News, March 2024

March 6, 2024 Grant Strugnell

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.

Family time furlough

August 29, 2023 Grant Strugnell

In 2021 we had a long furlough in the USA. It was a year later than it was supposed to be due to the pandemic. So it was longer than normal, and as such it ran during a time when Jane was ‘in school.’

Doing 3 months of travel while trying to keep a 6 year old on track with school (bearing in mind we are not homeschoolers, and have no ambitions to be) was one of the hardest things we have done in our time with MAF. Harder than living in Lesotho…

So, when another 2 years rolled around and we were due for a short furlough again, we decided to make it as calm and low stress as possible. Thankfully we were able to plan it to be in Jane’s winter (Northern Hemisphere Summer) vacation from school. That’s already a good start. Also, she is now 8, and 8 feels like 10 years more maturity than 6. Next, we planned to make our furlough away from Lesotho short: 6 weeks away, and focused on time with family. We then decided to travel as light as we could, and not plan to do too much while away. Activities add up quick, so planning to do little still means we are pretty busy.

A few days ago we arrived back in Lesotho. And we are excited to say that we feel like we achieved our goals. Our time away was very restful, low stress (besides airline travel, which seems like mess at the moment), and really enjoyable.

We began our time away with a few weeks in Texas, visiting Emily’s mom and stepdad. We had fun on the farm. Jane and I experienced our first rodeo and 4th of July Parade!

From there we went up to Minnesota, and had a great time with Emily’s dad and stepmom. A few days at their family’s lakeside cabin was a highlight, swimming and boating and having a fun time.

Our next stop was to join my family in the UK for 2 weeks. Our family had an amazing time seeing the country my mom grew up in, experiencing London for a few days, as well as the beautiful countryside in the New Forest.

Back in Lesotho, having missed the majority of the very cold months, we are grateful that this time away was as restful, fun and meaningful as it was, and that it was a huge improvement from our last furlough experience.

The good and the bad

October 5, 2022 Grant Strugnell

Recently I was walking around one of our remote airstrips, waiting for a passenger to complete their work in the village. As I walked around, I met a group of young shepherds, the youngest maybe 4, the oldest probably about 7 or 8. It was still winter, and the wind was cutting through my multiple layers of jackets. These boys were out here in the mountains, one thin T shirt under their threadbare blankets. I noticed the youngest had 2 dead field mice clutched in his hand. The 2 tiny rodents each had a spot of blood by their head, evidence of a shepherd’s stick blow that killed them probably minutes ago. I asked the boys why they had them. The older boy excitedly smiled and motioned cooking and eating. A nice treat for them to share later in the day.

I filmed this during my time with those shepherds.

I walked away from this interaction, as I do whenever I interact with the tough, resilient rural communities we visit, thinking about how hard some people have it, and how much I take for granted.

While this realization is true, it can also become an obstacle in our own introspection. When we know there are others with so much less, why should we give our own struggles and challenges any thought?

If we just compare ourselves to others, we will never give ourselves permission to be honest and open about our own situations. And so we must reach the point of seeing others, realizing their struggles, but not comparing them to our own. We do need to spend time being honest about our own situations.

It’s with that in mind that I share: this year has not been easy.

We returned from furlough pretty much at the end of 2021, and started back at work here in the new year. Furlough itself was tough, trying to do school for Jane while traveling soooo much. When we got back, we had hopes and plans all set out for all the things we wanted to achieve in the year ahead. Great ideas to improve PCC, and grow and learn in my work at MAF. After the first months of the year passed, we still hadn’t found our groove. Not quite getting done much of what we hoped to. Just surviving day to day, not making forward progress.

As much of the world by early 2022 moved away from Covid protocols, Lesotho clung to them all, until recently. The border still required testing and certificates up until about 2 months ago. The evidence of a post-covid world was all around us. Reports of crime far more common, people without jobs, more people asking for money or help whenever we left the house.

In June we went away for a weekend and had a Mosotho friend of ours stay at our house. At 9pm on the Saturday we received a call that 7 armed men had broken into our house, held up the security guard at gunpoint, assaulted our friend and searched the house for money. They found none and left without stealing anything. But the damage had been done, especially to our traumatized friend, security guard, and our feeling of safety.

We returned home on the Sunday, and decided to stay with friends for a few weeks while our house had some security updates done. Stronger bars, solid doors and an upgrade to the alarm system.

Since that incident, we have heard of similar events almost every week around the city. Break-ins, carjackings, mall and gas station robberies seem like a common occurrence in the last few months. Where smaller, petty crimes, were a normal part of life in the past, the things that are happening now show a new level of planning and violence. In a word, it is unsettling.

The effect these events have on our general feeling of safety and security is significant. We feel like we have just come out of 2 years of Covid restrictions straight into necessary security restrictions.

