Every new South African Commercial Pilot has a right of passage: To visit Lanseria International Airport to hand your resume to as many companies as possible. For me, I made this pilgrimage in 2005, when I had my first job as a flight instructor and was itching to fly bigger, cooler planes.

As I drove around the airport, seeing where else I could leave my suspiciously dense resume (why is it the more experienced you get, the less you feel you need to ‘fill up’ your resume with nonsense), I noticed a sign that said Mission Aviation Fellowship.

My first introduction to MAF.

I was ready to sign-up then and there. Of course they would want me, right? I was a Christian and a Commercial Pilot, surely they would be throwing themselves at me. Little did I know that it would be 13 years until I would actually be ready.

After a few interviews, tests and discussions, MAF South Africa nudged me in a wise and safer direction: Get some life experience, they said, before you go alone to fly a plane in a far away land.

A year or so later, I had resigned from my job and was setting out for a non-aviation volunteer position in the mountains of Lesotho.

'I’ll do this for a year,’ I told myself without irony. ‘Then back to MAF, because I’ll be ready.’

In my first 2 years in Lesotho- (let me pause for you to hear that sentence in light of my previous one)- I worked at Semonkong Children’s Centre, helping to run the place. Buying food, fixing things, doing things, playing with kids, that kind of stuff. Every now and again an MAF plane would land, bringing a doctor, and I would reset my resolve to be that pilot one day.

Me with the kids in 2007, Maggie in the pink hood

A church service. A whole lot of kids, singing, clapping hands, and doing the normal Sunday worship songs I had come to enjoy at the children’s church every week. One child, the youngest girl in the whole Centre, stood shyly at my side, kind of holding my hand. She was the shyest, and so I picked her out to make sure she got some attention, which was so often stolen by the cute, loud, extroverted kids.

My time at Semonkong was filled with these memories, the best of which are firmly attached to specific kids, and the hope that some of their lives were improved by that game of catch we played one afternoon in Semonkong.

You are reading this, so you know a brief summary of how the following 10 years went: I moved to Pulane Children’s Centre for a few years, then back to South Africa to be a flight instructor, then back to Pulane Children’s Centre with my family and then finally to MAF Lesotho.

Two days ago I received a call from the lady who now runs the Semonkong Children’s Centre. She sounded pretty desperate: “Hi, Jill told me I could contact you. We have a child who needs to get to Maseru as fast as possible for a blood transfusion. We can’t drive as the mountain pass has snow and our car might not make it. Can you help?”

I was on-call, and had just arrived home from getting the plane ready for the day. As soon as she hung up I was getting in the car and heading back to the airport. I didn’t know yet if we could help, but I should at least start moving in that direction.

This was an unusual call. We normally have calls come through the clinics, with an official go ahead from the Department of Health who pays for the flights. Regardless, I knew we could figure out those issues after the child was safe. With permission from our MAF Country Director to do the flight and figure out the rest afterwards, I was soon on my way.

Semonkong is a short flight, 25 minutes. We very rarely go there, and in fact this was my first time to go alone. We don’t need to go to that clinic anymore because they now have a good road. Today was a special situation.

I landed exactly 1 hour after getting the call. The Children’s Centre director arrived soon afterwards, from the clinic, along with the child and a house mother. The child, a girl of about 15 years old, was anemic, and had some complications with her kidneys.

As I was loading them up, I asked for the girl’s name.

They struggled to remember her English name. Most English names are used just for the sake of white folk who struggle so much with Sesotho. I asked for her Sesotho name, and then it all clicked.

"Her English name is Margaret,” I said. This was the little shy girl who stood by me that church service! She has been at the Centre all this time.

I had a new connection to the importance of this flight. Not that any patient is more important than any other, but my eyes were opened to how valuable and precious each life is. Sometimes we lose that perspective when we see and deal with many patients. This reminded me that each one has history. Each one was once a small child, shy or extroverted, raised in a village or a Children’s home.

Yesterday evening she had been admitted to the hospital and was receiving treatment. We have yet to hear any further updates.