You can do THAT in a DC-3?

On Monday I had the opportunity to go on my first flight with AIM Air.  Denny and Kurt took me on the King Air 200 to Mwanza, in northern Tanzania right on Lake Victoria.  The King Air is an amazing aircraft, and by far the most high tech of the fleet.  It is the only pressurized plane they have, and it cruises at much higher speeds than the others.  Most of the journey there and back was spent at 24,000 feet, so with all the cloud cover below us, I didn’t get too much of a chance to check out the Serengeti as we passed over it.  The view of Lake Victoria as we crossed over it and turned for our approach to the runway – which is right on the edge of the lake – was pretty impressive though. The flight was just a short trip to pick up some missionaries who needed transport out of Mwanza back to Nairobi.  My favorite part was definitely listening in on the headsets and chatting with the pilots from time to time during the flight.  I’m getting fairly confident in my knowledge of all the flight instruments after the time I’ve spent working in the airplanes, going on engine test runs, and now accompanying on a couple of flights.

I say a couple of flights because on Tuesday I got an even cooler opportunity.  I managed to get onto a DC-3 training flight.  For starters, the DC-3 is my favorite plane in the fleet.  We’re talking about a plane that is 64 years old (built in ‘45), has been rigged with turboprop engines instead of its original radial engines, and is in immaculate condition.  It’s beautiful, and it is after all one of the most successful aircraft designs in history – hard to go wrong there.

Anyway, I hopped on a training flight out to Magadi airstrip, which is southwest of Nairobi.  The flight there was too much fun.  As it was a training flight, the pilot was being run through different simulations, so we were doing stalls and all the like in this big thing.  The best part by far involved the pilot pushing the turning capabilities of this giant to the limit – I guess because he needed to be fully aware of what it could do.  That means he was pulling it into 45 to 60 degree hard turns – something you would almost never do in an aircraft like that – and you could feel some serious G’s in the back.  As if the stunts weren’t enough fun, we were flying over some incredible natural formations and lakes during this entire period.  The only other guys who came on the flight were these two media guys who are putting together some film and pics on AIM Air (one of them is also a pilot for AIM).  Anyway, even that pilot was getting a little sick in the back as we spun and banked through the sky.  I’m glad my stomach seems unresponsive to that kind of thing, ‘cause I was having a blast.

We then landed on this dirt airstrip in the middle of nowhere, amid some strange-colored salt lakes.  Since they were going to practice numerous take-offs and landings on that strip, they let the two media guys and myself off the plane, so we could watch/film/photograph the plane in action.  It was hot stuff out there!  I haven’t really been down from high elevation prior to that point (Nairobi is at 5,500 ft), so I wasn’t yet acquainted with the typical heat on the equator in Africa.  Anyway, we just hung out among the sparse brush or on the airstrip, taking all manner of photos and talking.  I would definitely enjoy being a photographer of some sort…  Some of my pics turned out quite well, if I do say so myself.  I’ll have one included in this blog when I get a chance to upload it:

Magadi airstrip

After about 5 or 6 landings, we got back aboard and headed toward Nairobi.  All in all, what a cool experience!

Wednesday was a fairly typical day of work at the hangar, although during lunchtime, two of the younger Kenyan guys and I played futbol for quite some time.  We were mostly playing juggling games back and forth, and I was surprised by how quickly my touch came back.  Marko even called me a “dangerous footballer”, haha.  After these couple of years unable to really play sports, I had forgotten how much they can bring people together.  We were all dying with laughter by the end.

Well I think that hits most of the big stuff of the last few days.  On Saturday, I’m planning to take another flight on the DC-3, but this time on an actual mission.  We will be going up to Sudan to deliver supplies.  It’s going to be a very long day, but I’m really looking forward to this trip.  I probly won’t blog again until after that.

Safari Time

Alright, so it’s been a while since I’ve thrown one of these up here, but it’s just been that busy.  Where to start…

Last week I put in a bunch more hours at the hangar, as usual just doing whatever needed to be done.  Much of that work was on one of the well used Cessna 206’s, doing a maintenance check.  My memory is getting hazy already on some of the other specifics since I had such an eventful and tiring weekend afterwards.  I also spent a little more time with my younger cousin last week, and I’ll admit that I had a blast doing some soap carvings with him during one of the evenings.  My uncle and I have also been putting in lots more hours on the motorcycle, so it’s coming along.  At the end I might have to upload a before and after pic.

