Woman of Worth Patricia Mawuli

She literally walked out of the bush, from her mud and thatch home, just six years ago, and asked for a job at Kpong Airfield. Starting by clearing trees, digging out roots and stones in order to hand carve runways for the light aircraft at Kpong, she went on to build several aircraft and become the first woman in the world to receive iRMT certification for working on Rotax Aircraft Engines. That is not the only first she has up her overalls sleeve! She was the first woman to be issued the Ghana National Pilots licence and is also the first female flying instructor at Kpong Airfield. She has not only built aircraft - she has also flown one around Ghana!

Patricia is a volunteer pilot with Medicine on the Move, providing health education materials by air to rural communities and the founder and Principal of the AvTech Academy, teaching young women from the rural communities in engineering, aviation, rural airfield management and health matters. Patricia teaches in the workshops as well as in the sky. She is at home with a welding hood on as she is with a headset! in the cockpit.

 Patricia is dedicated to providing opportunities for young rural women who have ability, determination and character, but often lack the resources to step out and step up. Patricia makes it clear that she has had to work hard, very hard, to get to where she is - and she has not stopped - she has plans to fly one of the planes she has built to Germany!

Patricia started with nothing but her own dreams and ambitions. With no money to invest, she invested her hard work, sweat, tears and perseverance That self-investment has paid off. As she says 'I have discovered that the difference between success and failure is hard work and determination' - and she should know - for she has broken the mould and set a trail in the sky for other young women to follow towards their individual successes.

Student becomes teacher

Patricia takes the baton over on more and more of the teaching at Kpong Airfield. This morning she
took five young people flying, and this afternoon she is going over the theory behind flight.

Using flight and aviation as a motivational medium for Science Technology Mathematics and Engineering is the basis of how we trian our youngsters at Kpong.

The wonderful thing is that the airfield has such a range of activities and skills that help us to create rounded youngsters.

Some people get confused by thinking that our purpose is to train young people as pilots. That is only a bonus. The primary aim is to give them a better outlook on life, personal confidence, intellectual growth, environmental responsibility, better understanding of health matters, a maintenance mentality and above all the steps towards independence.

If a youngster demonstrates the personal responsibility and potential we are prepared to support them to towards the Ghana National Licence.

For many achieving that licence may be just a challenge and for some it may not be suitable. All the same just a few hours of flight experience can change a persons outlook on so many things and aspects of their lives.

We are always going to be limited in what we can achieve, and the youngsters are limited by their own efforts, attitudes and preparedness to make the necessary efforts and sacrifices to reach their goal.

It is a privilege to work with many of these youngsters and a greater pleasure to see that our investment in training Patricia has resulted in such an able and inspirational leader for current and future programmes.

The Seagull

You may have read the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. If you haven't, then you really have missed out on one hour of the most amazing reading on the planet. The story is one about standing up and being different, doing things that are not 'everyday' for a seagull. It has many analogies to our everyday lives and most people find a personally touching moment or two in reading it. Part of the story is about a seagull called 'Kirk Maynard Seagull', a disabled seagull with damaged wings that learns to fly. For me, and others who know what we do in the bush, the story of 'Kirk Maynard' reminds us of Lydia. In fact, Lydia herself loves the book, given to our library by Onni and Angelika earlier this year.

When reading the book, young Ghanaians struggle to grasp 'what a seagull is', since most of them have never seen one. Therefore, when we stopped in the car park of Walmart in Oshkosh last week and a seagull landed next to the car, the excitement amongst Patricia and Lydia was in-containable. Opening the doors of Clay's van (the Webmaster), cameras in hand, two young women ran across the hot tarmacked surface, dodging trolleys, just to get a closer look and hoping for a picture of this 'rare' bird.

Passers by stared and smiled, wondering if this was a precursor to a TV reality show wondering what on earth was going on. For the 'seagull watchers' it was a moment of pleasure, the coming to life of the images in a book that has touched their lives in many ways.

