yellowshiv

[yellowshiv]

Community Grass Cutting

Once in a while, when the area around Telefomin gets rather overgrown, the government office here will ask members of the local community to bring their bush knives and cut the grass.  Everyone who helps gets a little pay for their work.  It is very common to see small children, like this little girl pictured, carrying bush knives almost as large as they are!  I (Shiv) saw her imitating her Mum and trying to help cut the grass outside the market, but I think it will be a few more years before she is paid for her work!

[yellowshiv]

Greetings from Telefomin!

We’re sorry we’ve been so quiet with our blog posts and general updates over the past couple of months.  We’ve been taking photos of our daily life, but it’s been so busy we’ve just not gotten around to sharing these little moments with you all, but we intend to make up for that...

Being so far from family and friends, it’s important for us to share these little moments, just like it’s great that we have modern technology so we can keep up with some of the little moments in some of your lives (although not as many moments as we would like).  We hope you enjoy seeing some of these moments over the next few months!

In this photo, we are enjoying a Sunday afternoon walk around Telefomin airstrip, which you can see behind us.

[yellowshiv]

Ryan taking off from Telefomin, just another “day in the office” where he did another Medevac of a lady who’d just given birth but had a retained placenta. Ryan picked her up from Feranmin, less than a 10 minute flight away (but a full day’s walk) and brought her to Telefomin where there are no Doctors or Nurses, but the Health Workers deal with birthing complications on a regular basis. The frame of the picture is courtesy of the App “Bible Lens”.

[yellowshiv]

Anniversary holiday and sick leave... It’s amazing how time flies, it’s been more than 1 whole year since we got married, wow! 1 year since the most wonderful day of our lives! We celebrated our 1st Anniversary on the north-east coast of PNG (that’s where the picture was taken), snorkelling and relaxing on the beach. It was wonderful! We’ve been very busy since we returned to PNG and moved to Telefomin, so we both really needed a rest and a break. Unfortunately the rest didn’t quite come soon enough, Ryan had been battling a cold for over 3 weeks and as we started our journey home he started to feel worse. He spent a couple of days in bed and has 3 days off sick. In that time Shiv managed to pick up a stomach bug, then just as she was getting over that she got Ryan’s cold and missed another week of work. Thankfully we are both now feeling much better, not quite up to full strength but getting there. We would really appreciate prayers for our health as we are both “sick of being sick” and really needing our energy levels back up to normal! Thank you.

[yellowshiv]

View on a morning walk... One day last week all 3 of us went for a short morning’s walk around the top of the airstrip. It’s been extremely wet recently (even for Telefomin) and the dew was hanging heavy on all the spiders’ webs, like someone had laid a lace table cloth amongst the grass. The dew glistened with the morning sun and it was absolutely beautiful! Here is one picture of the beauty of God’s creation!

[yellowshiv]

Steven & Michael reminiscing about old times...

Steven (Senior Traffic Officer, pictured left) has worked for MAF since 2001 at Telefomin and Tabubil bases, before that he was the community agent at Tekin, his home village.  Michael (Pilot & Flight Ops Manager, right) has flown in PNG since 1994.  Between them they have many memories of past pilots and stories within MAF PNG, so they were sharing some of these stories whilst waiting for the fog to lift this morning.

Michael has stayed with us for the past 2 nights whilst flying in Telefomin to get recurrent after being back in the UK on Home Assignment.  It was great to catch up with our friend and colleague.  I (Shiv) spent almost 4 years sharing an office with Michael and learnt a lot from his experience serving in PNG.  Ryan did some of his training on the DHC6 Twin Otter with Michael so we have both spent quite a lot of time with him.

Michael & his wife Nicki have given almost a quarter of a century of their lives to serving the people of PNG through their work with MAF, they are a real inspiration to us.  Sadly they will be returning to the UK at the end of this year to start their semi-retirement and spend more time with their grandchildren.  They will leave a very large hole when they go, but thankfully we still get to enjoy their company and support within PNG for another 5 months or so!

[yellowshiv]

Standby Day... What does a busy, hard-working pilot do when he has no aeroplane to fly? Mow the front lawn of course! (He did the lawn in the back garden last week in between rain storms) Ryan’s GA8 Airvan flew to Mt Hagen this morning for scheduled maintenance with our neighbour, Markus. Ryan was scheduled to fly the DHC6 Twin Otter with his Capt, but sadly Richie has the flu (Please pray for a speedy recovery!) so Ryan couldn’t go flying today, and possibly not tomorrow either. But he made the most of the good weather this afternoon!