Anyway, this past weekend was spent in large part in my aunt and uncle’s little 4-wheel drive SUV, but it was not in any way as dull as that sounds.  My uncle, my cousin, another father and his two young sons, and I all went up to Lake Nakuru National Park on Saturday.  What a trip!  It took a few hours to reach the park, but much of that driving was through the Great Rift Valley, an incredible natural formation that stretches for thousands of miles, all the way from northern Syria to Mozambique.  We reached Nakuru Game Park in the afternoon on Saturday, and got to go on a game drive before dark.  The sun roof of their car was quite handy as we cruised through the park among the game (when I wasn’t driving).  Were I to mention all of the different animals that we saw, we would be here for quite a while, so I will try to limit myself to the highlights.  The park covers quite a large geographic area, all surrounding Lake Nakuru, which is home to millions – yes, millions – of flamingos.  The mind cannot wrap itself around those kinds of numbers, even when you are staring at that many of them first hand.  They covered a large part of the lake, just hanging out and munching on their algae.  Interesting fact of the day from Wikipedia: Scientists reckon that the flamingo population at Nakuru consumes about 250,000 kilos of algae per hectare of surface area per year.  The next day with the mid-day sun on them, the pink seemed to over-saturate one’s eyes.  There were quite a few other incredible bird species, including some marabou storks and secretary birds that both stand over 4 ft high.  The other colorful birds that dotted the trees are too numerous to mention.

As far as larger game goes, there were a good number of white and black rhinos, giraffes, cape buffalo, gazelles, impala, water bucks, warthogs, eland, zebra, baboons, syke (sp?) monkeys, etc.  I was especially impressed by how close we were able to get to all of these larger animals, even the rhinos and buffalo (whether we should have from a safety standpoint can be left to another conversation).  The rhinos were probably my personal favorite.  They are awe-inspiring creatures, and they’re pretty goofy besides when you really look at how they are built; God had a little bit of fun with those ones.

So on Saturday, we went for a game drive for a few hours and ended up being caught out in the night, as we had a long drive to our little farmhouse.  We were trying to keep a look out for reflective eyes in the night, since there are a couple different types of large cats in the park, but alas we didn’t see any.  We did, however, see the remnants of a kill the next day.   For the night, we got to stay at one of the few locations actually inside this huge park.  It’s an old farmhouse on the north side of the lake.  We were thoroughly reminded of our presence within the game park when my uncle went to lock the front door later in the night and found a monstrous male cape buffalo laying down only a few feet from the front door, right amidst the bushes.  We supposed he was enjoying the protection of the light and the wall from lions, etc.  That was an impressive sight!

We spent quite a few hours Sunday morning into the afternoon on a game drive as well.  That’s when we ran across most of the big game, or at least we were able to see it at that point.  The weather was absolutely perfect that whole day, as it often is here.  It’s going to be unfortunate to go back to hot and humid Charlotte, NC from that standpoint.

On another note, I had another opportunity to see how similar my dad and uncle are.  It was pretty amusing to watch him intentionally throw the car into skids through the mud as we were cruising along; I know my dad would have been doing the same, and I have a feeling that’ll be me some day as well: just another big kid.

P.S.  A decent number of my pictures from our safari can be found on my photobucket site (link at bottom of page).  I figured I’d better save this tidbit of information until the end or no one would actually read my writings about the place; at least I know I’d jump straight to the pictures.  I’m also going to try to have another post up within the next day or two, just so you know.

Building/Riding Motos, etc

So it’s been a busy couple of days.  Yesterday was spent almost entirely in the hangar, with only a short break for dinner before uncle John and I went back to work on his motorcycle.  I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that or not yet, but right now his bike is entirely in separate pieces, so we are finishing the painting and beginning reassembly, with the goal of finishing before they leave on home assignment.  Then we were back to the hangar early this morning.  I’ve been working on a number of different smaller jobs with various people; from riveting to sanding/prepping a plane for its first Aim Air paint job (this is a new Cessna 206 which still doesn’t have wings on it). 

I haven’t yet mentioned how much fun I’ve had riding motorcycles here.  I’m borrowing an old Honda 600cc dirt bike from another missionary in order to get to and from the hangar and around Nairobi in general.  Riding a motorcycle here is so much more of a rush than back home, despite the fact that you usually aren’t driving quite as fast – the pot-holes see to that.  Very few laws are actually followed by drivers in general here in Nairobi, but motorcycles seem to be treated about the same as bicycles, in both a good and bad way.  It’s bad because you constantly fear for your life owing to the absolute disregard drivers show motorcycles, but it’s also an advantage because police are even more lax toward motos, meaning that you can get away with almost anything.  It’s practically expected that motorcyclists will be weaving in and out of traffic and driving in between lanes of opposing traffic.  During my first days – when I was driving more like an American – cars were noticeably impatient behind me, upset with the fact that I was taking up the 7 feet between them and the car in front of them.  They seemed to be confused about my presence in an actual lane.  I actually feel safer now that I drive like the rest of the bikers here, moving almost independently of the flow of traffic (fortunately, I’ve also adapted to driving on the left hand side without any noteworthy mishaps).  I’m not looking forward to driving again in the States and actually having to consider the rules of the road.  Bother.

