Medevac Update

I recently managed to see the old man who had the head injury whom I flew from his village to a nearby hospital. The hospital I took him to, Haydom Lutheran Hospital, is still pretty remote and a good eight hour drive from Arusha. It is pretty well equipped for a remote hospital due to many years of input from the Norwegian Lutheran Mission, for that reason the missionary doctor from the mission hospital near Pauli's village suggested that I take him to Haydom. He was able to get a CT scan and was stabilized but in the end surgery was still required to remove the pressure from his head.

MAF serves Haydom on a regular basis and we also fly monthly mobile clinics for them. However, I do not always get to spend much time there. A couple of weeks ago I flew a group of biological researchers in and waited to fly them out later that day. So, I asked around and manged to find Pauli in the surgery recovery ward. I could not communicate with him, but the doctors say that he is making a good recovery.

Please continue to pray for him and also his family member who has to take care of him while they are far away from their home village

how quickly a day can change

Although last Wednesday (1 May) was a public holiday, I had some work duties and a meeting so I thought I'd take Thursday off instead.

However, a call from our Operations Manager changed my plans with a wake up call containing two relevant words: "Medevac standby"

While on standby you prepared as much as you can to be ready as soon as to "Go call" comes. It's a strange 'place' to be; you don't have all the details, so you don't know exactly what to plan for; how many people will you need to carry? Do you remove seats for a stretcher? Where exactly will the pick up take place? Is the patient stable, mobile, conscious etc? This is added to the regular questions of weather, timing and fuel. You do this all with some sense of urgency, at least until you have more information and in the end it can all be called off...

I did not get called off and it ended up being a pretty straight forward medi-transfer flight between relatively large airports, with medical teams on both ends.

First Medi-transfer

The next morning I received an early call form the office again, but this time only from the finance department asking that I do my monthly cash count. I joked that it at least does not change my day as much as a call from the Ops department can.

Only to read my mails two hours later and pick up correspondence between Operations and the doctor from remote mission hospital about a medical patient to join the return flight from the hospital after the scheduled monthly flights the following week. However, the patient's condition deteriorated as the mails came through and I was put on active standby for the second day in a row. I prepared and headed straight for the airport to prepare, reconverting my small people carrier into an ambulance once again. As I finished I received the call that the patient became completely unresponsive, he would not make it through the weekend until the scheduled clinic flight.  So, off I went to collect him and take him to a hospital where he would be able to get a CT scan and possibly the head surgery he would require. The old man was in pretty bad shape as I handed him over to the hospital staff.

Pauli Peter Medevac

The next morning I hear that sad news that he passed away and the family is requesting that I return the body to their village when I go there for the clinics. I go through the following few hours sad and quite upset, especially with the previous hospital which sent him home with some aspirins for his headaches. However, as it sometimes is with bush telegraphs, news gets distorted and I receive the great news that he is still alive!

The latest news was that he was stabilized and moved to the larger Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi. It has certainly been an amazing privilege to be in a position to help this old man, please pray that he will make a full recovery...

Catching up

One problem about getting behind on blogging is that I end up staring at this screen for hours trying to think back what happened and where to start telling you about it...

So, it was Christmas, New Years, my birthday, my mother's birthday, some friends' birthdays, mother's day, Passion Friday, Resurrection Sunday, April Fool's day and some more birthdays.

During this time I flew people around, on days with challenging weather and on very nice days, I've been happy, sad, friendly, angry, excited, frustrated, disappointed, encouraged, shocked, stressed, relieved, relaxed, tired, energized, clean, dirty, wet, dry, bored, busy and I'm sure a few more. I think I will break them down into a couple of stories of the coming weeks...

The weather makes the flying 'interesting' to say the least, now we are in the rainy season which mostly comes in the form of thunderstorms that build up towards the afternoons. The bases are generally not that low which makes flying underneath a better option than trying to out climb it in a little Cessna. Especially when you hear the big jets at 36000+ feet ask to go off track due weather. You usually have to dodge a few rainstorms along the way and hope your destination is not covered when you arrive.

