Yesterday morning I was all set to take 2 passengers and 600kg of freight to Pochala, on the Ethiopian border, for the Presbyterian Church (USA), but then plans changes a little.
We received a request from Medair early in the morning to collect a sick member of their team from Leer, in the north, and bring them down to Juba so that they could travel on to Nairobi for medical care. We asked the Presbyterian Church passengers, who were already at the airport checking in to go to Pochala, if they would be prepared to delay their flight by four or five hours so that we could help Medair with the medevac. Graciously, the passengers agreed to the delay and we were able to accept the Medair flight. The flight to Leer is just over 1.5 hours and I was accompanied by a Medair doctor who would assess the condition of the patient and look after him on the flight back to Juba.
On returning to Juba our dispatchers loaded up the 600kg of freight (mostly metal pipes and pump equipment) for Pochala and I met our two patient passengers. I was interested to hear that they were going to be manually drilling for water (down as deep as 39m apparently) to provide a water supply for a school which the organisation has built. If they are successful with the manual drilling it will mean the cost of a well could be as little as $1,500 compared to $15,000 or so using heavy drilling equipment.
