Rolland, Heidi and I were flying down to Bangula in the Rolland’s little Cessna 206, it’s a fairly short flight, about 4 hours, with a quick stop in Blantyre to do immigration – and stock up on cookies and ice-cream!
Malawi law does not permit anyone to fly after official sunset, and everyone had to be out the air by 5:45pm. That meant that we only had 15mins to get our passports stamped, refuel the plane and take off before airport officials would ground us for the night… Then Heidi went into the only shop at the airport!
About 20mins later we finally got into the plane and the tower gave Rolland special permission to leave – the flight to Bangula is only about 30mins so they allowed us to leave on condition that he called the tower and let them know that we had landed safely.
The scenery is beautiful, so rugged and mountainous. From the air you can see all little farms on the hillsides and it looks lush and green. It is hard to imagine that this area is the most impoverished part of Malawi – more people are dying of starvation here than anywhere else in Africa – drought and rains at the wrong time has completely wrecked this part of the country.
The sun was gone and it was getting dark – Rolland had called Mo (David Morrison) from the airport and asked him to start clearing the runway. “Activating goat-on-runway detector” – in the distance we could see the 2 pin-scourers’ headlights flashing on and off guiding us to the small dirt airstrip next to the church property. The landing was pretty smooth and as we taxied to a halt crowds and crowds of people started running next to the plane. Once we had stopped the crowds surrounded us, hundreds of people! We got out and unloaded the plane, then Matt, a long-term missionary took me to the stage.
I did a quick setup, and we started the meeting at 7 – all the others had gone to Mo’s house for dinner, I had to wait until after the meeting!
An excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…at 6pm they started, I was the only white person there, the others only started to think about coming when they heard the sound of the music and finally arrived 2 hours later and I don’t think that the sound system is powerful enough, its difficult maintaining the balance between maximum volume and distortion… I’m so tired. Its hot. I want to go home. I don’t think that Africa is the place for me. I just need strength or something. I’m so tired…”
This year was not much different, again I was the only white person there for a while and the sound system still wasn’t powerful enough – although having a monitor speaker facing us made a huge difference! I loved the conference, there were so many people all dressed so colorfully all so hungry for the Word – it was just awesome. And the dancers just amazed me – their stamina: 1 hour of aerobics, twice a day!
Excerpt from my journal – May 2005:
“…I’m still trying to decide if I should quit my job in England and move here. It’s a great opportunity…I’m out of my comfort zone. I want to stay in England; I don’t want to be in Africa. BUT I do want to be in Africa. It will be such a difficult life and I don’t know if I can handle it…”
“…I think I’m going to say yes…”
I am glad I made my decision, although things have been really hard at times. Often I have just wanted to leave, to go back to a regular job where you are guaranteed a paycheck at the end of each month!
At the conference there were so many people healed, especially deaf people – they just strikes a chord with me – how can you appreciate the beauty of sound when you cannot hear? The smiles on their faces says it ALL.
On Friday night there was so much dust as they were all singing and dancing and some of it got stuck under my contact lense… the next morning I woke up to severe pain and discomfort, my eye was swollen shut and puss was oozing out and it was just nasty. At first I thought that it was conjunctivitis, but then because of the pain we started thinking there was something stuck in there. By this time I couldn’t even open my good eye, its movement hurt my other eye, so I was basically blind.
They took me to the clinic and the doctor tried to see what was in there – he couldn’t see anything. We went back home and I asked the girl helping me to look in my contact lense case – one had a lense in it, the other was empty, with ½ a lense stuck the outside…
We rinsed my eye, eye-dropped it and covered it with a bandage. I just lay there. It was horrible – just waiting for the pieces of contact lense to come out. Heidi and Rolland were due to speak at a conference in South Africa so I had actually come to Malawi to be here specifically for those 2 days. And here I was, not able to do anything.
It made me appreciate my sight so much – my independence especially.
The conference ended, me having only done 5 of the 8 sessions (still a good 10 hours of work per day!) and on Monday morning we loaded up the plane. Two of the visiting preachers were coming back to Pemba with us – they had flown into Blantyre from the States on Wednesday so we had all their luggage, plus the sound system plus all our stuff and everything that Heidi had bought at the little airport store!
Rolland carefully weighed each bag, and asked each of us our weight! I think we were over the limit the plane could carry – In Nelspruit, the airfield in South Africa where he gets the plane serviced they call him the ‘Holy Man’, and its not cos he’s involved in missions – its because he carries loads heavier than any of them dare to, they all think he’s crazy!
Before takeoff Mo drove up and down the runway – his pin scourer (ex-Swiss military vehicle) has a small speaker attached to the roof – announcing in the local dialect, ‘clear the runway, remove your cows, chase away the goats and clear the runway!’ It was funny. I remember last year watching as the plane took off, standing next to my father. Never in a thousand years did I expect to be in that plane!
Because my eye was still sore and light sensitive (although getting much better) I sat with it closed most of the flight. We had to refuel in Blantyre and I managed to clear immigration without my pink eye patch, I wore sunglasses instead!
The flight was quite smooth; once the plane got its heavy belly off the ground we were fine. I was feeling airsick so I closed my eyes and slept.
We were nearing Pemba and the chatter in the headphones would occasionally wake me up as Charles and Steve chatted to Rolland. Suddenly I woke up and heard,” Oh no, we’ve lost the vacuum line, gyro compass and artificial horizon is gone!” That kinda freaked me out, and one of the passengers asked the BIG question: ”So what does that mean exactly?” Fortunately it was all-OK – landing would be a bit tricky, but it was all fine.
Another normal day at Ministério Arco-íris!
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