Midsummer!

Glad midsommar till alla Scandinavian folk! I’m not sure that any other people group celebrate mid summer quite as well.... we certainly appreciated the land of the midnight sun this time last year with many, many long and bright evenings – here its dark pretty much 7pm til 7am all the year round where evenings may feel very long but then so is the summer: year round :o)

Last night we celebrated/sent off our festive Finnish friends, not out of Africa but up north to Arusha where Jarkko with newly license will join Kerstein as pilots to serve MAF’s new operational base.

Meanwhile last week we were sending off out of Africa several marvellous MAF families, to various nations – South Sudan, The Netherlands, Uganda.... we thought that taking them out of the office for their exit interviews might just be less painful with these sorts of views:

We did indeed enjoy a long weekend at the beach, a day or two to unwind, reflect and appreciate the sea (hadn't realised how much we had missed the waves)...

Moonlight...

Breakfast...

before a swim to discover a deserted island!

We shared our beautiful surroundings with two (loud) wedding parties!

With one set of interviews over, there were more to come, back in Dodoma; we had the wonderful opportunity to avoid 8 hours bus ride, flying on one of MAF’s tiny 206 aircraft: i sat in the co-pilots seat, Jez was the only passenger!

Our last blog showed our “power team” here in Dodoma who have this week to finish their fabulous work of upgrading the avionics on our 208 Caravan to look something like this, taken on a similar model, belonging to Flightlink - one of the country's national carriers, available for commercial flights for those able to afford a ticket:

We had the opportunity to pray for/see this beautiful nation from a different perspective:

Early morning mist (and smog) over Dar es Salaam

Outskirts of Dodoma:

Nearly home... here are some local landmarks seen from the air:

Main road:

Roundabout into town:

Touchdown, with one of the 3 local mosques opposite us

Outside the MAF hanger.... shows H-OPE, the 208 our "power team" are finishing/sending out to Liberia

An early morning flight, a quick stroll across the runway, straight from the plane and into the office for a full day..... writing contracts, arranging interviews (exit and recruitment) and organising leaving do's! They were right, colleagues here told us it was getting cooler: only 25 degrees at touchdown by 8.30am in the morning!
Happy midsummer!

See you next week - God bless this next one!
Love from us slightly-less-pasty-faces
J&C xx