From the logbook...

I was able to make an afternoon flight today, after many other flights that the other pilots were making. We (Chad and I) had 3 stops on our flight plan, but because of bad weather, we had to change our plans a bit. We took off from Shell with 2 patient returns, and 1 teacher with Compassion International. The 2 patients were both from a village called Ayuy, about a 30 minute flight from Shell. One of them was in a half body cast with broken legs, and therefore still couldn't walk, and the other was still so weak from her surguries that she wasn't in much better shape. After sneaking into Ayuy, beating the approaching rainstorms, we dropped off the woman with the broken legs at one end of the airstrip, and then we taxied to the opposite end and let out the other woman.

I had picked up this woman about 2 weeks ago when she was on her deathbed, and when I loaded her into the airplane, I didn't think she would make the 25 minute flight to Shell, let alone make it to see another day. Obviously the doctors worked miracles, as we saw a scar from her pubic area up to her sternum. I don't know what was wrong, but it was a long scar. There was a woman there at Ayuy two weeks ago when we picked this patient up, that was really upset; crying as we loaded her up into the plane. It was almost as though she didn't think she would see her alive again. This same woman was there today as the patient got off the plane, and instantly she broke down into tears and hugged her friend or sister, (I don't know) amazed that she was seeing her alive still. It was a powerfull reminder once again of the balance of life and death that we help to tip sometimes.

After Ayuy the plan was to make the 5 minute flight to Yuvientza to drop off the Compassion teacher. It was covered in a downpour, so we switched gears and headings, and made the 5 minute flight to our third stop called Makuma.

We just had cargo and mail for Makuma. It didn't take long to see that if we stayed in Makuma long, we would be there overnight due to approaching thunderstorms, so we took off again, this time for home, returning to Shell. We were unable to get the Compassion International teacher into Yuvientza today, so he came back with us to Shell. We will try again tommorow, and see if the weather is a little better. The teacher said if he didn't have all his teaching supplies, he just would have walked from Makuma to Yuvientza through the jungle. I asked him how long that would take to hike, and he told me about "5 hours." It would have been 4 minutes in our airplane!