I should have had the camera....flying to Nairobi the other day on the scheduled flight I had 4 people...and 2 goats. You know you're a missionary pilot when you start loading goats in the airplane. We stuffed them in gunney sacks and tied them up and then stuffed them in the baggage pod of the airplane. As Manai (the station foreman) quipped, "Jina lake ni 'lunch.'" Their name is lunch. They made it to Nairobi and the guys at the hangar promptly took them in hand for the next day's lunch.
We've also started building a fence around the runway here at Gatab. We're building it out of ano, a local plant that you take cuttings of and plant in a ditch. Lately there've been more and more animals and people on the airstrip, and the houses are getting closer and closer to the airstrip. Time to push back before there's an accident. The options were to either do a wire fence, or the ano fence. The wire fence would be very expensive, something like $2000 for the materials alone, and it would be likely to have sections stolen. The ano fence is much cheaper, (ano is free, we're just paying for labor), but it's not quite as goat and cow resistant as the wire. Still, it should work . Step one was going around the airfield with the assistant chief, one of the village elders, Pastor Job, Jeff Heidorn (the station manager) and Manai and laying out where the fence would go so that everyone was in agreement. Easily done. Now as we build the fence we're constantly having to explain to the people who live nearby what and why we're doing. It's going to take a while before they get the idea I'm serious....every day someone complains about restricting the path the cows take. Send the cows around.
Nairobi next week...inspection time for the airplane.
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