Once you have arrived safely, a new challenge starts: You have to keep an eye on the weather, a storm early in the day should not be a problem because the strip should have enough time to dry before you want to leave. But what if it's really heavy and soaks everything or if it sneaks op on in later in the day, it can become quite a challenge to get everybody out of a slippery situation. Another challenge is the maintenance of the airstrips, due to the rain it quickly becomes over grown and getting people to clear it before we arrive is not always easy. So, sometimes we have get everybody together to cut some grass before we can start with the day's clinic work. Although we sometimes have to delay, divert or cancel flights and clinics, we still manage to make it to places that are now even more isolated due to the weather.

On Friday morning I heard that a bridge between Arusha and Orkesumet (main town in South Maasai) has been washed away. Later in the day we received permission to use the Orkesument airstrip which we have been struggling to renew for 8 months! Next week we will finally start with the South Maasai Safari (more details about this in another post) and I have already received calls to transport medical supplies and 2 doctors because the town is still difficult to reach.

Please pray for the challenges brought on by the extreme rains, not only for the flying but also for the roads, villages and crops that have been flooded. Pray for enough breaks in the weather that we can reach our destinations and provide services to isolated communities.

a little look-back

South-Maasai Project

I have mentioned before that I have been tasked to coordinate this project from our Arusha base. We plan to help the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania (ELCT) with medical and outreach safaris to some remote villages. Thanks to your prayers we made some good progress during our visit in August. We were able to utilize local machinery to work on one of the strips which enabled us to complete the work in less than a week! Without it, the Lerumo strip would have been postponed until next year.

New Airstrips

We also cut some grass and filled some termite holes to repair the airstrip of the region’s main town, Orkessumet. The monthly safaris will be based from here, we will pick up the teams from the ELCT Hospital and take them to the other villages. In August we flew to Orkessument, drove to Lerumo for a ground inspection and then went back to do the first landing. Now the strip is ready to use pending the paperwork...

Since our visit we received news from the third village, Kitwai B, that they are also ready for a ground inspection of the airstrip. We will schedule that visit as soon as possible.

The next, and ongoing, step is getting all the paperwork ready so that we can submit it to the Civil Aviation Authority. The process is time consuming as the paperwork goes back and forth for village-, regional- and district signatures. After that the application process will also take some time. As soon as all this is in order we will start the safaris. Please pray that the process will keep moving and that we can start with the work as soon as possible.

Flying solo again...

I did my first solo MAF flight over the weekend and today my first solo flights with passengers! This was the first time as the only pilot on-board since I left Malawi in November 2009! Although I have some limitations as I still get to know the country, it is a great feeling to finally be part of the team. Today I did some shuttle flights and tomorrow I fly part of the Sandawe Medical Safari to Magambua and Berise which includes a Daktari wa Macho (eye doctor) and some nurses who will provide some basic medical services to mothers and their babies.

Operational...

5 May 1971 was the day my dad started his first job. 5 May 2003 I did my first training flight. 5 May 2008 I started my first flying job in Malawi and 5 May 2012 I flew my first operational flight for MAF!

It was a great feeling to finally start flying in a MAF program after the long road of preparation. With all the exams, briefings and tests completed, I am now doing supervised flying; that means I have complete responsibility but there is another MAF pilot who supervises the flight. The first flights I did were part of what is known as the Kilimatinde Safari; over 3 days we take evangelists from Dodoma to what is essentially an airstrip with a tree. Then we get a medical team from Kilimatinde Hospital and take them to the same airstrip.

“As I sit here in Chidudu waiting for the medical team and evangelists to finish their work, I realize how much I have to be thankful for. Once a month this large thorn tree and mud hut becomes the centre point for the nearby communities. On the flight in I could not really make out a central village. There are clusters of bomas, each with a kraal and a few huts, scattered around the area and that must be where these mothers with their babies walked from. As babies are weighed, recorded, injected and some basic medicine is handed out, I realize that there is a joyful atmosphere despite the sound of crying babies. The evangelists play gospel music over a crackling speaker powered by a car battery. They preach a little, have a session with some kids under the shade of the plane’s wing and spend their time talking and sharing with the mothers. There is a sense of peace and contentment despite the circumstances.”

It is in this type of work that our vision is truly seen…

“Isolated people physically and spiritually transformed in Christ’s name”