Thursday, and we return from a day in the interior having roasted in the hot sun and humidity – it was intense. My colleagues resembled lobsters by the end of the day.
I spent the day with the Kodiak, doing a first landing into an airstrip at Long Padi, a 535m strip at an elevation of 2600’. Having established that it was Kodiak friendly, the pilot, David Holsten, proceeded to load up 30kg sacks of rice in stages (well the villagers did the loading) and David did some test take offs and landings, slowly increasing the weight. Long Padi has had a good rice harvest, but the villagers of Long Layu, Paupan and Rungan are dangerously short of rice, their crops having been destroyed by a series of pests – rats, bats and worms. By the end of the day we’d transferred 860kg of rice from Long Padi to Long Layu. Once the word was out, those sacks of rice disappeared very rapidly in Long Layu, various members of the villages arriving on motorbikes or with wheelbarrows to transport the rice home.
After that we headed to another village close by, where Dave and his family have established a strong friendship with a local family, and where a late lunch of local produce awaited us. By then the clouds had gathered and the rain came down, making it a little more difficult to interview people – our hostess, the village pastor and another representative from the village – with the rattle of heavy rain on the corrugated roof. However, it was interesting to see how rapidly the storm clouds gathered following a blazing hot day – something pilots have to allow for and work around if they’ve not exited the interior early enough.
The evening saw all the international couples out at a local Chinese restaurant for dinner and then worship, prayer and Bible study (on this occasion, a filmed seminar on "Laughing Your Way to a Healthy Marriage"). This team is particularly good at an adapted ‘Mexican wave’. All was calm and merry when what someone had said was a shrew snuck out from under the air-conditioning unit. In fact it was a rat, and it proceeded to run under the chairs down one side of the table - (where probably about 10-15 people were sitting) – so started a rapid wave motion from top to bottom of the table, with much commotion. The rat is now resting in peace.
That’s all for now.
Stephanie
