Meanwhile... Back at the Ranch...

A lot has been happening with the airplane- its' arrival in Libreville and the race to get all the permits and start to fly.  While all that has been happening, work on the Lebamba airstrip at the Bongolo Hospital has been happening.  Last year, the government inspector said that he wanted to see some work to curtail the erosion that was happening on the strip.

This is a photo from December of 2009.  You can see the erosion issues that we were facing across this culvert.  Our aircraft uses this crossing to pass over the drainage ditch to get to the ramp area.  It became so bad that we used sandbags to control the erosion.  So... we needed a longer term solution.

So, Dr. Thompson put together a plan and hired a crew to get it done.

Phase one was destroying the existing culvert.

Then it was on to laying down the rebar and pouring cement.

Here it is formed up.  It's about twice as long as before and will handle quite a bit more of the runoff- keeping it from exiting across the runway and eroding our surface there.

Here's our project director in action!  He's sporting his "Indiana Jones" look!  Quality control is a big part of the job.  We are thankful for Dr. Dave's oversight to this project, our local workers, and Paul D. who is giving time away from maintaining the Bongolo campus to provide supplies and logistics to this effort.