Monday 10 October 2011

A Great Photo can remind one of when - A Jolly Jaunt from Juba to Pagak


Have you ever snapped a photograph that as far as your concerned is great, in fact if one was not so modest one might even declare it 'brilliant', catches the atmosphere, captures the moment, it may or may not be technically good - you just love it. Well...

I was in Pagak a little village near the Ethiopian border about 18 months ago, then Pagak was in Sudan now it is in South Sudan, they have not moved the country or village but.... , anyway being a border town both the Sudanese Pounds and Ethiopian Birr could be found working together in the little village shops. I had stayed overnight after dropping some passengers off, who were visiting some projects having flown in from Malakal and whilst getting ready next day to carry on, on my way I bumped into this friendly chap sitting quietly by his hut in the cool of the morning, he wore a delightful smile, as he pondered the day ahead and I felt the photo caught  the moment.

I was rather please in July to get a chance to go back to Pagak to drop off some medical supplies and a few other bits and pieces, when I had last landed it was hot and dusty, before I could land I had to chase off a football match that was enjoying the relatively smooth open ground.
Today all was quiet and the rains had not long been in the area, so whilst the day was warming it was still very pleasant. Alas it truly was a drop, load and go otherwise it would have been good to look for my pipe smoker but perhaps next time.


So here is a quick view of the latter flight 'A Jolly Jaunt from Juba to Pagak!

Thursday 6 October 2011

Recently I met Jim Le Huray MAF's newest Bush Pilot



Just before Christmas last year I was excited to meet our latest new MAF pilot fresh out from our training course in Nampa Idaho. He is working with MAF in Uganda, at Kajjansi our airstrip there, his name was Jim Le Huray and he has recently come out from Guernsey (land of the Guernsey Cow and the book Guernsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society) . He is a very popular pilot both with Local and International staff in Uganda and the Congo but he is a particular favourite  with our passengers, it was found by our Operations Manager Dave (who is from MAF US) that when Jim was operating single crew (as most of our aircraft are) due to his unusually light body weight we could load an extra 80kg of passengers and/or freight on to every flight which he flew. 
He was quite a character and on a number of occasions when he tangled with the military his sense of humour soon solved a tricky situation. 
He had a particular heart to work with very young people, perhaps because he is altitudinaly challenged himself. Also he was eager to do a bit of filming with me the results of which we made into a short film which was shown on a couple occasion earlier in the year and the results were well received and Jim felt we could perhaps make a couple of films that might appeal to younger folk. When we did some editing together we found quite amazingly that on film our voices sound remarkably similar. 
Well my son Jonathan offered to be the main editor of the first of two versions of the first film of The Adventures of Jim Le Huray and it is called Jim Le Huray Bush Pilot. Which we find attached below. There is also an 8 minute version which is very different. Enjoy ... do contact me on bryan.pill@maf-europe.org

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Who on Earth is MAF?



Several folk have recently asked who is this MAF, I keep mentioning in my Blogg, well it is not the Ministry of Ag and Fish but  - Mission Aviation fellowship. 
So it was a good question... so I fed my my son Jonathan numorous cups of coffee and gave him two briefs one is he had to teach me some of the finer points of using Final Cut Pro X (read how to use it) and the 2nd was to come up with a 90 secs short - this is MAF. He could use any of my film. He spent quite a time on it and drank lots of coffee and I thought this was  pretty good. What do you think? Please do comment.


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