MAF Youth magazine #15

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An island christmas Photos Mark and Kelly Hewes

It’s strange to think that there could be inhabited islands within a landlocked country like Uganda. But it’s not so strange when you consider how massive Lake Victoria is!

The travelling evangelist Sam Tsapwe is an evangelist who has a deep concern and love for the island communities.

Lake Victoria borders Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan and is 68,00sq km in size – only slightly smaller than the Republic of Ireland. It’s also home to the Ssese Islands.

Island life The Ssese islanders rely heavily on fishing for food and money but, because of strict laws, many have given up the trade.

Apart from humans, monkeys are one of the main creatures living on the island.

Unfortunately, their presence discourages farming because the monkeys end up harvesting the crops before the people can.

So, most of the groceries needed by the inhabitants have to be shipped over from the mainland, making the Ssese Islands an expensive place to live. Because of the cost of travel, it’s also an expensive place to get around.

So it’s no wonder that many Ssese Island communities suffer from a sense of hopelessness and, because of this, spend much of their money on alcohol. Life for the Ssese islanders is pretty hard.

Making good use of MAF flights, Sam and his team regularly visit the Ssese Islands to see how the people are doing and bring the story of Jesus to life through film.

Sam and his team also set up dental clinics to provide the communities with free healthcare — he’s an all-round top bloke!

200 Christmas dinners in flight Last Christmas, instead of loading our plane with the usual generator, projector and screen, Sam brought something different: 80kg of rice,

Main // Joey fitting an HF radio antenna in Guasa Left // Sam Tsapwe at Buyange island Top-right // Sam Tsapwe greets children at Bukasa airstrip Right // Women decorating for a Christmas party on Buyange Island Bottom-right // Dancers perform at church on Buyange Island

20kg of beef, tomatoes, onions, spices and a whole bunch of soft drinks.

For the islanders, fizzy drinks are a rare treat in themselves, so he knew they’d be well received.

The idea was to get ten of the little churches from the various islands together and throw one humungous Christmas party!

‘Gatherings like this are important for the people because they provide something that gives them hope,’ Sam explains.

How to get there — the quick way The destination, Buyunge Island, normally requires a gruelling eight-hour journey. But thanks to MAF, a short 16-minute flight enabled Sam and his team to reach Bukasa and, from there, to travel to Buyunge Island by boat.

As soon as Sam arrived, he saw that an eager crowd had already gathered for the festive shindig!

A Christmas party — Ssese Island style!

‘We had different churches presenting songs with drums and dancing.

Then we had a time of praise and worship, sharing from the Bible, praying for people, then eating — quite a bit of eating! There was also a birthday cake for Jesus!’ smiles Sam. The feast was enough to fuel the 200-strong crowd to celebrate late into the night! The whole event was an amazing success and a beautiful opportunity for the islanders to unite in celebrating the hope Christmas brings.

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WHEN MAF YOUTH M E T //

John Woodberry Photos Anthony Cece and Paul O'Brien

‘Disaster Response Officer’ — what does that involve?

My role is to make sure MAF is prepared for when a disaster happens, and to ensure that we’re able to respond rapidly, effectively and impactfully, using the skills MAF brings.

What is a disaster and how does MAF help?

A disaster can be an earthquake, hurricane, cyclone, war, famine, Ebola outbreak, or something like that.

What MAF does is to provide remote flight support, communications or logistics — getting the right people and the right cargo to the right place at the right time.

How do you keep on top of what’s going on around the world?

We pay attention to what’s going on in the news and to what’s happening on different disaster websites.

We’re connected with other groups that work in disaster response as well, and we share information. We may even partner together when a disaster occurs.

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We also get critical information from MAF programmes. Sometimes you hear something in the news but you’re not sure of the scale of the disaster.

How is MAF prepared to respond?

We do a lot of preparation before any disaster, but it’s not like we have a fire station with ten planes waiting for a bell to go off!

What MAF has is a core disaster response team involving people who are already part of MAF programmes globally. We also have money and equipment set aside, so we can act rapidly when disaster strikes.

We can have people moving within 24 hours if we decide to trigger a response. am

aster Response Te

Some of MAF's Dis

What skills are important to a disaster response (DR) team member?

They need to have the right personality to work in a high stress, low sleep and constantly changing environment.

Someone who brings solutions to the table, not more stress.

They also need to have a high skill set, whether in aviation, administration, communications or logistics, and be able to do it well enough so that, even in the midst of the stress, they can set up a good system.

They also need to be comfortable making decisions with only 65% of the information they’d like.

When does a disaster response stop being a disaster response?

Typically, a disaster response finishes after three months, but it really depends on the disaster. Sometimes the needs are met within three weeks. With other disasters, because the area is so remote and the needs are so great, it might take a year.

You have to figure out one to three months into a response what the end is likely to look like. If there’s a programme there already, are we going to transition back again? If there wasn’t one before, are we going to start a new one?

What do you think is the greatest challenge with DR? The greatest challenge is coming into a situation and not really knowing how the operation is going to be set up.

We know what MAF does well, we know the skill sets of people on our team, but you’re going into a new environment or situation, with new challenges and new needs — all of which can change over time.

What’s the most rewarding part of the job?

I believe strongly that God has given me certain gifts. He gave me these gifts for a reason, so being able to use them in a way that impacts and serves people is the most rewarding thing for me.

How does the team handle the emotional side of DR? Stressful environments can cause one of two extremes in people. They can either get so disturbed by the trauma that they can’t operate, or they can become ‘Mr Robot’ and tune the emotional side out.

You have to engage with the emotion, with the story, but also not get so involved in the trauma that you can’t do a technical skill well.

