Mission 12 - JP Morgan – Eshowe Trip.

Saturday the 23rd July, our second trip in conjunction with JP Morgan Chase & Company, South Africa. This was a trip to Eshowe to two schools in the area. The aim was to put a face to the people from JP Morgan who made donations to Mpumazi School and their Classroom project, and Emasundwini School and the official opening of their kitchen. 180 Kg’s of stationary was also delivered along with 3 distinguished passengers from JP Morgan, Fradreck Shoko, Gqi Raoleka, Kingdom Mugadza and myself. This is a unique undertaking for Rainbow AirBridge pilots, who usually have very quiet and inanimate cargo. Our take off time was to be as early as possible from Grand Central airfield, so with sunrise at 06h50 local a safe take off time would be 06h35.

Pilots were; Francessco Masselli from Central and Tony Kent from Brakpan in their Cessna 182’s, a sterling effort as winter is fairly harsh at this time of the morning. Tony made a special effort to be ready flying in the dark, early hours to be at Central on time. He has his night rating. Take off was unfortunately delayed by 45 minutes due to mechanical failure of the motorised variety, but with speedy action the problem was solved as soon as possible. The flight down was beautiful, the air relatively clean on the reef, and magnificent en route. We left as a formation flight, to allow us to get airborne at the same time, but once out of the TMA, Francessco requested his own level and we flew pretty much the whole way with a 5-7 nautical mile separation, chatting on frequency to ensure separation was maintained. The amazing thing was that no matter how accurately we positioned ourselves relative to ground features for each other, spotting the aircraft proved impossible.

Eshowe airfield was tough to spot, but after a turn we spotted a murky green field with a slightly darker strip up the centre, unlike all the other green sugarcane fields in the immediate area. On the map it is positioned on the southern side of town, when in fact it is on the north eastern edge of the town. After a smooth touchdown, with me helping Tony on the air pedals at my feet, we had a bumpy run up the hill, yes up the hill on 22. The welcoming party was there in the form of the local Rotary chapter led by Fred Volbrecht and Chris a local enthusiast. After offloading we immediately set off for Mpumazi School, in a comfortable 23 passenger bus, through some magnificent and windy countryside. What greeted us, simply put, was amazing. The JP gang must have felt like the 3 wise men. A procession of young drummies, wearing JP Morgan headgear escorted the bus from the gate towards a white marquee, and then once disembarked the 3 wise men were escorted into the tent, in front of what seemed to be the entire community, with school children running around in an organised chaotic fashion.

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