As a side note, despite the fact that it is quite the rush, feel free to pray for my safety in that area, although I’m sure the prayers of my mom alone should cover me after she has read this blog-post.

One Body

Today I had the privilege of attending church at Mamlaka Hill Chapel. What a powerful service in so many ways. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to visit a number of churches in different cultures, mostly in Latin America, and now this one. Once again, today I was presented with a beautiful reminder of the global scale of Christ’s church. We spend a lot of time in Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at UNC emphasizing the global Church and all of its members, who will one day be worshiping God together in heaven, but to actually see a reminder of that fact is always an awesome experience.

Today I was blown away by how musically gifted the congregation and worship leaders were. We sang the coolest rendition of “Our God is an Awesome God” that I’ve ever heard. I also didn’t feel as out of place as usual in my desire to dance a little bit to such upbeat songs. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so encouraged by the worship as today. The pastor was also quite the eloquent speaker, and he delivered an extremely challenging message on using our gifts and talents. I could get into a fairly long discourse on how I’m trying to figure out the application of that in my life, but I’ll save that for another time. Anyway, I really enjoyed the service and I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to go to another one or two before I leave, but the next weekends could end up being fairly busy. I know at least next weekend we’ll be out at the game park, which will be sweet.

It seems that this culture is in general more musically oriented than most, which of course I love. It’s a lot of fun in the hangar to hear the multiple expert whistlers conversing back and forth as they go about their work. Occasionally I try to pipe in myself, with varying degrees of confidence. One of my favorite guys to work with, Andai, is probably the best whistler there, so I enjoy just listening to him as we take care of the task at hand. He’s also incredibly knowledgeable about the aircraft, and he’s always willing to share his knowledge and general mechanical experience with me (he also probably doesn’t mind having someone to throw on the tedious projects, like the hundreds – maybe thousands – of screws that I got to check the other day, haha). 

My uncle’s got the carburetor from his motorcycle in pieces on the kitchen table next to me, so I’m gonna check that out a little I think.

I just felt like throwing this pic of the DC-3 up as well cuz I like it so much:

Settling in

One of the fun things about traveling to new places is getting to know the local customs.  Since day one here, the continuous consumption of chai tea with copious amounts of sugar and milk has stood out.  Though unlike many cultural practices, I must say this custom is enjoyable on the very first try – no time required to acquire a taste for it.  Every day there is a dedicated chai time at 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM on the spot, at least for the Kenyans who work at the hangar.  Today I even got to sit with a group of Kenyans in the shade outside the hangar during chai time, though what was discussed I haven’t the faintest idea.  Other than the guy who invited me to join them occasionally speaking to me in English, it was all Swahili.  Clearly any aptitude I have for languages is limited to the romance variety, but I didn’t really expect to pick up the language during my month here anyway.  Fortunately, almost everyone seems to also speak English, though many people’s accents are so strong it still seems like a language I’m not totally fluent in.  I do enjoy hearing the Swahili constantly spoken around the hangar, but it’s also really nice when I’ll join some guys on a project and they’ll switch to English so that I can understand, even when they are talking amongst themselves.

Speaking of working with the other guys in the hangar, I feel a little more accepted as part of the crew at this point, though it’s not that they were exclusive initially.  On Wednesday I somehow found myself working with a couple of guys on an odor/sanitation issue in the hangar.  Apparently about once a year one of the administrative staff will come into the hangar and mention the unpleasant smell that has developed right under the mechanics’ noses.  It is usually caused by the poor drainage of water out of the hangar’s drainage system.  The stagnant water mixed with the oil and other waste that drains off the hangar floor create quite a nice sludge-like mixture, which I got to help clear out.  I felt like I could’ve been on that “Dirty Jobs” show on the Discovery Channel with all the handling I got to do of the sludge, and we eventually got the drainage water looking a more grayish color, as opposed to the chunky black mess it was before – a small success.  Anyway, all that to say, I think some of the guys were impressed that I was involved in that undertaking, so maybe I gained a few bonus/acceptance points that way.

Much of the rest of my time in the hangar has been dominated by work on the modified DC-3 with turboprop engines.  I didn’t realize, but it’s the only DC-3 in east Africa, so maintenance on it can be kind of tricky sometimes.  We’ve just been doing a general inspection the last couple of days, so I’ve gotten to climb all over and in it, which has been fun.

Sorry this is so long, but this blog is just gonna have to come in chunks like this.  The next part is reminiscent of an earlier blog post from my South America journey, as today we had two goats slaughtered in the middle of our hangar floor.  I got an incredible picture of the slaughtering right in front of the Beech King Air; what a bizarre backdrop! 

