This is Africa

Nearly everyone knows what it means to have a deja vu moment, where it feels as if you are repeating a moment in time from the past by being in the same place or having the same experience that you did previously. Well today I experienced a different phenomenon that I'm going to call a surreal moment. 

It was around noon on a warm, sunny day. My mission was to drive from the house where I was staying to the Flying Mission Services hangar at the Gaborone airport. It was my first solo mission navigating around the capital city of Botswana, and without the map in the front console, it might have been a failure. However, armed with a map and my own memory, I climbed into the right seat of the car (or the wrong seat, depending on your perspective) and backed out into the street to begin my journey. What happened next, me making a few wrong turns and requiring the services of the map to determine my position in the city, isn't too important to the story, so we won't waste time on that. I had finally gotten my bearings and was on the right road. Things were looking up. Then it happened. The surreal moment struck.

I was driving the borrowed Toyota down the left side of the road from the right seat at about 60 kilometers per hour with the windows down and some African pop music coming through the radio when I had to brake for a herd of about a dozen goats that were crossing the road. BOOM! That's when the thought hit me. I'm in Africa! For the movie buffs, it was a "we're not in Texas anymore, Toto" moment. Sitting on the opposite side of the car, driving on the opposite side of the road, using the metric system for everything, listening to music in a language of which I could speak less than a dozen words, having animals roaming the streets, this was a whole new world. I had finally made it halfway around the globe to a completely different hemisphere, right where God had called me. I took a deep breath of African air, and pulled forward as the last little goat plodded off the side of the road.

God has brought me a long way, opened a lot of doors, and taught me many things in the last several years. From dreaming of attending the Air Force Academy, to planning a career in corporate jets, I had all sorts of plans in my own mind about what my future in aviation would be like. It wasn't until about halfway through college that I even began to imagine my future looking like what it is today. And what exactly is going on in my life right now? It's a valid question. Here is an update for those who haven't heard.

I left the good old U.S. of A. On September 3rd, flew across the pond to London, spent my 9 hour layover in London riding the tube (subway system) and seeing some sights, caught a 10+ hour flight to Johannesburg, barely made it to the gate for my connecting flight to Botswana on time, and ended up arriving in Gaborone right on schedule on September 5th. I was met by a group of Flying Mission Services personnel, many of whom were familiar faces from back at Liberty University. In the past week or so since my arrival, I have been given a tour of the city, an overview of Flying Mission's entire organization, a pile of documents to study in preparation for an exam, gotten to experience a number of restaurants in town and eat some authentic African food as well as some fast food, been invited to numerous BBQs (or braais as they're called here), attended a Baptist church service, gone for runs outside the city and inside it, met a lot of people, and more. Currently, I am in the process of buying a car and slowly learning a few more words and phrases in Setswana. Within the next week I will begin ground school for the Cessna 200 series fleet I will be training to fly in and then once the paperwork for my work permit, immigration, and license validations gets approved I will commence getting checked out to fly! I will continue living in the capital city until I start flying, and then I will move some 800 kilometers north to the city of Maun, where I will be based. 

More updates to follow as things move forward... Cheers!

Hopping across the pond

Westminster Abbey

Monkeys hanging around outside the FMS hangar