Ghanzi and Back (the promised photo-story)

Last Saturday, I had some work to do on the vehicle that I'm trying to sell, so Stefan and came out to the hangar. He played around on his laptop while I worked on the Land Rover. In the afternoon, as we were getting ready to leave, I got a call for a mercy flight to Ghanzi. Stefan had been dying to go along on one of our flights, so I called Mark (the Director of Operations) and asked if it would be okay if he rode along. It was, and Stefan was tickled. Stefan is quite the amateur photographer, so his official duty during the flight was to take pictures (that's why this is a photo story). Since I was at the hangar already, I did the preflight inspection, filed the flight plan, and got the airplane all ready to go. Matt and the paramedics arrived pretty quickly, and when they did we all jumped in and blasted off. The patient was a pregnant woman who was having fits of some kind, and the doctors were worried that the fetus wouldn't be getting enough oxygen. It was a fairly uneventful trip to Ghanzi, flying into the setting sun. Ghanzi is in the far western part of Botswana, across the Central Kalahari that dominates the middle of the country. We arrived just before sunset, and the ambulance was waiting on us there. We quickly loaded the patient (who was luckily pretty light) and headed off before it could get dark enough for them to have to set up the portable runway lights. On the way back, Stefan got stuck on the little potty seat in the back and probably got a bit of a cramped neck from the lack of headspace, but he says it was worth it. It was worth it for me too, because I finally got some decent pictures of a full mercy flight without having to remember to bring my camera along. Enjoy the pics.