News September 2024

I passed one thousand feet above the dirt airstrip to check the wind, check for animals, and position myself for the specific approach path. This particular runway faces 90 degrees to the direction of the valley, meaning you land towards the up sloping terrain. The day before I had been at this airstrip with a new pilot, teaching him the specific details and threats to this particular place. So the pattern, the valley, the legs of the approach were fresh in my mind.

I expected a challenge today. This airstrip is our most difficult as it gets windy and turbulent in the valley. Our remote weather station showed a pretty calm wind when I checked it before leaving, but I knew that was supposed to increase through the day.

I reduced power and started my approach while doing my before landing checks. I was being bounced around as I descended into the valley and positioned the airplane as tight as I dared to the valley side to give myself maximum space to turn out and away if needed.

My approach was stable and going well. Despite the turbulence I was able to keep the airplane going on a path that was consistent and safe.

I continued on the approach path that goes over a particular house in the village on the mountain slope. I was working for it, but it was still going well.

I knew that I would have about one second after turning onto the final approach path to decide if I was landing or getting out of there. If I hesitated too long I would be too close to the rising terrain to safely turn out again.

As soon as I turned onto final approach everything changed. The wings rocked more violently, and I had a sharp decrease in altitude despite my efforts to keep it stable. The sharp pockets of rough air were buffeting around my wings and I was feeling every bump. I let the downdrafts do their thing and push me lower, below the glide path, and immediately applied full power and got out of there.

I flew out of the valley, climbed to a higher altitude, and regrouped. Then I turned around back towards the airstrip and set up to try it all again.

I tried the approach two more times and got the same result. Everything went well until the last section of the approach path where it turned into a washing machine spin cycle. Seeing the consistency of the wind in that portion of the approach, I was now satisfied that there was no way I could safely land here today.

Knowing I flew within my predefined safe limitations, and that I gathered the data I needed to make a smart decision, I had no doubts as I set course back to home base, leaving the doctor team I was supposed to pick up ‘stranded’ at the remote clinic.

As a pilot, this type of decision process is very clear in my mind: there are predetermined limitations that are set before I even start the flight. I can operate inside of those limitations, even if that feels uncomfortable and challenging. But anything outside those limits is strictly a no-go. By doing this, we can operate in very uncomfortable, bumpy, challenging conditions with clear guidance when the limit is close.

Knowing those limits and staying in them makes me feel at ease, even when it’s tough. And staying in the limits keeps us safe.

And yet, when it comes to other aspects of life, we rarely apply the same logic. Sometimes things get busy. Our plates get fuller and fuller, and we just keep saying yes to everything until it’s all just too much and we put ourselves in an unsafe situation: be that physically, mentally or emotionally.

Work has been tough for the last few months. Early this year our country director (the program manager for MAF Lesotho) and his family returned to the USA. This left the rest of us to fill his role by all doing a little more and taking on more leadership-type tasks.

We then had one pilot go on furlough, which left us with 3 pilots. In June, one of the remaining pilots got injured while riding his bicycle in town. A taxi jumped a stop sign and struck Joe, who ended up with a concussion, a broken elbow, broken hand and cracked tail bone. (We are thankful that Joe is healing well!)

That left us with two pilots: Myself and Luke (aka “the new guy”), who started with MAF Lesotho last September.

For the last few months we have been on-call every second weekend. Meaning we work 11 days and then get 3 days off. This takes a toll. Added to that are the additional leadership tasks and day-to-day challenges that arise.

During this time Jane had her long ‘winter’ break (summer break for all Northern Hemisphere kids). Lesotho is a hard place to be during the winter break. There isn’t much to do outside. No parks or activities or libraries to visit. It was a daunting task for Emily to have 8 weeks at home finding things to do with Jane. Added to which our local support network had all but vanished as families took the winter break to visit their home counties. With our staffing shortage it meant any plans we had for vacation during that time needed to be changed.

We did have two wonderful things happen during the winter break, though. A visit from Emily’s college roommate, along with her family, was one of the highlights. We also had the amazing opportunity to go to a Springboks (South African Rugby team) match in the nearby town of Bloemfontein with my family.