This year's festivities

 They were slaughtered in preparation for the goat roast we are having tomorrow (Friday) in honor of certain people leaving on home assignment for a few months.  The situation might have been a little more bizarre for me had Jonathan and I not witnessed the sacrifice of 2 llamas last summer in the highlands of Bolivia.  Clearly the consensus on the most effective killing method extends across continents (see pictures).  For once though, the smells of the slaughter actually started to get to me as I was trying to focus on work nearby on the hangar floor.  Don’t worry; I

Last summer's festivities

won’t bore/disgust you with any more details about that.

Anyway, it’s late, so goodbye for now (I honestly can’t remember the last time I considered 10:30 late).

ps. I’ve added a link to the Africa pics section of my photobucket at the bottom of this page if you’re interested.  It’s going to be hard to upload very many with the connection speeds here, but I will try.  Just click on one of the albums on the left, right now all I have up is “AIM Air”.

So here I am in Nairobi, Kenya.  I don’t feel like I’ve had time to hardly think since my arrival, but I’ll throw up a quick post anyway.  I got here late Sunday night after a surprisingly smooth journey (flying stand-by teaches one to expect the worst), and was only without my bag for a day.  This turned out to be fairly unimportant, because I didn’t have time to need anything out of it.

First thing Monday morning, my uncle John and I were off to the hangar, where countless introductions were made and a general tour of the facilities was given.  I’ve been quite impressed with the shop in general,  and the aircraft are beautiful.  It’s pretty cool getting to work at the oldest airport in East Africa, a stat I was unaware of beforehand.  I surprised myself to some extent by actually being useful on the first day here, as I worked first on the brake system and then the propeller of one of their primary workhorses, the Cessna Caravan.  I got to sand down the prop and repaint it, so it was cool to actually get some legitimate work straight away.  I had to take a pic of it today when I came in: 

The prop I worked on

Besides just working in the hangar, it has been fun to get to meet some of the AIM Air team.  They’ve got a really great group of people working here, and I’ve already had the opportunity to go to both a special prayer meeting and a weekly bible study with some of them.  I’m really looking forward to getting to know more people.  One thing I jotted down yesterday so that I wouldn’t forget was my reaction to the faith expressed by the people here.  For some reason, I always find myself far less cynical when I witness the faith of believers outside of the U.S.    Sometimes, the Christianity I come across in the U.S. leaves a bad taste in my mouth, or simply seems uninspired and mere habit.  Here though, the people really believe, and most importantly, they are seeking to learn more and discover more what living life in Christ means.  That broad statement might seem like a lot to say after only being here a day and a half, but I’ve run across that pattern in my travels to other areas of the world as well, so I figured it deserved a mention.  (Rereading that portion, it sounds fairly harsh on Christians in the States, so I wanted to clarify that maybe living a life of faith sometimes just requires more effort from the comfort of our U.S. lives.)    I hope to learn much from the people here that will impact my faith and make it more real.

I’m gonna head back down to the hangar floor now though, and I find myself getting more and more excited about getting to hop on one of their flights soon.  Yesterday I helped to load up their modified DC-3 with supplies and equipment headed for Sudan, and O how I would’ve liked to see where those get delivered today and how they will be able to impact lives there.  Soon hopefully…

Off on another Adventure

Hello all!  I hope to blog fairly regularly on here concerning my time in Nairobi, Kenya this summer.  Why am I going to Nairobi, you ask?  Well, here’s the short and sweet version.  I will be there for just over a month – assuming plans don’t change -  staying with my Uncle John and Aunt Anna (along with my younger cousin Wes).  They are missionaries serving with AIM Air, a mission which uses planes to deliver needed supplies and people all over the continent.  I will be helping them in any way I can, which will include working in the airplane hangar with my uncle.  At this point I don’t really know everything that I will be involved in, but I simply hope to help and encourage them however possible.  As I’ve talked with them in planning this trip, they’ve assured me that there is no shortage of things to be done, so pray that I will have a willing spirit to do whatever will be most helpful to them and the other people I come into contact with.

This is my first time in Africa, so I expect this will be a learning experience that I hope will seriously broaden my horizons.  Tomorrow I head out, though at this point I don’t know exactly how I’ll be getting there – either through Paris or London.

For those of you who are curious, all the blog posts prior to this are from my journey last summer through 5 countries in South America.  I expect these new blogs to be slightly different from the posts from South America, because I don’t think my time in Kenya will be nearly as chaotic as the mad rush across the 7,000 miles that we covered last summer.  I hope to spend a little more time reflecting on my time there, but we’ll just have to see how they turn out.