Flying high at AirVenture 2012

Three MoM volunteers have spent the week at Oshkosh, not fund raising, but raising awareness, sharing with the supporting organisations of the operations at Kpong, and meeting with those who have followed our progress.  This trip and all the practical arrangements and scheduling was only made possible by the kind support of several of you reading this, and we thank you all.  Lydia Wetsi - the young woman of small stature and a big story came too, after long trail of paperwork for passport and visa!  'Ringmaster and web-lord', Clay made sure we were all where we were meant to be!  Lydia was met by many people who commented on how her story inspired them - an a amazing knock on effect of the operations in Ghana.  One gentleman with an incurable disease came specially to have his picture taken with Lydia 'You are such an inspiration to me' he said, adding 'I have read all about you and watched the videos with you in - I am very proud of you!'  It is wonderful for Lydia to pay back some inspiration to those in the developed world who have been instrumental in her positive story.  Such feedback is also a massive boost to her development, and a vote of confidence in the approach and outcomes of our operations. We all loved meeting those who came up and told us 'I read about you!'.... it was very special.

Once again, we were based at the Zenith Booth, the company who provides the 'plans and kit parts' of the aircraf that we build and use.

Whilst at Oshkosh Lydia met with her 'heroine', Jessica Cox, the only certified pilot without arms in the world, and if that were not enough, they were together with the amazing Melissa and Rex Pemberton, regulars at Kpong Airfield, role models, mentors and supportive advocates of the outreach and training programmes that we are involved in.

During a walk between two appointments, Lydia had the opportunity to board a C17 Globemaster and chat with medical aviation experts who operate at the top end of the scale in the cavernous belly of the disaster theatre aircraft - it provided an inspiration to all of as toeards the long-term aim of a flying ambulance, at some point in the future...

During the Able Flight awards, a special programme for disabled pilots in the USA that we attended, the world famous Tuskegee  Airmen representative spotted the smile and attentiveness of this young african aviator with a desire to share health education to her people, and chased after her to present a Tuskegee Airmen (famous for the Red Tails in WWII) T shirt.  These pilots struggled against the odds, and we shared the commonalities of challenge in developmental aviation and the development of the 'red tails'.




To top it all off, in this week of being amazed at what aviation can do in so many realms, we all met with Karlene Petit, author of the novel 'Flight for Control', which has a passing mention of MoM in the story line.  That and some great interviews with AOPA and the EAA, left us all exhausted.

One thing that became clear to all of us on this trip is that 'raising awareness' is more important than we ever realised.  If we missed you, we are sorry. If we met for the first time, it was a pleasure to get to know you.  If we met up again, we were happy to enjoy the 'family reunion'.  All of you are special, and we look forward to welcoming you to Kpong Airfeld, receiving a mail from you, or simply knowing that you are out there, reading about us, and supporting us quietly as we strive to change 'Lives, one flight at a time....'

On behalf of the whole team, THANK YOU!

9G ZAF.. Upgrade time

Submitted by Capt Yaw

Work is under way to improve 9G ZAF, also known as 'the mission aircraft'. We are working on a number of improvement and hope to share with you very soon the new specifications of our lead aircraft for aerial supply work. As part of the upgrade we are installing many more sensors - however, not all sensors come with 'Africa in mind' and therefore specific protective solutions need to be developed. (This is just phase one of a number of planned improvement to our operational potential).

For the new pressure/temp sensor we are installing, we all felt that a 'cage' would be necessary to protect the 'business end' from insects and other critters (spiders are particularly troublesome with such sensors)! A few off the wall ideas were thrown around and then Patricia asked to be given a completely free hand to design and develop the sensor cage. We like to give people a free hand where practical and the ability to explore their potential, and gave her the go ahead. A couple of hours later she produced an excellent, functional and elegant solution. After inspection and appropriate testing it was permitted to be installed in the aircraft.
Well done Patricia!

