First MAF Ride Along

 Today I had the privilege of riding along with Tim into the interior of Papua.  Flight days tend to start early around here for a couple reasons the main one being weather.  Here in the tropics weather tends to build throughout the day making the earlier flights safer and easier.  If it means getting into an airplane a 4:25 am alarm clock is not so bad.  Arriving at the airport around 5:00 am for final flight preparations and pre-flighting the airplane and depart at 6:00 am.  Our first flight took us to Ilu were we dropped off a Caravan load of chairs for a local Church there.  On the return trip there was a bit of confusion as at first we heard there was a lady having difficulty in child labour but never showed up so we took two other gentlemen instead that were there at the airplane wanting a ride back to Sentani.  There was also talk of us picking up some others at Mulia as well which as another community about 7 miles away from Ilu.  That however changes as we are were overhead preparing to land they contacted us to tell us that they didn't have anyone for us to pickup so we turned for home to drop off our two passengers and pickup our next load.  

 Our second flight we carried a full load of mixed supplies and one passenger to Bime.  The first 3 pictures were taken while on the approach into Bime.  The first 2 are of what looks like a new runway under construction near to where we were headed.  The approach for Bime is one of the more challenging ones in Papua mainly because if one needs to abort the landing it requires a quick right turn and then a left turn of more than 180 turn safely back out.  All that to say it will be a while before they send me here which is okay by me.

Lying next to the plane was the cargo that we were taking back to Sentani along with 11 passengers, and yes that is a pig, hog tied (no pun intended) by Tim's feet.  This stop was a little stressful to say the least as we had weather moving in, one to many passengers, some confusions regarding tickets and total money required.  Thankfully Tim was dealing with that and I was basically just along for the ride.  That being said Tim did asked me to help make sure that everyone was seated and had their belts on correctly which also meant the children and infants needed to have a kiddy belt on.  I was doing okay helping the one mother in the back with her toddler next however was a mother nursing her baby that needed help.  Yes, a little awkward for this prairie boy, thankfully there was a local young man helping someone else up front that came back to rescue me, by taking over the explanation and helped the mother put the kiddy belt on her child.

PS: Pigs do not like the start up procedure, as soon as Tim hit the starter the pig started to wiggle and squeal, but once the engine was running couldn't hear it anymore but also didn't feel him move around much after that as well until we landed in Sentani.

Flowing with Change

Greetings dear friends and family,

General Update

Well this month has been filled with change.  At the start of the month we were still living at the MAF guesthouse next to the airport waiting for work permits and our stuff from Salatiga.  Well when it rains it pours here not only literally but figuratively as well.  Monday Sept 8 our stuff arrived which meant moving time to our house assignment up at Pos 7.  So we unloaded all our stuff and Julie had the day off from teaching so she headed to the house which wasn't quite ready as it needed a good cleaning.  That same day we got word that we needed to go back to Jakarta as our visa/work permit had come through.  It was decided we would go to Jakarta the following Monday and we could use that week to move into the house.  Praise the Lord all of our stuff made it and was in relatively good shape.  We are still waiting for paperwork before we can resume using our bike & scooter from Salatiga, hopefully it won't be to much longer for that paperwork to arrive.  In the mean time I bought a "homemade" trail bike that I'm using when it wants to work and Julie has learned to drive a manual car from the right side and she uses that when needed, (I've been using it to when required but I still prefer my bike even with it's unreliable nature). We are mostly moved in but still have a few things that haven't found a home and a few things that we can't find, that probably were left behind in Canada thinking we didn't need them. All in all we are settling in pretty good.

Franklin's collar bone continues to heal well.  This past week I've seen him reading a somewhat large book all on his own which was very cool to see.  We also got the report from his time in Singapore yesterday so Julie has started to read through it and see what we can implement at home to help his continual learning process.

Isaac is enjoying school and he has enjoyed the fact that Julie is often at the school for lunch and recess.  He scored 100% on a science test the other day which he was pretty excited about.  Math is still a struggle but it seems to be a bit better than last year for him.

Jaclynn is doing pretty good in school as well.  She is however complaining that she can't play as much and doesn't get as many fun activities this year in school.  I guess we forgot to tell her that every year school is going to get harder with higher expectations on studying.