So, you get people on the disaster response team who are good at managing their emotions because that’s what’s needed for more people to be helped. But if they sense themselves becoming ‘Mr Robot’, they have to adjust.

You have to keep yourself somewhere in the middle!

What’s in your DR ‘go kit’?

A water filter that allows you to take water out of a ditch and drink it safely.

‘Clif Bars’ – which you can live off for days. I’ll also bring backpacking food.

A bug hut, which is like a mosquito net in a tent structure.

Those are the things I always have in my ‘go kit’!

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JAYAPURA // PAPUA

PHOTO MARK & KELLY HEWES

UA P A P F A M FROM

MIRACULOUS MEDEV ‘What’s the most interesting thing you’ve had happen?’ MAF Youth-er Deborah Westley asked MAF Pilot Dave Forney. Dave, who’s been with MAF for 13 years — first in Indonesia, now Uganda — responds.

A call for help We did a lot of medical emergency evacuations (medevacs) when I was in Indonesia.

Every pilot does several medevacs a week so there are lots of interesting stories, but one particularly stands out.

While flying out to scheduled villages, we’d often get a call on the radio saying, ‘Someone is dying’, ‘Someone has fallen out of a tree’ or ‘Someone has been bitten by a snake’. We would then change course and pick the patient up right away.

A terrible injury I was called to one village to pick up a young girl whose hair had been caught in a machine that takes the husks off rice. The claws inside had cut her face pretty badly.

She wasn’t in good shape and, although her condition wasn’t life-threatening, she needed to get to a hospital.

‘Stop the plane!’

I loaded her into the plane along with her mother and was getting ready to start the aircraft when some guys came running out of the jungle shouting, ‘Stop the plane!’

I opened the door, asked what the problem was, and one of the men said there was a lady who’d been in labour for 1½ days and was likely to die if she didn’t get medical help.

Main // MAF pilot Dave Forney inspects propeller at Kalongo airstrip Bauble // MAF Youth-er Deborah

A fearful dilemma It was nearly the end of the day, I’d been flying long enough to know how the weather works in the jungle and could see huge thunderstorms building up.

My fear was that, if I waited too long, I’d be stuck where I was until the following morning.

The young girl, who was in a lot of pain from her facial injuries, could easily survive until the next day, but the pregnant woman wouldn’t. So I decided to wait for the other patient to arrive.

Patient pilots and pain-filled patients It took about an hour for the woman to be carried through the jungle from a village that didn’t have an airstrip.

Eventually, with the back seats removed from my small, six-seater Cessna 206, we ended up with two patients lying on the aircraft floor and the young girl’s mother accompanying them.

The pregnant woman, who had lost a lot of blood, was now unconscious.

VACS

Photo Mark and Kelly Hewes

‘Shut the plane down!’

I started the plane and had got it running, when I heard screaming coming from the back of the plane. I turned round and the now conscious lady was waving frantically.

‘Stop! Shut the plane down! The baby’s coming!’ she yelled. Right there in my plane, she was giving birth!

We carried her from the plane and placed her underneath the wing, where she proceeded to pop out a baby in about three minutes – super fast!

With the mother and child now unconscious, we carried them back to the plane.

Blue sky It’s really incredible that, although there had been a huge storm throughout the entire drama, there was still one hole of blue sky that had stayed

open the whole time. So, having started up the engine again, I flew out through

the hole and got everyone safely to hospital!

Crossed wires The last day we were able to fly before Christmas, I was getting ready to board some passengers when a very excited lady appeared with a baby boy. She had now recovered, and the baby was doing well.

‘I’m so glad to see you!’ I said, ‘What’s your baby’s name?’ But she replied, ‘What’s your name?’ The conversation took place in Indonesian, so I thought I’d used the wrong words and she’d misunderstood.

So, I said, ‘No, no. I’m asking, “What is your baby’s name?’’’ She said, ‘Yes, I know.

But what is your name?’

Maybe I wasn’t being clear, so I said, ‘Well, my name’s David. But I’m trying to find out what your baby’s name is.’

‘I’ve been waiting for three weeks,’ she said, then added, ‘my baby’s name is David.’

Then she asked, ‘What’s your surname?’

‘Forney,’ I answered, and she replied, ‘The baby’s name is David Forney.’

Not as bizarre as you’d think In Indonesian culture, children are often named after someone – or something – significant. So she’d obviously named her baby in honour of me, although I took the opportunity to explain that it wasn’t just me, it was a team effort.

But still, it was pretty exciting and, from then on, every time I flew to the village there’d be this little baby Dave Forney running around!

About half the medevacs we do are related to childbirth issues. Most of the other MAF pilots in Indonesia have had at least one, if not more, children named after them because of a medevac.

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MAF Youth’s Becs Walker, has been out to Uganda to visit MAF’s programme and explore the amazing work they do with hundreds of isolated communities and refugees. Becs will tell us how she got on in our next magazine!

This Christmas we’ll have been visiting loads of primary schools across the country and telling them about our MAF Christmas Advent Adventure — a fun opportunity for children to journey with MAF as we fly to different countries, picking up weird and wonderful life-saving cargo on the way.

DO YOU WANT ONE FOR YOUR SIBLINGS?

Snap us your address Tell us how many you want

We’ll do the rest!

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pray, PrAY, pRay As Christmas kicks off, find some time to hang out with God and pray for the following:

Pray that those who survived the tsunami in Indonesia and escaped the typhoon in the Philippines will find hope, shelter and safety. Pray that God will enable them to rebuild their lives.

Ask God to give MAF’s Disaster Response Team wisdom as they work out how to continue helping these disaster struck nations and decide what the next step should be.

Finally, pray for the Ssese islands. Pray that the churches there will share God’s love with those struggling to find purpose and meaning.

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