Story by Nathan Fagerlie and photos by Mark and Kelly Hewes
THREE MINUTES TO SPARE After two months of home assignment in South Africa, MAF Tanzania ops director and chief pilot Kirstein Combrink and his family returned to the programme in February. And back to the programme means straight back to work: the Combrinks travelled via Nairobi, where one of the MAF Tanzania planes had been getting an avionics upgrade. After a systems test flight to confirm all was in order, Kirstein flew the family home to Arusha in 5H-MWA, helpfully returning all the absent resources back to the programme in one go.
Safari, one of the monthly services the programme provides for medical and evangelistic teams with a heart to reach people in remote areas in the east of the country. Having not been able to operate these since November, there was a strong hope that they would be able to restart; however, there are often complications, and this time was no exception.
Kirstein takes up the story. “It is normally quite a challenge for the medical team from Hedaru Health Centre to get to the airstrip at Katahe where we pick them up. Most times they need One week later, Kirstein was to get a vehicle from the district preparing for the South Maasai medical office in the town of Same (about 50 km away) to pick them up and bring them to Katahe. Even on the occasions when we are told in the days leading up to the outreach that they have arranged something, they still often experience delays due to transport. “This time, we were actually informed days before the outreach that they had a problem getting a vehicle to transport the team, and so by Tuesday evening (the night before the flight) it seemed pretty unlikely that the South Maasai outreach would take 18
place. I had some other things to do with the plane and so the next day I moved it away from the busy section of Arusha Airport back to our regular parking spot on the apron. When I stepped out of the plane after moving it, there was a message on my phone to say that a car had been organised to pick the team up in an hour. “So I got ready and made the one-hour flight to Katahe. I waited an hour for the team on the ground, and it was becoming obvious that if they did not arrive soon, we would run out of daylight hours to complete the safari. We gave them until 1 pm to get there. Left: Picture shows literature brought by the evangelist for distribution. Top right: Some of the women attending the clinic who also took some free litarature. Bottom right: Kirstein (L) and Christiaan (R) carry out the test flight on the newly-upgraded plane.
