Emergency Medical Evacuation

While we are learning Portuguese, we won’t be involved much in the flying ministry of MAF.  An MAF pilot doesn’t just fly airplanes.  If we are going to be tools of God to share the love of Jesus Christ, we must be able to communicate His love clearly…and that means learning new vocabulary, how to construct sentences, figuring out how to conjugate verbs correctly, etc.  

Our language tutor, Alberto with us during a lesson

That being said, one day Dave happened to be at the hangar when a call came in for an emergency medical evacuation and he got the opportunity to ride along.  A man who works at a titanium mine about 1 hour away (by air) had an extreme case of malaria and had gone too long without treatment.  MAF was called to come pick him up and transport him to the hospital in Nampula, where we are based. To make the trip by road, it would have taken many bumpy hours for him to get to Nampula.  

Patient being loaded onto the plane at the mine

 When the MAF plane landed at the airstrip associated with the mine, there was already an ambulance waiting.  The ambulance drove up to the plane and Dave and Dave L. (the other MAF pilot) pulled out seats to accommodate the stretcher the man was lying on.  The patient was already unconscious and was hooked up to an IV when MAF arrived.  It took about five or six people to delicately lift the stretcher into the plane where he could lay comfortably.  A Mozambican doctor sat in the seat next to the stretcher to monitor him on the flight and with that they took off and headed back to Nampula. At one point during the flight, the doctor seemed concerned about the patient and pulled out an oxygen bottle and rigged up a mask, however, when he went to open the valve, it could be heard hissing even over the noise of the airplane.  Concerned that the bottle was leaking oxygen into the cabin, Dave L. asked Dave to communicate to the doctor the dangers of the leaking bottle in the plane (without Portuguese, he had to use hand gestures).  After several attempts to fix it, the doctor was able to use it without it leaking. 

Arrangements had been made for an ambulance to be waiting at the airport when they arrived.  While in flight, Dave L. radioed the airport to make sure they knew to expect the ambulance to meet the plane.  After landing, the plane was parked at a far corner away from any other airport traffic, however, the ambulance wasn’t there.  Instead security came up to the plane and they learned that the ambulance was waiting outside the fence because no one had paid a fee to access the airport.  Dave L. tried to explain that the ambulance was needed immediately and that the fee could be paid once the patient was taken care of.  However, security insisted the fee be paid, so Dave L. had to go into the airport and pay the it himself in order to get the ambulance to the plane.  While he was gone, the doctor demanded that they let the ambulance in.  Seeing that someone had gone to pay the fee, security at last allowed it in.  

Patient being unloaded at Nampula

 Once the ambulance pulled up, Dave, the doctor, and the ambulance workers quickly worked to unload the patient off the plane and he was quickly taken to the hospital.  Afterwards, Dave L. took a moment to give a lesson in compassion, asking the security if they would they want the ambulance delayed until a fee was paid if it was them or a family member that had the emergency.

We never found out if the man recovered, however, it is most certain, that without the airplane, he would not have received medical treatment in time and likely would have died. 

Do Your Eggs Come With Feathers?

We have had several people ask us about what we eat and how we cook since moving to Mozambique... So far, nothing too adventurous (no monkey brains or chocolate covered bugs although Dave did eat some Octopus...), but there are a few differences we thought we would share with you.

As you may know, we never did cook big even when we had every imaginable ingredient available to us in the States... Sometimes a fancy meal was Velveeta mac and cheese instead of Kraft mac and cheese!  Until last week, we have had a single gas burner to cook on...we just bought a single electric burner and doubled our cooking capacity!  We are eagerly awaiting our shipment (which will have our oven and microwave) which should leave the States in mid-March (meaning hopefully June it will be here).

Our staple food has been homemade tortillas...they are so good and you can eat anything on them...beans, rice, meat, eggs...yum!  We can buy ground beef and cheese here but it quite a bit more expensive than back home.  You can buy frozen chicken, but we often see people carrying their live chickens tied to the back of their motorcycle, on the chapa, or just walking home.  Twice we have bought eggs (you just tell them how many you want) and they put them in a plastic sack to take home (no carton)...it was a miracle we got them home without breaking them traveling on the bumpy roads!

Little bananas and giant avocados

This batch of eggs came with feathers

 Different stores carry different items, so to finish your shopping you will probably go to four or five stores.  You can't get fruits and vegetables at the little shops, so you have to go to the central market or find a roadside vendor.  Most days, people come by our house selling vegetables...tomatoes, potatoes, lettuce, green beans, etc.  They can be a little more expensive, but it is nice to avoid the hassle of the market sometimes.  Any produce we buy, we soak in water with a cap full of bleach to make sure we don't get sick.  We also boil and filter all of our water for drinking, cooking, tooth brushing, etc.

Water filter

You can buy beans by the kilo at the market

Fat free milk is a rare find

Top row is the cereal aisle...cornflakes anyone?

"Made From Real Mealies"

The cereal aisle here is definitely different than in the U.S.  You can get a little box, a medium box, a large box, or a family size box of corn flakes.  We have seen a few other types of cereal for sale in certain stores but they seem to be way more expensive.  You can buy one liter cartons of long life milk that don't require refrigeration until you open them... At at least 60 meticais per liter, milk costs about 9 dollars a gallon! 

Popcorn the old-fashioned way

We don't seem to buy near as much prepackaged food here..mostly pasta, tomato sauce, and little rolls of cookies.  Our favorite treat is an ice cold Coca Cola... save the bottles or you will have a hard time getting more! 

Waiting for the rain to stop to collect the rest of our laundry

Laundry detergent and bleach

Laundry is a little different for us too...the washing machine is located outside under a covered veranda.  When it rains, it definitely takes a long time to get your clothes dry, but we are fortunate to have a place to hang them where they can stay dry and out of the sun.  I don't care what the commercials say ...line dried towels are not soft and fluffy (maybe its because I don't use fabric softener)!



Our biggest challenge at the moment is water.  We have a tank that periodically gets filled by city water that gets pumped into the house.  We also have rain water running into the tank (and collect rain water in barrels to haul to the tank) to supplement the city water.  When the city water isn't running and it isn't raining, we can have water hauled to the tank to help get us by.  Unfortunately, our tank has a leak and after recently hauling water, we lost almost all of it in a couple of days.  Our big project for next week will be replacing the tank so we can consistently have water. 

The leaking tank in our front yard

For those that have asked, yes we do have a toilet (although many in Mozambique do not), and we have AC as long as the power is on...so nice to sleep in a cool room!

AC unit (top left) makes sleeping under the mosquito net more bearable