Leaving Bobo Dioulasso airport was just as easy as arriving at it. Our hosts drove us out, arriving a little after 9 in the morning, and we very swiftly passed through security in the once again empty private terminal. While Sophia’s medical friends waited in the lounge, we headed for the tower for the formalities. After a few fruitless minutes trying to gain entry into the locked building, someone pointed out that there was a new tower a few hundred…
Tuesday morning Sophia and I split up for efficiency. We took a taxi from the hotel that first dropped her at the hospital with the equipment to be donated to local hospitals. From there, it took me and the baggage to the airport to organise payment, flight plan, and fuel. Given how easy things were when arriving at the airport, I was not expecting much bureaucracy when leaving, and thankfully I was proved right. On arrival I was taken straight…
Betty had done a superb job of putting together a program of activities for our visit. Our first stop was a local girl’s secondary school, where summer school was in session. The students, 150 or so girls from age 10 to around 13, were assembled around a large open air stage in the school yard and Sophia was presented with a megaphone to deliver a motivational speech about the project, and the importance of female education. A cameraman from the…
Our friends from the airport showed up just 30 minutes late, not bad going. While waiting I was treated to the spectacle of a retired English gentlemen being berated by his young Gambian “companion”; apparently he was leaving, and she did not consider that she had been adequately compensated for her companionship. Sophia, meanwhile, was being accused of food theft by the lady guarding the breakfast buffet for having the temerity to try and carry her coffee and slice of…
The Onomo hotel turned out to be a very different experience to the Sahara Regency in Dakhla where one would have been unsurprised to find bullet holes in the hallway and the bedroom chair was a folding camping one. This new hotel was modern, air conditioned, and clean and a very comfortable place to spend a few nights. After an excellent breakfast we met up with the driver that Sophia, through befriending one of the waiters, had organised for the…
Morocco has a series of VFR routes between airports, with reporting points that were not on any of the charts that we had on board. Searching online reveals no availability of Moroccan VFR charts, or information about these routes. We asked for, and were given, the GPS coordinates of the points for our first leg; there was some initial confusion until we realised they were giving us degrees, minutes, seconds while we though we were being given decimal degrees. Nonetheless,…
An overcast sky in the morning stopped us feeling too bad about being earth-bound for the time being. The breakfast at the Holiday Inn Express was surprisingly good, and with our hunger satisfied and clutching our newly purchased tools we took the shuttle bus back to the airport. Servisair met us once again and led us through to security, where we hit the first problem of the day. The men at security were adamant that our dangerous tools would not…
Before setting off on the trip, there would be a bit of time in Europe to prepare. I had to collect the aircraft from Belgium and ferry it to the UK, where we’d spend a few days getting ready. We’d meet at Cranfield airport two days in advance of setting off south where the main sponsors, Clearblue, would hold an event, and we could spend time with the families before departure. I arrived in Belgium a couple of days early,…
Unsurprisingly, there are significant challenges when planning this kind of flight. The first is the choice of aircraft; the limited availability of AVGAS cuts out 99% of the piston general aviation fleet. We ended up leasing a Cessna 182 that had been converted to an aero-diesel engine produced by SMA – this runs on jet fuel, which is available almost anywhere. It comes with the added advantage of better fuel economy leading directly to increased range. The number of different…