These things on their own seem manageable. But it’s amazing what an added level of anxiety can do to your day. You just don’t get done what you need to get done, never mind what you want to. It’s not that there are more things to get done, it’s that everything you were trying to get done has some weight added to it, and that takes a toll.

I don’t mean to paint a bleak picture. It’s not all bad, but I do think it’s important to share some honest news, as well as some wonderful, positive things that have happened this year.

Jane recently started the new school year, and is now at the American International School of Lesotho. She had been at a smaller school, which suited her great for her younger years. But now that she is older, this school is so wonderful. She loves her teacher and classmates, and gets to do fun things like after school Lego club! On spring day at school her class was encouraged to dress up as their own made up spring themed superhero. Jane wanted to be ‘The Pollenator’ (hopefully part of the next phase of the MCU) and came up with an awesome moth-themed suit, with a little graphic design help from her dad for the shirt!

Tlhanyaku airstrip where I was doing a checkout for Chad recently

On the MAF side, I have been loving my role as the chief pilot. Our new pilot, Chad, is doing great, and I enjoy supervising him and making sure he continues to learn safe, efficient ways to operate in Lesotho. I have also slowly been doing more and more work on our operations side, trying to assist with the workload that our Country Director carries. The less he can do with regards to day to day flight operations, the more he can focus on leading the team here and managing all that goes with keeping the program going.

Emily and her PCC management team getting a quick fun flight with me.

PCC continues to operate well under the management of our local staff. Emily as the director continues to hand off decisions and day to day work to them, and they continue to rise to the occasion. Our hope with the Centre is to continue learning new and better ways to care for vulnerable children, and to work at implementing them. It’s a tough task, and one where you learn something new, and then feel like you know less, because it’s so complex and dynamic. Emily has been learning about trauma and the effects it has on development, and that is an overwhelming topic and task, but one she rises to boldly.

The shepherds and their mouse snack have 2 very contrasting realities. On the one hand they have a hard, cold, hungry existence. On the other hand, they live free, in the unspoiled mountains, caring for animals and living a simple and beautiful life.

We have the same contrast. Things are not easy, but we love what we are able to do, we love the people we work with, and the beauty that surrounds us daily. We do our best to hold both of those things together, giving both the time and energy they deserve.

Strugnell News, March 2022

March 2, 2022 Grant Strugnell

In 2022, I (Grant) took on the role as MAF Lesotho’s Chief Pilot. I am very excited about this, as it means I am in charge of training new pilots on the program, as well as ensuring our current pilots keep up to standard. I have always enjoyed the more advanced aspects of flight training, and am excited to work with our pilots and challenge them to be the best at what we do.

This means adding tasks to my existing roles of Director of Safety and Quality. MAF on a global scale has been taking big steps towards ensuring we meet international aviation standards and expectations. Taking safety seriously in our type of operation is a priority and translates into a fair bit of work on the legal and procedural side to ensure that we keep up with and surpass expected standards. It is work that I enjoy, and that makes all the difference.

MAF has been able slowly but surely increase our flying hours after we saw a decrease during the unsure pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. The Lesotho Flying Doctors restarted their weekly doctors visits to the clinics, as well as the daily 1-2 scheduled flights we do for nurses and supplies. After a significant rainy season, we are seeing an increase in the amount of emergency medical flights needed due to impassable rivers and bad roads in the mountains.

Emily’s work with Pulane Children’s Centre continues to be fruitful and challenging. I believe that’s the nature of any work with children. I am sure my mom, who has been a hardworking primary school teacher all her life, would echo that. No one is in that line of work because it’s easy! At PCC some children flourish and exceed what we could hope for, while others provide challenges and need a bit more time, love and energy to find a healthy path in life.

Emily is passionate about improvements at PCC, and we have been learning how important it is to reunite children with families as much as possible. Often the easier option is to take a child in and know they will be provided for. But we have been challenged recently to think about their long-term development, and to try and find ways for them to remain in their villages with family members. This is not an overnight change. But rather a concept that we are trying to move towards over time. We are learning about how to improve PCC’s role in the community to help and support not just children, but families so that they can support their own children. It is exciting and extremely overwhelming!

For the first time since March 2020, Jane is back to regular school hours every day. We are so thankful for the return to some kind of normalcy and routine. It’s amazing how having the consistency of daily school really boosts what she is able to learn and absorb. She is now big time into Pokemon, and our household always seems to be in the midst of some kind of Pokemon showdown.

Our little puppy, Ghost, is growing fast and making sure our home is never too ‘put together.’ Puppies don’t have a medium mode: they are either very naughty, or very adorable, there is no in between.

As the world continues to deal with challenges, heartbreak, anger and frustration on so many fronts, we are thankful you have chosen to support us and to help us make even a small change and improvement to some lives in the mountains of Lesotho. Thank you.