[yellowshiv]

Oil Change on a GA8. Ryan’s been doing some Advanced Airstrip Training with Rick (pictured), a pilot who was based in PNG for many years with his wife and kids, but who has now retired back to his home in New Zealand. As with many ex-MAF folks, retirement for Rick is pretty busy, this is his 2nd trip up to PNG this year to do training on the GA8 Airvan. Last week he was down in Rumginae training our fellow Alberta pilot, Tim. On Friday he heads home to NZ, but we hope to see him again later this year!

[yellowshiv]

Alberta Pilots Together! Whilst I was waiting in Kiunga one day last week, my “wantok” (fellow Canadian) Tim landed for a quick turnaround to get fuel and passengers before heading out again to fly through the “fun” weather in the area. So here we are, two Alberta boys posing in front of our two GA8 Airvans!

[yellowshiv]

Day trip to Kiunga Base. Today Ryan had to fly to Kiunga Base to pick up Rick, who will be doing some Advanced Airstrip Training with him for a week, and Markus, our Telefomin Pilot neighbour. As Telefomin-Kiunga is a very unusual route we didn’t expect to have much loading so I took the opportunity to go with Ryan and do an informal base visit. I only got 2 hours on the ground, but that was long enough to encourage the base staff, do a cash count and give everyone a muffin with glitter on top! I may not be the Ground Operations Manager anymore, but I spent almost 4 years with the work performance and welfare of those 40 staff as my primary concern and I cannot simply forget about them. Thankfully my boss Doug, the Operations Director, is very happy for me to continue in a supporting role. My primary job now is doing Operations Projects and managing complex flight bookings for the western half of PNG, but when I get the opportunity, I also assist, support and encourage some of the Ground Ops Staff, which I really love doing. Today I got to do that for 2 hours!

[yellowshiv]

A surprise at the market... Ray the dog and I have a bit of a morning routine here in Telefomin. We walk with Ryan to the base at 06:50, we hang around for a bit to see if we can help with the refuelling or loading (Ray likes to pull the trolleys), then we head off for a half hour walk around the top of the airstrip, ending with a visit to the small market before we go home. One day recently I spotted something I’d never seen at the market before and I had to ask to be sure what they were. They turned out to be eggs from the “Welpul”, a bird found in the mountains around here (I have no idea what it looks like, but the people at the market said it was a large bird). The picture has a jumbo chicken egg in amongst them for size comparison. I thought I had to get all of them to cook Ryan & I an exotic omelette for dinner! Unfortunately, when I cracked them open, 3 of them were not good to eat and made me feel quite queasy seeing the contents of the eggs! But one of them was perfect, the yolk was bigger than the chicken egg and it made a very tasty omelette, not much difference in taste to a chicken egg, but it was a PNG bush experience!

[yellowshiv]

The Birthday Boy! This weekend we have been mostly relaxing and celebrating Ryan’s Birthday. 2 years on, I decided to re-visit the Aeroplane cake that I made for Ryan for his 30th Birthday, just before we started dating. 😁 He seemed quite pleased with the result!

[yellowshiv]

Happy Mothers’ Day from Telefomin!

We thought we’d share the lovely Mothers’ Day sentiments expressed at our Church this Mothering Sunday. After all, we are both blessed with the bestest Mums and can never fully repay they for the loving way they raised us, prayed for us and released us into the world! See the video on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0esC4ZHEwE

[yellowshiv]

The Canadian Dream Team! Today Ryan is flying with his “wantok”, fellow Albertan, Jason Marsh. They will be flying two Disaster Relief flights, one for CARE International and one for World Vision. In order to give the flights the best chance of happening we all left home before 6am this morning to get an early start! Jason is based in Goroka, 30 mins East of Mt Hagen, we are based in Telefomin, 90 mins west of Mt Hagen, and Jason & his family will be leaving PNG in less than a month, so this will be the last time this Canadian flight crew will be able to fly together in PNG. Although it’s sad to be saying goodbye to our friends, the Marsh family, it’s great to think, as they will be returning to Alberta, that it’s likely our paths will cross again. Please join us in praying for them as they transition back to life in Canada.