Working together for disease prevention

Submitted by Michaela Sholes
MoM, AvTech, and WAASPS really do have a great bunch of folks here. We're all very different, have our individual quirks, but at the end of the day, we come together and make it all work, even when the assignment is something less than delightful! Ben and I have been preparing the next round of information packets for the upcoming bag drop later this week and needed the AvTech girls to help finish it! One of the things we do in each packet is to include a MoM-developed poster with images we've taken on various health topics, and this week was Schistosomiasis (try to say THAT 3 times fast!). Patricia and Lydia helped model correct preparation of the SODIS method of water disinfection, such as cleaning the bottles, filtering them of debris, and shaking them for 20 seconds. Even though the girls were on holiday, they pitched in with a great spirit to help us take some Schistosomiasis-related photos. I'm sure they were mortified that onlookers were staring as we took pictures of human waste just a short distance from the lake's edge (one of the ways Schisto is transmitted is when infected waste gets into a water source where the snails live), but they were good sports! They modeled good behaviors to help prevent the disease and I think we're going to have great posters thanks to their help!

Fueling the machine.... quite literally.

Preparing for a drop run is quite interesting.  The flight team are getting the plane ready, the Health Education team getting the drops ready... then you need to get more bags (and different sizes, we are hoping to try some A3 drops soon too)... then there is the fuel for the aircraft - which is not available locally - fuel sourcing is always a half day affair - empty the steel drums, load them in the truck, hope that when you get to the station the fuel is there, then bring it back - fuel cleanliness as important as community hygiene!  We dust off the top of the drums prior to filling, check the drum seals and re-check and re-dust-off before unloading.  Fuel is then filtered into  20l drums, then filtered into the plane, then the plane has finger filters, in-line filters, gascolators (water separators with a filter screen) and pump filters before that fuel reaches the cylinders.  Contamination is easy to get, and so the team is working non-stop to beat the environmental challenges of reaching the communities with other environmental challenges in a timely, reliable, repeatable and sustainable manner. 

Like in a ballet, there are many involved, the sound, lighting, orchestra, scenery movers, prompters, conductor and more, all made perfect by the presence of the audience - all made possible by the so called 'Angels' who fund the development of the production until it can stand on its own 'two-shows-daily'; likewise we have our little Tower radio operators, aircraft engineers, pilots, catering, grounds staff (runway mowing and safety areas), marker board making (yes we make our own marker boards for the runway, and replace them regularly), health ed team, telephone team, accounts, communities in need, all funded by 'Angels' such as you, until we can fly on our own two wings, multiple missions per week.

We are not there yet, but with your help we are closer to a self-sustaining aviation based health outreach solution - one that has 'contamination control' and the associated health benefits at its very heart!

IF you would like to sponsor a village drop please visit:  http://www.medicineonthemove.org/index.php/projects/etche

Working together to make it all happen

Submitted by Michaela Sholes

A few days ago, the girls gave a motivational talk about AvTech and aviation to a Girls' Camp in Accra. The group was so inspired by what they heard, that they then asked if they could make a visit from Accra to the airfield to see the girls in action. As you can see, they were in high spirits when they arrived onsite and Juliet did a fantastic job leading them to a Safety in Aviation demonstration. Each of the girls worked together to instruct the group about checks when flying, F.O.D, and the different types of aircraft. Patricia led the group in a F.O.D. walk so the kids could practice identifying items that do not belong on the runway. The girls also helped Ben give a health talk on Schistosomiasis and taught the hand-washing song to encourage healthy practices.

Experiences like these remind us of how important each piece of this organization is...WAASPS provided the planes that the kids enjoy learning about, AvTech provided motivation to others through the encouragement of their own training, and the AvTech girls are given a health-based perspective through training from MoM that is then able to be passed on to others. We all work together to achieve mutual goals and each day, we have the opportunity to make an impact.