SQUIRRELS on a MISSION

Having lived in South Africa my whole life, I have become used to our amazing road system. It’s normal for me to ride to work on a modern five-lane highway, covering the 40km in no time. I hardly think about it during the short uneventful journey, except when there’s been an accident to foul up the traffic, sometimes for hours. Then I wish I was already in a helicopter zooming overhead to my destination.

- George Tonking

Some years ago, however, while on a holiday trip to Madagascar, I experienced first-hand the challenges of being in a country with little or no road infrastructure – especially outside the cities. The 650 km trip from the island’s capital Antananarivo to the famous Avenue of Baobabs on the west coast took us two days by car – on tar roads! In the other direction, along the winding “Route Nationale 2” to Toamasina, a distance of 375 km, we travelled from before dawn to after dusk. We had a good laugh at the sign warning us of curves ahead after we’d been winding back and forth for over three hours already! And let me not even mention the dirt roads, which become absolute quagmires in the rainy season!

While in Antananarivo, I was introduced to Craig Pearson, a South African expatriate who works in Madagascar as base manager for a faith-based humanitarian organisation called Helimission.

Helimission, with its headquarters in Trogen, Switzerland, specialises in helicopter humanitarian relief. Founded in the early 1970s by Swiss helicopter pioneer Ernst (Ernie) Tanner and his wife Hedi, Helimission now operates three bases with a total of six helicopters: in Madagascar and the Indonesian islands of Papua and Sulawesi. Its main aim is to provide social, medical and spiritual aid to people in remote, inaccessible areas using helicopters (therefore its name).

(George Tonking can still rearrange it. I just wanted to give to right facts regarding him becoming a follower of Jesus.)

Ernie Tanner, who was born in 1927, got to know Christ as his personal savior when he was 25 during his 7 years in the US. (He emigrated to the US from 1948 – 1955.) He then was ordained as a minister at the age of 28.