Already a month ago, I had one of my most memorable flights. Memorable for a lot of reasons, of which I hope to record a little bit of here over the next few days through a series of 5 blog posts.
(Ogasto decending the "ladder" back to the airplane. SUPER STEEP, and SUPER SLIPPERY!)
The village of Tumbang Tohan (TOH) has been asking MAF for years if we would bring the airplane into their village. This is the kind of request we love to have, but the answer isn't always a simple "yes." TOH is the last upstream village on a particular river we serve which translates to small, narrow, and not always that deep. I had performed two or three aerial surveys of the village location as well as collected data from Google Earth. It looked possible. But, we don't continue to operate airplanes in some of the places we do with continued safe operations and margin only running on possibilities. We want certainties when we are putting thousands of pounds of man and machine onto the surface of the river. So, this has only meant one thing; survey trip!
There is never a perfect time to make a survey trip. You just have to put it on the calendar and do it. So that is just what we did. This time I was able to take Rebecca and one of our Indonesian employees named Ogasto with us. We landed at a village we already visit weekly called Tumbang Naan (NAN) where we met Pastor Roni from the village of TOH. From there we boarded a motorized canoe and set off upstream to the village of TOH where we would survey the river, spend the night, and then return to our awaiting airplane the following day. After that, we would fly 20 minutes to Jujang Parit to visit the pastor and other friends there before flying home to PalangkaRaya. It was going to be a full two days!
The canoe ride was breathtaking!!! In Rebecca's words it was almost like we were in "Paradise Lost." About halfway there we stopped at a gravel bar to re-fuel the lawnmower sized engine and to stretch our legs. It was great to stretch a bit as by bum and back are not accustomed to sitting on what is essentially a hard wood bench for hours at a time. Did I mention it was beautiful!!!
Being in virgin rain forest in the middle of Borneo is something that I never would have dreamed I would experience if you would have asked me as a boy. It's always amazing to look at your life in retrospect and realize all the things that God has brought you through and where He is taking you. This trip accomplished so much more in Rebecca and I than simply performing a survey for potential landing of the MAF airplane. The 48 hours that this trip took from the time we left our home in PalangkaRaya until we returned reminded Rebecca and I of many things in life...more about that to come in a few days.
No comments:
Post a Comment