Thursday was an exceptionally long day. I
knew that going into it, so planned for an early start and prayed for good
weather. When I got up that morning at 5:30am, the weather was great!
At 6am I was out the door to get the
airplane ready to go.
 |
| Not this plane. |
 |
| That one! |
It is a great little airplane that came out
of the factory the same month and year that I was born.
At 6:30am, the airplane was ready and I
headed home for a quick breakfast. A few minutes later I was on my way out the
door again. This is my usual view looking back at the house. What you don’t get
from the picture is Dorothy and Hannah calling after me with their advice for
my day:
“Don’t run into the airplane!”
“Don’t get eaten by a bear!”
“Don’t forget your phone!”
“Make sure you don’t take the wrong path!”
“Make sure your passengers know your name!”
I landed in Bunia at 7:01am—1 minute behind
schedule. Amayo had my passengers and cargo ready and quickly got everything
loaded while I filled out paperwork and checked my fuel. At 7:18am I was airborne
again—2 minutes ahead of schedule. If everything went perfectly I would land at
home in Nyankunde at the end of the day at 5pm.
My first stop was in Doko. Two of my
passengers from Bunia were travelling with me roundtrip. They said they needed
20 minutes on the ground in Doko. We arrived in Doko about 5 minutes early and
they headed off to do their business.
I texted Kathleen from Doko to let her know
that things were going well—and they were. Until 45 minutes later when my
passengers still had not returned from their “20 minute” stop. They did finally
return and we were on our way to Aru—25 minutes behind schedule.
After a 40 minute flight to Aru, my
passengers hopped in a car and headed into town. That was a bad sign. I thought
they were going to do their “20 minute” stop at the airstrip. So I waited for
their return.
I was not the only one waiting. In Aru, I
found a missionary couple from Nebo (you know, the couple that I meant to blog
about at Christmas time but haven’t posted yet:-) They had been on holiday and
were waiting for our other airplane to come and take them home.
The Caravan arrived a few minutes later to
take them and their supplies to Nebo.
My passengers arrived back at the airplane
and we headed for Bunia—still about 24 minutes behind schedule. I dropped them
off in Bunia, refueled for the rest of my day, and headed off to Nyankunde with
our MAF IT guy, Sabato.
Sabato was heading to Beni to look into how MAF could help the local hospital with their internet connection.
We stopped in Nyankunde briefly to pick up
passengers for Burasi. I had a couple of free minutes and ran home to say hi to
Kathleen. The girls were gone to a friend’s house to play. We left
Nyankunde—still about 20 minutes behind schedule.
There were three passengers going to Burasi. One
was on crutches, and from the welcome we received in Burasi, I am assuming that
he had gone to Nyankunde to get his leg cared for and was now returning home.
Burasi is located in a river valley. Since
the rainy season is in full swing the area (including the airstrip) is quite
wet. The great thing about only dropping off passengers is that it gives a great
opportunity to make up time if you are behind schedule. We are on the ground
for only 10 minutes—now 15 minutes behind schedule.
In Beni I picked up two passengers. One is
the Rector of a Christian university, and the other is the head of a
reconciliation ministry that works extensively in eastern Congo. They were on
their way to meet with a partner organization from the U.S.
On the way to Goma, the weather ahead was
not looking good. That is normal in this area. Hiding in those clouds up ahead
were 4 volcanoes—the shortest one at 10,000ft, and the tallest over 14,000ft. We
were flying at 8,500ft, so some clear weather would be appreciated.
It doesn’t show up very well on the
picture, but a tiny little light spot started to show up on the horizon,
between two of the volcanoes.
As I got closer, the light spot turned into
this, and we were home free.
We landed in Goma. I dropped off my
passengers, took care of paperwork, and loaded up the airplane with
precious cargo—Cheese!
Boxes and boxes of cheese! 355 pounds of it! Goma
is known for their cheese, so when we have a flight through there we offer a
special form of encouragement to the missionaries we serve. We let them order
cheese! Those rounds of tasty Gouda make their way all over eastern Congo to
doctors, translators, nurses, pilots, professors, administrators, and
construction workers.
When I left Goma, the weather had cleared
and I got a couple of pictures of the volcanoes that had been lurking in the
clouds on my way in to Goma.
I’m not sure how to describe the rest of
the flight home to Nyankunde. Picturesque is the word that comes to mind, but
there isn’t a camera out there that could capture the beauty I saw on that
flight. The sun was sinking low in the sky, which makes for long shadows and
terrific lighting. There were big, puffy clouds, the sun reflecting off of Lake
Edward, and then the Rwenzori Mountains. The Rwenzori’s start in the valley at
about 2,300ft above sea level and rise almost straight up to more than
17,000ft. They are almost always covered with cloud, and today there was a
solid layer of clouds at about 14,000ft. I was flying just below 10,000ft and
was able to fly right alongside the mountains. The lighting was spectacular and
showed off the beautiful, forest covered mountains. And there were waterfalls
everywhere. I tried taking pictures, but none of them turned out
anywhere near to what I saw. I guess you should have just been there:-) I
almost felt bad because I was the only one getting to see the mountains, on
this particular day, with these particular clouds, and this particular
lighting. And no one else would ever get to see it exactly like this. They say
a picture is worth a thousand words. But a thousand pictures would not even
come close to being there in person. All I could figure was that God was showing
off, and doing it in spectacular fashion!
I finally made it home.
Put my hard-working, dirty little airplane
to bed.
And headed home.
