Cold Remedies

Lots of people have colds these days so I did a review with my health group on some ways to help someone who has a cold.

 We talked about five easily-available things and ways that they can use them:
 1. Water: drink lots; breathe in steam; wash hands often
 2. Salt: use in warm water to gargle for a sore throat; sniff up warm water with a little salt to help clear a stuffed nose
 3. Garlic: eat a few cloves a day (easier when they're diced small and swallowed without chewing, with lots of water); for children, dice finely or crush a clove, put on a spoon with some sugar
4. Onion: cut up half an onion, mix with a cup of water and drink a few sips at a time
5. Hibiscus tea: drink lots, it contains vitamin C and other good things

One important thing NOT to do for a simple cold: go get injections of antibiotics (very common here--a waste of money and potentially harmful).

The women had fun teaching about these things at church.

"Here, have a glass of water with chopped onions."

A Time for Sowing

The rainy season has begun here in Parot. We've had a few good rains and people have been sowing seeds: okra, pumpkin, sorghum (a kind of millet). They'll sow peanuts later.

The Dinka around us typically plant seeds in two ways: scatter and bury, and dig and drop.

In the scatter and bury method, seeds are scattered over a plot of ground that has not been worked or dug in any way, only softened by rain. Then, usually on their knees, people turn over the earth with long hoes, burying the seeds in the process. No sowing in straight lines or making sure seeds are a certain distance apart, as is the custom in many other places.

The ladies in this photo are from our local church. We have given them part of our compound to grow things in. The fruit of their labours will help support their denomination's pastoral/leadership training centre. The past few days the ladies have worked sowing okra. The video below shows how they use their hoes while kneeling or sitting, turning over the earth to bury the seeds they've scattered.

The dig and drop method is usually used for smaller areas. My friend Agau planted a small patch of okra last week using this method. It's very simple: you did some holes, and drop seeds into them. You can do all this while standing, covering over the seeds with your foot, as Agau does in the video below.

 

 

BYOC (Bring Your Own Chair)

Heading to church this past Sunday morning

After-church chatting

Coming In On A Charter: The Flight

When I left off in my last post, my teammates the Farises and I had just gotten onto the MAF plane for our flight from Nairobi to Malualkon, South Sudan on April 4. The route for our flight was the following, which is the route our charters usually take to go in:

A. Nairobi to B. Lokichoggio, Kenya: 2 1/2 hours flying time
B. Lokichoggio, Kenya to C. Rumbek, South Sudan: 2 1/4 hours flying time
C. Rumbek to D. Malualkon, South Sudan: 1 hour flying time
The stops in Loki and in Rumbek are for re-fueling.

View Larger Map
To continue on with the timeline from the previous post:
9:30 - Passengers load onto to the MAF plane, which is a Cessna 208 Caravan with a single turboprop engine. Our pilot is Jane, who as far as we know is the only Kenyan and only woman pilot currently flying with MAF.

Daniel and Liam are sitting in the back of the plane behind the freight.

There are three passenger seats in front of the freight, just behind the pilot and co-pilot's seats (on our flight we only have a pilot). I'm sitting behind the pilot and Natalie and Liam are behind the co-pilot's seat.

My view of the control panel. The screen with green and brown in the upper middle of the panel is a map showing the position of the plane. It's fun to follow along our route.





9:50 - Take off from Wilson Airport to fly north up to Lokichoggio (Loki). I got some nice views of Nairobi (Wilson is located right in the city).

View of Nairobi city centre

Recent housing complexes

Slums

12:20 - Arrive in Loki.

View over the pilot's should as we were heading towards the runway in Loki, which you can see in the distance in the middle of the photo.

Loki airport official buildings (police and immigration)

Our plane being refueled

The official reason for stopping in Loki may be refueling, but for me (and I'm sure most women passangers), what Loki means is: toilets!
(There's no toilet on the Caravan.)
 

And the women's washroom in Loki is actually very decent for rural Africa. It's spacious and clean, the toilet usually flushes, there's toilet paper and soap and running water for handwashing.

13:00 - Leave Loki to fly to Rumbek.

13:40 - Cross into South Sudan. The route map below shows the plane right on the border. 

 

15:20 - Arrive in Rumbek, South Sudan for refueling. It's about 40 degrees C (approx. 105 F.)

Rumbek airport

We passengers go to the immigration office at the airport to pay a registration fee and have our passports stamped.

16:00  - Leave Rumbek for our last leg, a short flight to Malualkon. The Caravan plane cabin is not pressurized so it's quite warm in the plane.

Getting close to Malualkon - notice the plane's shadow, bottom left

Good view of typical Dinka compound in foreground

Coming in to the runway at Malualkon

It's always great to see our truck waiting at the end of the runway

Teammate James who came to pick us up, greeting pilot Jane

Unloading

Lots of interest on the part of onlookers

17:40 - Leave airstrip 

We can't fit all the freight on the truck at one time. We take one load plus all us passengers and pilot Jane, who will spend the night at our compound. The next morning, James will drive her back to the plane and pick up the rest of the freight.

18:05 - Arrive at our compound in Parot. We made it!

So sorry, no pictures of this. Guess my mind was a little fuzzy.  And I didn't even think of taking pictures of the final step: unloading the truck.

 

Thanks for coming along on this journey!