[yellowshiv]

Travelling Home... The last time I (Shiv) was in Hagen, Ryan flew me and another pilot, Markus, direct to Hagen on a Monday morning with the intention of swapping his plane and returning back to Telefomin before the end of the day. Unfortunately, the plane he was swapping for was a little bit more broken than the poor, hard-working Engineers realised and Ryan ended up getting stuck in Hagen with me for 2 nights. I’m sorry for all the people who couldn’t fly because the plane was broken, but I’m awfully glad because it meant we only spent 1 night apart in the end! It was the Hagen C208 Caravan, flown by Mathias and Luke (who was checking Mathias into an airstrip which he hadn’t been into in the Caravan before), who flew me home on the Thursday. However, I’m not the queen and so I don’t get to fly direct unless the plane happens to be going direct, which is rare as Telefomin is approx. a 1.5 hours’ flight from Mt Hagen. So I had the fun (?) of flying through 4 other airstrips before being dropped home in Telefomin. First stop was Wanakipa, a bush airstrip, which was actually the first bush strip in PNG I ever flew into more than 4 years ago. I remember then feeling very intimidated by the hundred or so people lined up along the edge of the runway, just staring at us. I didn’t know what to do and back then I couldn’t speak a word of “Tok Pisin” the PNG trade language, so I just awkwardly stayed under the shadow of the wing, feeling unworthy and like an animal at a safari park. This time, with 4 years of experience and a little bit of the language, I walked amongst the people, shaking hands with some of the women and talking to whoever would look me in the eye without running away. I even spotted someone with a t-shirt that read “I Need A Hug” and insisted that I do as her t-shirt said and give her a hug, which she allowed, much to the amusement of everyone watching! The second stop was Tekin, one of our more tricky strips to land at and the location of a successful High School which was founded by a single missionary lady who still works at the school, training the teachers. Here we met Paul flying the C208 Caravan based in Wewak and the 3 pilots started talking about their beloved aircraft whilst the agent, Patrick, ran around really busy, arranging the different passengers for both planes. The third stop was Rumginae, which is a base where we have two pilot families living, the Neufeld and the Eatwells. Both wereaway at the time, the Eatwells because their C208 Caravan was in Maintenance in Australia, and the Neufelds on sick-leave, but we’re looking forward to both families returning within the next week or so. As they were away, Rick had been covering for a few weeks, but his GA8 Airvan had a maintenance issue. We had to drop off an Engineer to fix the Airvan so Rick could fly it back to Hagen before he left the country the very next day! It’s very unusual for Hagen aircraft to go all the way out to Rumginae, but I made the most of the opportunity by using the bathroom in the Neufeld’s house! The fourth stop was Tabubil, the MAF base closest to Telefomin and which Ryan flies out of several days each week. The staff there are used to me visiting from Telefomin, so they were very surprised to find me on the Hagen plane! Eventually, after a very long day of flying (for me) we reached Telefomin and I was very pleased to be going home, especially as Ryan was off sick that day with a bad cold. It was much more of an adventure than I’d expected, but it got me home to our little house in the mountains and gave me the opportunity to appreciate this beautiful country in which we have the privilege of working, and to meet some of the people who we have the privilege to serve.

[yellowshiv]

Living & Working at an Outstation! On Thursday Ryan ran out of duty hours and wasn’t able to fly (Legal rules about max no. of hours pilots can fly/work), so he could have stayed home and rested on the sofa, like Ray the dog does most days, or he could have sat on the veranda with a book enjoying our view of the mountains, but he didn’t! Instead Ryan spent the day installing a new stove in our neighbours’ house, a new washing machine in ours (this one is water and energy efficient), installing the fittings and re-routing the drain pipes for the new water tank (so we don’t run out in the dry season), doing some gardening and even putting up a new sign at the Base, which Eugene, one of the Senior Traffic Officers, was very impressed with. Just normal life living on a remote Outstation, there are always things which need to be done and having a farm boy around to do them is awfully useful!

[yellowshiv]

Donations from Mt Hagen. This morning I (Shiv) went to Queen’s Park in Mt Hagen to see local Churches, Schools, community groups and individuals donate food and clothing for those affected by the earthquakes. Pictured are some local school kids with some of the donated cabbages, sweet potatoes, clothes and blankets. We will be flying these donations to the affected areas tomorrow and next week and I have had the privilege of arranging these flights as a part of the MAF Disaster Relief team whilst we are in Mt Hagen. It was humbling to see local people, who have very little themselves, giving a few clothes, a few cabbages from their garden, whatever they can spare, to bless those bush people who have even less than them. I felt like I was was watching the widow at the temple from the story in the bible, Luke 21 v 1-4: “As Jesus looked up, he saw... a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. ‘Truly I tell you,’ he said, ‘this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’” ‭‭