Julie is doing amazing work keeping the house in order and teaching Franklin his acidemic courses.  Since I've started to report to work everyday I haven't been able to keep up on the dishes like before.  It seems that Franklin is picking up some of that slack.  She also put together a chore list today which I hope will help lighten her load as we work together as a family to keep house.


Greg's Work Update

In the MAF Papuan program the new standard for pilots is to start training in the Kodiak.  There are several good reasons for this.  So before we had our work permits to keep busy and productive,  I spent my time reading technical manuals in preparation for maintenance and flight for the Kodiak (and washed the dishes among other domestic things).  And to keep with the title of the blog earlier this week it was decided that the Papua program needed a Caravan driver sooner than another Kodiak driver.  So Tuesday morning I received word that I was being switched over to train in the Caravan instead of the Kodiak.  There was many factors that lead the Papuan management team to this change in directions for me, some of which I'm not privy to.  I'm  however excited about the change other than I had to restart all the reading and start working through the Caravan manuals.  The Kodiak is a great plane and someday in the future (likely on our second or third term) I look forward to flying it as well.  Since receiving a new set of manuals to read I was able to get through most of reading material for maintenance and a fair chunk of the flight related reading along with some hanger flying, all in all a good week. Not sure what all of next week will look like, Monday I will go on my first ride along flight into the interior which I'm excited about and then later in the week there is a Caravan coming from Timika for an inspection which I might have the privilege of working on.  The check out process will take 9-12 months depending on many things after which we will be posted to one of the other 4 bases in Papua for the foreseeable future.  The process for me to get checked out for solo operations is a long and what might seem laborious process, it is however for good reasons.  Papua's mountains are littered with aluminum (airplanes) of those that were unprepared and under trained, there are also a few of experienced veterans that let their guard down as well.  All that to say MAF has a well laid out training program to prepare and train me and other new pilots with the skills and attitudes required to get me home at the end of the day or next day if an overnight is required.

As we continue to flow with change please continue to up hold our family in your prayers.  

The following are some picture from when we first opened our crates that beat us to Sentani from Nampa.  Also some pictures from moving day and around our yard at the house in Pos 7.

Crates

One happy boy

Dinning/living room moving day.

Kitchen moving day.

Jaclynn's room moving day.

 

Pak Yerri, our night guard and yard keeper.

Pineapples.

Pineapple garden.

Mulberry tree.

Youth rec center next door.

Me installing our bedroom A/C

Sehari-hari Salatiga

The following video is a small look at some of what life was like for our family while in Salatiga this past year.  I apologize it does have a few small editing errors that I didn't have time to fix as I only had a short window to get it up on the web while we were in Jakarta.

Before we get to the video, here is a quick family update.  All the visa stuff is finished so once I return to Papua in the morning I can start getting my hands dirty which I'm excited about.  During our trip to Jakarta for visas, Franklin noticed that his left collar bone looked different and after showing it to Julie and talking with some very wise people here it was decided that Franklin and I would stay another night so that we could get a doctor to look it over in the morning while Julie and the other 2 kids went home on schedule.  I'm happy to report that they made it back safe and sound.  For Franklin, we were able to get into see the doctor first thing this morning and learned that his collar bone was broken and was already well into the healing process.  So nothing at this point in time needs to be done other than Franklin has to be careful and no more falling off play structures and the like.  We are not 100% sure when but we think he broke it about 6 weeks ago when we were on vacation in Jepara.  Our family was enjoying a banana boat ride altogether until it came to a very quick end dumping all of us in the shallow waters near the beach.  All five of us had something hurting and for Franklin it was his left shoulder.  His fall in Sentani didn't seem to have a sore shoulder related to it but I'm sure it wasn't good for it.  So Franklin and I are heading back to Sentani tonight and will join the rest of our family tomorrow morning.

I hope to have some more photos and videos maybe soon as I get my hands dirty and possibly see what Papua looks like from the air as well.  Hope you enjoy this short clip from what some of our life in Salatiga was like.  Sentani, Papua is quit different so I will work at putting together another video maybe for next year or the next time I'm in a location with internet that is capable of me uploading a video to our blog.

Sehari-hari Short from Greg on Vimeo.