In these more challenging conditions, I’m learning to apply the concepts we use to keep us safe when flying to keep us safe while doing other things too. This means saying no to a lot of things that would push us outside our limits.

As we look back and realize it’s been a year since we started the handover of PCC to Liberty Church, I am so thankful we did, because we just wouldn’t have been able to handle it all. Lineo and the Liberty Church team continue to do a wonderful job leading and directing PCC, and we celebrate their progress.

Jane stared 4th grade in August and while we only have one child, it feels like a full-time job to support, encourage and help her in these important years. Well done to everyone who does that with more than one child!

When I reflect on how we fly, and the concepts we use to keep ourselves within the limits, I realize how vital it is that we do that in the rest of life as well. Figuring out what is reasonable to handle, and being brave enough to give up things that aren’t.

If I think about that landing I gave up because it was out of limits, I know without a doubt that if I pushed on, broke the limits and landed the airplane anyway, it would 100% have been a failure.

*Upon checking the data on the remote wind station at that airstrip, I saw that at the time I was attempting the approaches, the wind had picked up to over 10 knots, with gusts up to 20 knots!

Update by picture

Sometimes pictures are a better way to share parts of our world with you. Here are some of my better pics from May to show my day to day life at MAF-gs

TK, one of our national staff works away at an inspection on one of the TU206’s.

Some of the same shepherds posing with their cows

This is a pic of Luke taking off with a stretcher patient to transfer them from this mountain airstrip to the hospital

When I get a chance to walk around near the airstrips, I love getting pics of shepherds. I carry a tiny photo printer with me and will often give them a copy of the pics I take of them!

Ive bee checking Luke, our new pilot, out at more and more airstrips. Here is a drone shot of Lebakeng take during his training there.

A snow day in Maseru that kept us on the ground! Winter has arrivd.

Easter on call

MAF Lesotho is quite unique in the MAF world with our system for being on-call for medical emergencies. Each weekend a pilot is on-call, and then gets the next Friday off to compensate for rest days. We rotate through pilots, and so depending on how many pilots we have determines on how often you have a weekend on-call. At the moment we have 3 pilots on call, so every third weekend is my turn.

Being on-call on the weekend is a strange feeling. While we can be at home and do things with family or friends, we also want to be ready and able to get to the airport reasonably quickly. There’s a bit of tension, wondering if the phone will ring as soon as I start a house project. It’s enjoyable, but isn’t really a restful feeling. My main hope when I am on-call is that I don’t get called out during the Formula 1 race that our family has come to structure our weekends around!

On the long Easter weekend, I was on-call for the 4 days (Easter Friday until Monday). We struggled with weather the week leading up to Easter, and were behind on our flights. At the end of Thursday it was clear that we were not going to get all our planned flights done, and so I planned to do a flight early Friday morning so that the passengers in the mountains didn’t have to wait until our next scheduled flight the following Tuesday.

On Friday morning, I went to work and got going pretty early to drop off a load of medicine, and then collect 3 passengers. A simple 2-stop flight that should take around 2 and a half hours. The weather was good, and it was a great day to be out.

On the way back to base with the passengers, I received a message from our flight follower to say that there was a possible emergency flight, or “Code 1” due to a bus accident in one of the main towns in Lesotho, Qachas Nek, down on the southeastern border.

By the time I landed at base, the flight was confirmed. We didn’t have much info, other than I should prepare for multiple patients who needed to be flown from the Qachas Nek hospital to Maseru. They also advised me to take 2 stretchers, which is pretty uncommon.

I refueled and got going to Qachas Nek. Upon landing I was met by two vehicles and a handful of medical staff. This is pretty rare as patients are usually just dropped off accompanied by one nurse.

I was still gathering information about how many patients there were, and was asked if I could take 4 plus a nurse, two of whom needed stretchers. This was impossible, as two stretchers take up the entire rear loading area in our small Cessna 206’s. It was quickly becoming clear that I would be coming back here later for another load.

