The first flight of the day was out to Pagil for Christian Mission for Development with a load of 17 School in a Box kits plus some tarpaulins. While unloading the metal boxes (40kg each!) from the back of the aeroplane I was bitten by a tsetse fly, which is rather uncomfortable. Unfortunately the one that bit me was not alone. I think I provided some amusement to the locals when I climbed into the cockpit to prepare for departure and sat for quite some time trying to swat as many of the tsetse flies as possible before starting up.
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| The ones that didn't get away |
From Pagil I went to Gorwai to collect some more freight and then on to Jiech. In Jiech I collected one lady and eight children for the flight back to Juba. The airstrip in Jiech was quite wet, thanks to rain a couple of days ago, and I came very close to getting stuck in the mud while I was backtracking the runway before departure. Thankfully there was a small dry patch at the end of the runway which meant I could turn around without getting stuck and we continued back to Juba with a rather muddy plane.
My second rotation was to Tonj for Don Bosco and I carried 5 passengers and 450kg of freight, mostly food. Although the weather was building up by the afternoon, I was able to divert around the thunderstorms and the flight was pleasantly uneventful.
