" such as we have in developed countries. If children, pregnant women, or the rest of the population are not vaccinated, it is nearly a certainty there will be an epidemic and many, many people will become disabled (which is worse than death in an unforgiving place like the jungle) or die. 

Unloaded much needed supplies

These vaccine runs are just an example of many vital flights we are able to accomplish with small aircraft because of our love for the isolated people of Congo.

Motherhood Moments #20

Sometimes motherhood looks like...

There are some days I miss the convenience of calling upon one of my barber buddies when my son looks like this...

Granted it only took me 20 minutes to wrangle him and trim it, but most of that time was spent holding him down. Here is the final product:

 But here's what my little man really thinks of his new hair cut...

Motherhood Moments #19

Sometimes motherhood looks like this...

 A folded wash cloth. The cloth on the left is mine and the one on the right was and attempt to fold by little girl.

Sometimes motherhood looks like a bigger mess than you anticipated. Making tortillas is MUCH harder with 6 hands.

And sometimes motherhood is a beauty of cooperation when washing and rinsing dishes.

Hangar Happenings #3

What a busy week we've had at the hangar! In the first blog about Hangar Happenings I talked about the Caravan inspection that is going on. What I didn't mention was that the inspection was an inspection based on calendar time. Since the calendar inspection was completed, the airplane has flown 15 hours in the last 3 days. That means the caravan is now due for inspections based upon flight hours. This inspection is mostly focused on the engine.

Things are getting busier for me as well. There is an audit coming up the beginning of February. A third party auditor will come in to inspect everything in the hangar - from parts to planes. They want to make sure that we hold ourselves to international aviation standards. This is good because it ensures that we stay on top of things and forces us to evaluate ourselves and change if need be. But for me, there is much work that needs to be done in the parts room. I am now going to go into the hangar three times a week - Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until the inspection is complete and I have been assigned temporary assistants!

Nancy working hard on the hardware.

Fidele working hard to label all the O-Rings.

Do you remember the construction from last week? Well it continued this week. While Leopold placed bricks in the bathroom (more photos to come later), Kevin and Matt did some demolition. One morning I was in the office staring at a wall and within an hour, the wall was gone. The room I am in is going to be the new parts room and the old parts room will become the new office.

The wall that forms the office for the moment.

 

Thor...ahem...Kevin at work.

I still managed to do some work even with the distraction.

Matt made sure all the wires discovered weren't active.

All of this was done in an hour! 

Kevin told me that today all of the top part and side came down, and all of the rubble was cleaned out. Also, the new two stall bathroom is almost done. All the tile is in, and the toilets will be installed on Monday. I will get to see the final product soon. And so will you!

Motherhood Moments #18

Sometimes motherhood looks like this...

 amazing fun with friends! We did balloon races and it was a blast.

 Half the kids gathered on one side to release an inflated balloon that was taped to a string.

 The air inside it propelled it across the distance to the kids standing on chairs waiting to declare their team a winner.

Hangar Happenings #2

The last Hangar Happenings talked about the inspection on the Caravan. Well, now I am going to talk about construction! Right now, MAF has an administration office all the way at the other side of the city from the hangar where the pilots and mechanics work. This year, one of the many goals is to focus on improving team building. An easy (and also cost saving on rent and transportation) method is to combine the two offices. After much talks, planning, drawing, erasing, quoting, and staring, the decision has been made official!

The project began with cleaning up the "attic" space which will become the new offices. The next step was to fix up the bathroom. They tore up the old tiles that will be replaced and cut concrete for new pipes. They placed new pipes and new walls all to make two separate bathrooms. At the moment, one toilet was able to handle all the biological needs of the workers. But with all the administrative staff joining the staff at the hanger, an additional toilet was needed. Also, with the changing of a few walls, we will be able to recuperate some space for a more effective work flow in the maintenance and pilots offices. THEN, we will be able to build the offices in the attic. All of these things so far have be accomplished with our hanger employees (or our husbands).

I am super excited to see all the changes and improvements that are coming our way and I hope to share with you all the excitement!

Letting the dust settle after breaking up tiles

Matt in action, cutting concrete for new pipes

Wane (Juan-eh) cleaning up the tiles he busted up

Wane breaking concrete with a hammer
and chisel for new pipelines 

Digging out the old pipes and placing new.

Two pipes for two toilets

Matt getting all his anger out...

New doorway for the remodeled bathrooms

Matt and Leopold cementing the wall

He is a hard worker! This was all in one day.

Motherhood Moments #17

It's been a while since my last Motherhood Moments blog. So I thought I would start back up again. Sometimes motherhood looks like this...

Hand, foot, and mouth disease. Poor baby boy had not been feeling well a while back and the lymph nodes on both sides of his neck swelled up. After starting a course of antibiotics, they began to go down. But the lymph nodes had been fighting HFMD and when the swelling dropped, the symptoms popped up. Poor kiddo! Luckily he was a trooper and got through it quickly and it did not spread around in our family.