"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink," is a well-known proverb. The adjunct is, "but when it doesn't you wish you could give it a kick to make it do what's good for it." Maybe as a vet I shouldn't have said that, but you know what I mean.
I mentioned last week that I'd had an early flight to Ambuluwa to take teachers and their supplies back for the new school year. The flight was paid for by the local MP, somebody who has channelled money into remote communities in his electorate. What I didn't mention last week was that despite being given a definite check-in time for the weather critical airstrip, they turned up 45 minutes late, with a very lame excuse.
However, the bad weather saved their bacon, and their charter cost. Anxious to get back they enthusiastically agreed to a first light departure on Tuesday, with no difficulty in fitting in with the 05:30 at the latest check-in time, necessary so I had sufficient time to do a second round before the wind picked up.
The afternoon before the aircraft was loaded, refuelled and prepared for the flight, with all the paperwork as ready as possible.
Sebastian Kurz, my FO, and I were there by 05:30. The Traffic Officer assigned to help us was there at much the same time and the base was opened. No passengers. They were still not there at 05:45, 06:00, 06:15, at which times we'd had reports from our agent, John, at the community that the weather was good. In order to get a mobile connection for the weather report John has to walk a considerable distance up a mountain, and once he knows an aircraft is coming, hurry back again to get his load manifest completed in time.
Just before 06:30 the group of teachers finally showed up, by which time it was too late, I didn't have time for their flight and then the second one. They certainly weren't to have priority with such tardiness, even though it took substantial time to change the loads around and rearrange everything. In the end we were airborne at about 08:40, more than three hours after starting work, and more than 2.5 hours after I should have been in the air.
With a late show like that we keep the charter fee, but as they don't have any personal investment it won't be any more than an inconvenience to them and avoids the need for them to go to a remote community for a bit longer.
Their excuse: "It was raining overnight."
I would have liked to have replied, "I noticed. So what?"
We tried to help, but the horse wouldn't drink.
Kompiam is about 18 minutes flight time north-west of Hagen and is where Dr Dave Mills and his family are based. It's he who oversees the medical care for the surrounding area of Enga Province. When I first flew to Kompiam Andrew and Pauline Longley were based there, Baptist missionaries who'd come to PNG in the 1970s.
Andrew died a while back but Pauline has been back by herself a couple of times since, and at the moment is working with another ex-missionary, Sally Burton, on a revision of the New Testament in the two main Enga dialects. Sally first came to PNG in the late 1960s and worked at several of the communities in the area well before PNG became independent.
On Thursday evening we had them round for an evening meal together and had a lovely time catching up with Pauline and getting to know Sally a bit. On one of our early family holidays in Cairns we overlapped with Andrew & Pauline and their two boys, James and John, so there was interest in seeing up to date photos of them and each other's grandchildren.
With Nicki and me pondering our future at the moment, it struck me that we are a bridge between some of the early MAF pilots and PNG missionaries, and newer generations of staff who have no link at all to those early days. I've had the privilege of meeting a very few of the real trailblazers who arrived in the 1950s, but most of the people I've known arrived in the 1960s.
In any organisation history is lost as people move on, it's inevitable and it's impossible to write down all the stories that sit behind the decisions that have been made, the personalities that drove them, and the conditions of the time that made those decisions necessary. I know very little, but have benefited hugely from the time that I've been able to spend with those people who worked here in the very early days when remote areas of PNG found that there was an outside world beyond the confines of their communities.
Having handed over my FOM role I am finding, much to my relief, that my email inbox isn't anywhere so full. It is still difficult to reduce it as quickly as I'd like, but the total number is decreasing. I felt for Brad when he came in the office on Monday saying that having dealt with everything by Friday afternoon, he now had 63 new emails to deal with. I know the problem!
It is nice to have more capacity to work at some long-outstanding projects, some which have been waiting for months or years. One project to revise our IFR route structure has been given to pilot Richie Axon, but his work needed checking, so that was done this week. The IFR trainer is up and running as I mentioned last week, but I've also written some briefing notes on the upgrades for our pilots. These and various other tasks are gradually reducing and with it the satisfaction that they won't fall to Brad to deal with on top of his email mountain.
This week I spoke in our church, Mount Hagen Baptist, using the same basic sermon outline as I used last week, but with the benefit of last week's practice and subsequent modifications, I thought it went better. Not long after we arrived in church I realised I'd left my notes at home, so a quick (or as quick as the potholes allow) dash back to collect them was necessary.
Folk in church had heard rumours about our plans for eventual departure, but had misinterpreted them and thought we were leaving for good in March. Relief was expressed this was not quite so imminent. Standing in front of everybody I assured them that rumours of our departure had been greatly exaggerated (to misquote Mark Twain).
Tomorrow (Monday), I'm off to Ukarumpa for three days as part of the MAF contingent going to a Mission Aviation Conference. There's a lot of topics of common interest so I'm anticipating an interesting time. Nicki will hold the fort here.
It's a good opportunity for the aviation missions, ourselves, New Tribes, SIL and another much smaller one, to get together. I suppose you could say that we're heading to water and are going to enjoy the drink!
