A Day in the Life of Pilot Jason Job – Timor Leste
Jason Job currently lives in Dili, Timor-Leste where he works with Mission Aviation Fellowship, along with his wife Kim and six year old son Sam. Jason is a pilot and Kim is a mum, Communications Officer and volunteers at a local disability centre. What is it actually like to be a MAF Pilot on the field? Jason recently recorded what a day in his life as a pilot looks like for us.
He writes: I arrive at work at 8:20am. I’m supposed to daily check the plane first thing when I arrive; Wings: present. Propeller: still on. Okay, my wife will tell me to let you know that it’s much more thorough than that, but instead, I get sidetracked by two Policemen sitting close to our office guarding the business jet parked in front of our hangar. I go and introduce myself and chat for a while. The local Timorese people are always willing to chat with any “Malae” or foreigner who is willing to try to converse in their language, Tetun. After that, I sit and wait for the phone to ring for any possible medevac flights. MAF in Timor-Leste work with the Ministry of Health to provide air transportation for critically ill patients, flying them by air to the National Hospital in Dili from the more remote regions of the country. I fill in the time reading through the new Operations Manual that we have to read each year.
The phone rings at 9:07am. The Ambulance service have called requesting a medevac of two patients from Suai, about a half hours flight to the south of Dili. The other MAF Pilot, Daniel readies the plane while I submit a flight plan, check the weather report, notify authorities in Suai that we are coming, and generally prepare for the flight.
At 9:34, I depart Dili airport in VH-MQO and climb to 5,500 feet, passing Mt. Ramelau, Timor-Leste’s highest peak of almost 10,000ft to the left. Landing in Suai, I find the ambulance already waiting. We load up a very sickly looking twenty month old girl who sits on her parent’s lap for the trip. Also loaded is an 18 year old male, who is unconscious while I strap him into the stretcher and hang up the IV drip. Both patients are accompanied by family members and a medical staff member. We make the return journey back to Dili with no problems. I touch down at two minutes past eleven o’clock, making it around two hours since the call was received. There is now only a 20 minute ride via ambulance to the hospital for the patients. Typically, the trip from Suai to Dili would take 8-10 hours by road.
Before the ambulance departs for the National Hospital we give a “care pack” to a family member of each patient for their stay in hospital. These packs consist of some food, water, mobile phone credit, a copy of Mark’s Gospel in Tetun, and some toiletries. The contents vary slightly depending on who is receiving the packs. The MAF Timor-Leste staff (specifically the MAF pilot’s wives) make up four different variations of the packs, for pregnant women (or who have just given birth), adult men, adult women, and children. Each pack also contains a small card with a reminder that God loves them and the assurance that the MAF staff are praying for them at this time.
I go into the office to complete my post flight paperwork, and have some morning tea. I notice the Policemen are still sitting outside in the heat, so I go inside and make them some Timorese style coffee, strong black, with loads of sugar, and take it out to them. We stand around and chat for twenty minutes or so, after that. It’s always good to make friends.
More reading of the Operations Manual (it has around 470 pages) and a Vegemite scroll for lunch, before the Ambulance calls again. This time the patient is a 10 year old boy from Baucau (about 30mins east of Dili) with severe head trauma from a motor vehicle accident. Most people here don’t wear seat belts in cars, and traveling in the tray of a truck or ute is also common. Less than twenty minutes later, I am airborne in VHMQO again. The flight was rather straightforward. However when I returned to Dili this time, I was told two pieces of information within two minutes of each other: that being the patient from Baucau had been air sick during the flight, so inside the plane was a bit of a mess and that I had another medevac flight now to Los Palos.
It’s times like this when I’m glad we have extra help, another MAF pilot Daniel and a local Timorese employee, Aldo to work with. I had to (fortunately) go into the office to submit another flight plan and do more paperwork (and to have a break for a few minutes) while Daniel and Aldo refueled the plane, cleaned up the mess and installed a clean stretcher. This time two nurses were going to accompany us from Dili, but we could only take one because the take-off weight out of Los Palos was quite restricted due to the airstrip being quite boggy at one end.
Luckily Aldo could explain this to the nurses a bit better than I could in my broken Tetun. After a 32 minute turn around I was back in the air again for the 50 minute flight to the eastern end of the island. The patient this time was an old man. It was a smooth flight and we arrived back in Dili with two accompanying family members, at 5pm. We don’t always know what is wrong with the patients, even when we try reading the copy of the referrals that we keep in the office. They are usually written in Portuguese and in Doctor’s handwriting (this phenomenon crosses cultures apparently).
After landing I hear the RAAF Boeing 737 coming into Dili on the radio. We find out later that it has the Governor General of Australia, Peter Cosgrove on board to attend the celebrations surrounding the swearing in of Timor-Leste’s 6th President.
Working for MAF in Timor-Leste, no day is the same! This was a busy day for medevac flights, not every day is like this. Part of the challenge of working in this place is to be prepared to serve Him in whatever a day presents, whether that be showing love to policemen, cleaning out a messy plane or flying the plane to transport sick people to hospital. God requires our love for neighbours and diligence in our work whatever the task.
