Dabia

This week, Andrew has been busy building his flying hours and has now achieved the required 12 hours of supervised flying. This means that he will be flying solo as a MAF pilot next week.
The days can be long and hot for the MAF pilot. On his working days this week, Andrew left Dodoma early in the morning and flew out with his colleagues to remote villages where MAF partners carry out their work. Andrew waited on the ground until the work was completed at the end of the day, before flying the partners back to Dodoma.
Despite the wait in the relentless heat of the African sun, the days are full of interest. Here are a few photos from Andrew's flights on Thursday of this week, in the village of Dabia, where MAF's role was to bring a medical team and a group of evangelists. This is a regular medical safari, which happens in Dabia on the first Wednesday of each month.

Just arrived in Dabia; the team of evangelists come to work among the people while the medical team carries out its work:


The local children appear very happy to see the evangelists and enjoy a few games with them near the MAF plane


The village church from the outside...


...and the inside


The village water supply- the spring, where the young girls fetch the water for their families, as it trickles down between the rocks:


The medical team sets up a Mother and Baby clinic under the trees near the few houses which make up the remote village. Medicines are dispensed under one tree, where a temporary "pharmacy" is set up.
In this photo, the scales are hung on another tree and a "kanga" (a typically Tanzanian piece of material) is used for the babies to lie in. As you can see, many mothers from the surrounding area brought their babies to be weighed and checked, and their babies weight was entered on a chart (held by the man on the right-hand side).