Coming In On A Charter: Pre-flight Preparations Part 2

After the preparations described in my previous post, here's a chronology of pre-flight preparations on the day of the flight, which in this case was Thursday, April 4.

6:30 - Arrive at MAF compound at Wilson Airport (dropped off by our guest house van). Charter is scheduled to depart around 8:30.

6:30-7:30 - Freight moved from MAF storeroom via MAF truck to Wilson Passenger Terminal; passengers and carry-ons weighed and then taken to Passenger Terminal in MAF van.

Liam being weighed

Arrival at Wilson Passenger Terminal

7:30 - All freight put through x-ray machine at entrance to Passenger Terminal. The picture below is from a previous charter and shows my teammate Vince helping with this process of getting all the boxes, suitcases and other items on and off the conveyor belt. After this the freight is all piled on large carts which will then be used to take it out and load it onto the plane.

Some of our freight waiting to be loaded onto the plane

7:40-9:00 - Passengers wait. Freight waits on side of tarmac. Plane is delayed due to a missing page in the customs declaration as well as a minor technical glitch.








 9:00-9:30 - Freight loaded onto plane. Larger items are arranged strategically & securely in the cabin of the plane. Smaller items are loaded into the storage "pods" located in the belly of the plane. Each pod holds a different maximum weight, so the weight marked on each item of freight is helpful for the MAF staff so they don't overload the pods.

Pods underneath the cabin.

Freight secured in the cabin

9:30 - Passengers walk out to plane and then embark

Just before boarding the plane

To be continued... :-)

Coming In On A Charter: Pre-flight Preparations Part 1

I was out of South Sudan on R&R last month, hence the lack of posts. I came back in last week with my teammates the Farises on a MAF (Missionary Aviation Fellowship) charter flight from Nairobi. My team charters a small MAF plane a few times a year to bring in people and freight, and I thought I'd give you an idea of what this involves, in this post and the next two posts.

Pre-flight Preparations, Prior to Flight Date

1.     A few months in advance: Reserve charter with MAF Kenya. Based on the weight of the passengers, the pilot, fuel, seats, etc., MAF gives us a number of kilos of freight we can bring in (on this last flight it was 790 kilos = 1,742 lbs.).

2.     A few days in advance: Gather items to bring into South Sudan, whether purchased in North America or in Nairobi (we do a lot of shopping in Nairobi, for things that we can't get in SS or that are much more expensive there; for example, many food items, large plastic barrels for storing water, plastic pails and basins, brooms, toilet paper, foam mattresses, paint, medicines, water filters, building materials, kerosene for cooking, etc., etc.).

A few of my boxes last week

3.     Repack most items into boxes or suitcases. Label each box with owner's name, summary of contents, organization, number and destination. Weigh on scales at guest house and calculate preliminary weight of everything we want to take in.  The photo on the right shows some of the things I packed last week: raisins; cans of tuna, chicken & veggies; spices & condiments, insecticide, rye crackers, rolling pin, peanut butter, honey.

4.     Prepare customs list. This includes all boxes, suitcases and loose items leaving Kenya, listed by number, with a short description and $ value of the contents of each.

Loading up the car at guest house to head to MAF (had to make two trips)

5.     Two days before flight: Transport everything except carry-on items to the MAF building at Wilson Airport for weighing and labeling. Calculate total weight. Decide if we need to remove things or can add more things (usually it's the former!).

Teammate Daniel unloading things at MAF

Daniel put the things on the scale

 I wrote the labels and kept a list of the weight 

of each item

A labeled box top. Our destination: MALU = Malualkon, a small airstrip about 8 km from our village

More of our freight

Labeled freight piled at MAF

 

6.     Email customs list to customs agents, then go to their office to pay fee. (Fortunately the office of the agent we use is located just down the street from MAF.)

Compound Clean Up

Visitor David H. with lush vegetation in background, late Sept.

By the end of the rainy season (October), our compound was quite overgrown with vegetation of all kinds. We liked this because it was so green and lush and gave us some privacy from our neighbours.








 

 However, during the following months, all this vegetation turned brown and dry, a real fire trap. The tall grass and undergrowth are an ideal hiding place for snakes, of which we've seen (and killed) several during the past months. And by our neighbours's standards our compound was looking really messy. Plus thieves have had an easy time prowling around at night without being seen.




So, we hired some women from our local church to come and uproot the grasses and undergrowth and put them into piles that we could burn.

The women appreciate the work not only for the money it provides but because they can take any grasses or sticks they would like. They use these for many things, particularly for making grass huts or thatching the roofs of mud huts.







During the past weeks we have spent quite a few enjoyable evenings burning the piles of grass, twigs, leaves, etc. It's been a fun team activity.

 

The change in our compound has been very dramatic. Completely new views have opened up.

Before: storage shack barely visible on middle right

After: clear view all around the shack

This is the "after" view of the second picture in this post. My teammates the Ward kids call this area "the forest" and enjoy playing under and around the trees. Before it was so overgrown they couldn't get near them. The building that's now visible just a little above the centre of the photo is our new guest house.

 This is a view from the centre of our compound looking towards the south west. Before, we couldn't see the huts that are now visible in the middle of the picture. Now, we can not only see better but hear better. I noticed last night how well I could hear this neighbour and some of her friends sitting outside talking and laughing.