Flight Day

Every other Thursday we have a flight day in which we receive supplies that we need from Nairobi, Kenya. The day begins at about 5am for me as it is necessary for someone to go and check the airstrip and make sure that it is landable. During the rainy season our dirt airstrip can be quite muddy and we don't want the plane to get stuck or have other trouble on our airstrip. So, at 5am I get up and go to check the strip and then give an update to our pilots in Kenya letting them know how it looks. This week it started to rain at about 6am after I had checked the strip so someone had to go out again and check it at 10:30 after the rain had stopped to make sure that it was still ok. The airstrip is only about 2km away but it takes at least 20 minutes to get there because of the road, which has many large mud hole in it. Two weeks ago we actually got stuck on our way to the airstrip which caused some stress on our part. This week we didn't have any trouble getting there and the plane arrived at about 1pm. Flight day is always kind of exciting because people are coming and going from breaks and we get new food and supplies. It can also be somewhat stressful as communication over the radio with the pilots can be frustrating. We also have to take fuel to the plane on most flight days and so it takes a lot of effort to load up the fuel. The two pictures are of loading up the fuel at our compound and then fueling the plane at the airstrip. (I've also added a picture of the tank stand that I built for our water collection. The tank holds 1000ltrs and it only took about 3 rains to fill it. I then put a runoff pipe into another large tank and it was full a couple of days later. When it rains it pores!!)