Naomi's 2nd Birthday

Last weekend we celebrated Naomi's second birthday. It was the first of many family birthday's that we will celebrate here in Tanzania. Although we had anticipated our container to have arrived by the time her birthday came round (as there were a couple of presents on it!) we still had a lot of fun celebrating!

On the Friday, Naomi 'helped' Jenny decorate a little cake for a celebration she had with her friends. Can you spot the pink icing all around her cheeky chops?

There is usually a playdate with other little people who are all roughly the same age as her every Friday morning. So we made it a birthday celebration too! She had lots of fun, playing with her friends, eating treats and blowing out the candle on her cake and getting some little pressies as well!

Her birthday was on the Monday but so that we got to celebrate as a family as well we had cake and pressies on the Sunday afternoon with our neighbours, whose little girl is Naomi's best friend. 

It has been a family tradition since Abigail's first birthday that both the adults in the family take part in making and decorating the girls birthday cakes. So Jenny made the cake and icing and Mark decorated it ... a giant pink cupcake, which she loved! In fact, if you mention the word 'birthday' to Naomi right now, her response is a very enthusiastic 'PINK CAKE', of which she was lucky enough to have two!! 

Then it was time for more pressies. We had collected together a few things here in Dodoma and then there were also various parcels that had arrived from all over the world from friends and family! Abigail loved being in on all the secrets of the presents and helping wrap them which was lovely to see.

The one pictured below was all the way from a friend of ours who is working in Vietnam. We've joked about how to write customs forms so that they sail through the Tanzanian postal system untouched ... this is a top tip, write it in another language!

Naomi had lots of fun opening her pressies and playing with them, with both her big sister and best buddy!

All that was left to do on her actual birthday was another family tradition in our house, a birthday height measurement ...

It has been suggested that if you take your height at the age of two and double it, you get a rough guesstimate of your fully grown height. Naomi is currently looking to be 5' 5" ... the same height as her mummy! (Abigail is going to be almost 6' if the theory proves true) So catch up with our blog again in another 20 years and see if it all works out!

All in all it was a fun weekend of birthday-ness that all of us but especially Naomi seemed to really enjoy. 

Hangar Work

We have been here two months now, so thought it was time to write a little about what I (Mark) have been doing in the hangar.

Pretty much from day one, they have got me working hard. There always seems to be an aircraft coming in for an inspection or repair which has kept me on my toes. Then there is learning all the new ways MAF do paperwork, research and computer programes compared to MMS Aviation.

One nice programe they have here is called WASP which stands for Web-based AMO Support Package. In short, it contains all the parts we have in stock, allows us to put in requests for new parts, has the work orders for aircraft coming in, and has all tasks and snags recorded on that aircraft that needs to be completed.

Here at MAF-TZ (Mission Aviation Fellowship - Tanzania) we have four aircraft (2 Cessna 206's and 2 Cessna 208's) that belong to us and that we maintain. We also have a Cessna 206 on loan from SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) in Kenya. Then we have another 9 aircraft that we maintain for different paying customers. At the height of the tourist season, we sometimes see the same aircraft in every two weeks for its 50hr inspection.

Customers aircraft being weighed.

So far I have worked on 8 of these aircraft doing things from simple snags that the pilot has highlighted, to having to do a 'Hot Section Inspection' of a Turbine engine because I found a crack whilst doing a borescope inspection.

The small crack that I found.

The engine split in two.

The 'Hot' Section

At this moment in the hangar, there is a Cessna 208 finally being re-assembled after getting a replacement combustion liner, radar and gyro. A Cessna 206 has been dis-assembled, stripped and repaired and is now in the process of being painted. Another Cessna 206 is due in for its 50hr. Lastly, we have yet another Cessna 206 that sustained some damage to its stabilizer and elevator, so we're waiting on the powers on high to make a decision as to what direction we will go forward ... repair ourselves (some twist damage, so difficult to repair correctly without a jig) or purchase a new set from the States (costly).

Anyway, that will do for now. Judging by the amount of work that I have been doing, I won't be bored or stuck doing the same job day in and day out, and my training/experience from MMS Aviation has definitely come in handy many times already.

So it is time to say it again ... if you would love to work on aircraft, helping missions and people in remote areas, but are not already an aircraft engineer ... get in touch with MAF UK and ask about the partnership with MMS Aviation. If I can become a licensed Airframe & Powerplant Engineer in three years, then I'm sure you can too!