I mentioned last week that I'd had an early flight to Ambuluwa to take teachers and their supplies back for the new school year. The flight was paid for by the local MP, somebody who has channelled money into remote communities in his electorate. What I didn't mention last week was that despite being given a definite check-in time for the weather critical airstrip, they turned up 45 minutes late, with a very lame excuse.
However, the bad weather saved their bacon, and their charter cost. Anxious to get back they enthusiastically agreed to a first light departure on Tuesday, with no difficulty in fitting in with the 05:30 at the latest check-in time, necessary so I had sufficient time to do a second round before the wind picked up.
The afternoon before the aircraft was loaded, refuelled and prepared for the flight, with all the paperwork as ready as possible.
Sebastian Kurz, my FO, and I were there by 05:30. The Traffic Officer assigned to help us was there at much the same time and the base was opened. No passengers. They were still not there at 05:45, 06:00, 06:15, at which times we'd had reports from our agent, John, at the community that the weather was good. In order to get a mobile connection for the weather report John has to walk a considerable distance up a mountain, and once he knows an aircraft is coming, hurry back again to get his load manifest completed in time.
Just before 06:30 the group of teachers finally showed up, by which time it was too late, I didn't have time for their flight and then the second one. They certainly weren't to have priority with such tardiness, even though it took substantial time to change the loads around and rearrange everything. In the end we were airborne at about 08:40, more than three hours after starting work, and more than 2.5 hours after I should have been in the air.
With a late show like that we keep the charter fee, but as they don't have any personal investment it won't be any more than an inconvenience to them and avoids the need for them to go to a remote community for a bit longer.
Their excuse: "It was raining overnight."
I would have liked to have replied, "I noticed. So what?"
We tried to help, but the horse wouldn't drink.
***************
Kompiam is about 18 minutes flight time north-west of Hagen and is where Dr Dave Mills and his family are based. It's he who oversees the medical care for the surrounding area of Enga Province. When I first flew to Kompiam Andrew and Pauline Longley were based there, Baptist missionaries who'd come to PNG in the 1970s.
Andrew died a while back but Pauline has been back by herself a couple of times since, and at the moment is working with another ex-missionary, Sally Burton, on a revision of the New Testament in the two main Enga dialects. Sally first came to PNG in the late 1960s and worked at several of the communities in the area well before PNG became independent.
On Thursday evening we had them round for an evening meal together and had a lovely time catching up with Pauline and getting to know Sally a bit. On one of our early family holidays in Cairns we overlapped with Andrew & Pauline and their two boys, James and John, so there was interest in seeing up to date photos of them and each other's grandchildren.
With Nicki and me pondering our future at the moment, it struck me that we are a bridge between some of the early MAF pilots and PNG missionaries, and newer generations of staff who have no link at all to those early days. I've had the privilege of meeting a very few of the real trailblazers who arrived in the 1950s, but most of the people I've known arrived in the 1960s.
In any organisation history is lost as people move on, it's inevitable and it's impossible to write down all the stories that sit behind the decisions that have been made, the personalities that drove them, and the conditions of the time that made those decisions necessary. I know very little, but have benefited hugely from the time that I've been able to spend with those people who worked here in the very early days when remote areas of PNG found that there was an outside world beyond the confines of their communities.
***************
Having handed over my FOM role I am finding, much to my relief, that my email inbox isn't anywhere so full. It is still difficult to reduce it as quickly as I'd like, but the total number is decreasing. I felt for Brad when he came in the office on Monday saying that having dealt with everything by Friday afternoon, he now had 63 new emails to deal with. I know the problem!
It is nice to have more capacity to work at some long-outstanding projects, some which have been waiting for months or years. One project to revise our IFR route structure has been given to pilot Richie Axon, but his work needed checking, so that was done this week. The IFR trainer is up and running as I mentioned last week, but I've also written some briefing notes on the upgrades for our pilots. These and various other tasks are gradually reducing and with it the satisfaction that they won't fall to Brad to deal with on top of his email mountain.
***************
This week I spoke in our church, Mount Hagen Baptist, using the same basic sermon outline as I used last week, but with the benefit of last week's practice and subsequent modifications, I thought it went better. Not long after we arrived in church I realised I'd left my notes at home, so a quick (or as quick as the potholes allow) dash back to collect them was necessary.
Folk in church had heard rumours about our plans for eventual departure, but had misinterpreted them and thought we were leaving for good in March. Relief was expressed this was not quite so imminent. Standing in front of everybody I assured them that rumours of our departure had been greatly exaggerated (to misquote Mark Twain).
***************
Tomorrow (Monday), I'm off to Ukarumpa for three days as part of the MAF contingent going to a Mission Aviation Conference. There's a lot of topics of common interest so I'm anticipating an interesting time. Nicki will hold the fort here.
It's a good opportunity for the aviation missions, ourselves, New Tribes, SIL and another much smaller one, to get together. I suppose you could say that we're heading to water and are going to enjoy the drink!
