I thought it would be nice to show a little of the flying I've been doing over the last couple of weeks. The first set of pictures is when we took a medical team (Volunteers in Medical Missions) into a small very remote village in Sudan called Pibor. The team was made up of about 4-5 Doctors and some nurses and they planned on doing clinics in the town for the week. Dropped them off on a Saturday and then picked them up a week later. We first stopped in another small village called Akobo on the way back to pick them up. Can anyone find the airstrip for Akobo? It's only about 3 miles away on this first photo, but difficult to pick out.
Here's another picture of the Akobo airstrip after we took off. The dust cloud is where we started our takeoff roll.
the next few pictures are in Pibor picking up the medical team. They worked almost non-stop and over the course of a week were able to see 1,200 people with quite a range of medical issues. A lot of syphillis, malaria, intestinal parasites, injuries, infections, and many more I am forgetting already. Needless to say they were VERY tired on their way out.b
It was about 110 degrees and everyone was looking for some shade to get out of the sun's fury.
Loading the team back up to leave. Notice the T shirt. We see a lot of used clothing advertising stuff from all over the U.S. It's really funny to see and sometimes the kids have no idea what is really on their shirt.
On the way back to Loki we ran into this storm. We are needing to land just on the other side of the second rainshower. We landed fine, but soon after were drenched by a half hour rainstorm. This is in the north of Kenya, where it's a desert. Seeing all this green up here is really unusual. They have had more rain than normal this year.
We had to wait 30 minutes for the rains to slow down so we could go out and fuel the airplane for our return trip to Nairobi.
After being fueled and ready to go, this is just after takeoff. The soil just doesn't want to accept the rain in the desert.
Then early last week I flew up to an airstrip in Eastern Sudan near the Ethiopian border for a mission group who were building a school. There wasn't anybody there to pick us up because their car had broken down so we stayed there on the airstrip for a couple of hours. In the end we left the missionaries there and made a plan to come and pick them up the next day. Flexibility to what is happening is really crucial in this kind of work. This was near a small village called Kuron. The kids who came out to the airplane were pretty primitive and as you can see in some of the pictures some of them were totally naked. (the boys at least) Most of the people in this kind of environment are wearing everything that they own.
Here's another picture of the Akobo airstrip after we took off. The dust cloud is where we started our takeoff roll.
the next few pictures are in Pibor picking up the medical team. They worked almost non-stop and over the course of a week were able to see 1,200 people with quite a range of medical issues. A lot of syphillis, malaria, intestinal parasites, injuries, infections, and many more I am forgetting already. Needless to say they were VERY tired on their way out.b
It was about 110 degrees and everyone was looking for some shade to get out of the sun's fury.
Loading the team back up to leave. Notice the T shirt. We see a lot of used clothing advertising stuff from all over the U.S. It's really funny to see and sometimes the kids have no idea what is really on their shirt.
On the way back to Loki we ran into this storm. We are needing to land just on the other side of the second rainshower. We landed fine, but soon after were drenched by a half hour rainstorm. This is in the north of Kenya, where it's a desert. Seeing all this green up here is really unusual. They have had more rain than normal this year.
We had to wait 30 minutes for the rains to slow down so we could go out and fuel the airplane for our return trip to Nairobi. 
After being fueled and ready to go, this is just after takeoff. The soil just doesn't want to accept the rain in the desert. 
Then early last week I flew up to an airstrip in Eastern Sudan near the Ethiopian border for a mission group who were building a school. There wasn't anybody there to pick us up because their car had broken down so we stayed there on the airstrip for a couple of hours. In the end we left the missionaries there and made a plan to come and pick them up the next day. Flexibility to what is happening is really crucial in this kind of work. This was near a small village called Kuron. The kids who came out to the airplane were pretty primitive and as you can see in some of the pictures some of them were totally naked. (the boys at least) Most of the people in this kind of environment are wearing everything that they own.
At the other end of the small airstrip. It was a pretty narrow turn around at the other end. You can see my inside tire tracks where I turned around. Also a "dry" only airstrip for the King Air. If it would rain the airplane would definately get stuck as it was really soft ground.
Quite a few AK47's and this guy like everyone else was just looking for some shade under my wing. He kept (inadvertantly) pointing this gun at us while he was talking to his friends and we kept moving out of the way, but finally he decided to lay down and rest for a while. 
The kids love to have their pictures taken and then look at themselves in the little screen. Piercing has always been pretty popular with the girls mostly. They use either wire, or just sticks to make their holes as you can see. The scars and burn marks on their heads and shoulders are made on them when they are going through the passage ceremony. The time when they pass from childhood to adult status in their culture. 
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