I loaded up the 2 stretcher patients, and had the nurse in the front co-pilot seat, which is common when we need one extra spot.

I flew the 45 minutes to Maseru, unloaded into the waiting ambulance, restocked medical supplies and fuel, and headed back to Qachas Nek.

This time I loaded up 5 passengers. 4 were patients and one was a parent. It seemed like with this load, it would be the most critical patients that had been transferred, and the Qachas Nek hospital would be handling the less critical ones locally.

I flew this load of passengers back to Maseru, by which time it was close to 3pm.

What started as an easy day for one flight had turned into a full day with lots of loading, unloading, refueling and quick turn arounds. When we are on-call like this, we do a lot of that stuff ourselves, as our normal ground crew is on holiday or off for the weekend. So these kind of days really make me appreciate the amount of work they do to ease the load for the pilots.

The day was very successful, and I was grateful that we were well-equipped and ready, and that the weather was favorable, for us to be able to help where needed.

Thankfully, the rest of the weekend was quiet. But unfortunately due to the Easter holiday, there was no F1 race to enjoy!

News, March 2024

Sometimes it feels like I don’t have any news to share about what has been going on here in Lesotho, but then I look back to our last newsletter and realize there are things to share.

Our last significant update explained the transition we were making with Pulane Children’s Centre. We are very pleased to say that Lineo, Rob and the team who have stepped into our shoes are doing a wonderful job, despite the steep learning curve.

Lineo focuses on using her strengths in her management role. She is so good at making connections with the local staff: encouraging, mentoring, and leading them to continue doing the wonderful job they have been doing. She is such an asset when it comes to understanding child care in the local Basotho context. As expected she is doing things we just didn’t have the knowledge or training to do.

Rob and his leadership team from Liberty Church are likewise doing a great job of staying connected with Lineo to ensure she has all she needs to do her work well.

It is encouraging to see that in the 6 months since we began the transition, the new team is already building on what PCC has been doing over the last 15 years and is taking it to new and exciting places.

At MAF we have not been immune to change. In February, Matthew, our Country Director (the manager of the program here) and his family, moved back to the USA after being in Lesotho for over 10 years. Having older children they reached the stage of needing better schooling options, and so their time in Lesotho came to a close.

This leaves our program with just 4 pilots, one of whom is new and is doing training with me at the moment. Sharing the Country Director’s tasks between those of us holding other positions has added quite a bit to our workload. I now find myself in the role of Director of Operations (in charge of keeping the flying operations running smoothly), Chief Pilot (in charge of all local training for pilots and ground crew) and now about 1/3rd Country Director, taking on some management jobs as needed.

Despite this workload, our program is still doing a good job to meet the needs of our client, the Lesotho Flying Doctors, and doing so safely.

Over the next few months my focus will be to train Luke, our new pilot (pictured above fixing windsocks), and get him flying solo safely and confidently. Having him able to do solo flights will really help ease the load on the other pilots.

In February I spend a few weeks at our HQ in Idaho doing some training to make sure I am up to standard as an instructor pilot. I had a good time and got to focus on retuning my skills from the right hand seat. While I was away Emily’s mom and stepdad, Deb and Duane, visited and kept her and Jane company and helped out with day to day life. We are so grateful to them for the help. Duane impressed many of our Basotho co-workers with how hard he can work on handyman fixing jobs!

Jane is halfway through 3rd grade and continues to enjoy school. Usually the highlight of her week is on a Tuesday afternoon going across the border to South Africa where she attends a gymnastics class. She really has fun and loves it!

Lastly, we have been a little extra busy lately as we prepare to move houses. We have stayed in this MAF house for the last 6 years, but unfortunately it continues to have a significant problem with its underground sewage system. Years ago the water and sanitation company put in a ‘temporary’ diversion, which routes the whole neighborhood’s sewage through our tiny backyard pipe system. It often gets blocked and has become a health issue for us, with no signs that the temporary diversion will ever get properly fixed. As such, we are preparing to move into the house the Country Director just moved out of, just as soon as a few repair jobs are complete.