Mission 14 - 4th March 2006 - Christina Kiddie Children’s Home - Kimberley

After a false start due to bad weather on February 25th, Saturday March 4th saw us finally head off for Kimberley on our first trip for 2006. Andre Klepper in his Piper 235 took the bulk of the load, and Stephen Bowden in his newly registered Cessna 182, flew myself and Alan Mocke plus some toys down to Kimberley. Thank you to both pilots.

Alan Mocke from Air BP joined us for the 6 hour round trip to see first hand what it is we do on our missions across the country. Clothing and toys were collected and donated by Alan and Air BP staff, with Air BP matching the amount raised. A big thank you to Air BP. Alan purchased toiletries from Dischem Pharmacies at a discounted price, and school stationary was purchased from Makro. With the money collected we were able to adhere to Freda’s and the Children’s Home’s wish list very closely. A request for a DVD player was also met by us. Thanks to Andre’s DVD donation the children should be watching DVD’s soon, Andre also collected clothing, books and toys, and thanks to Mike for toys and clothing collected over the past few months.

The trip down was fast for both aircraft. We clocked ground speeds on the cruise descent for Kimberley at 170 knots. Freda and Sandy met us at the airfield together with two of the boys who were keen to assist us offload the aircraft. For their trouble they got a ride in the aircraft, all be it on the ground as both aircraft had to be moved to accommodate incoming scheduled flights. After this and a delay to refuel and pay landing fees we headed for the children’s home.

Freda and her team run a very tidy home, the children who were not out with foster families and or their parents for the weekend met with us and took us on a tour of their lush green garden and showed us their rooms and some of their toys. We had a spread of tasty snacks with tea, coffee, and juice waiting for us too. The industrious catering business the home runs certainly produces some tasty delights and brings in needed cash. We were also told that Freda’s husband and some of the children were off on a fund raising drive in one of the nearby towns.

Alan and I had a frantic but enjoyable photo call with some of the children who jostled for a place in front of our cameras to have their picture taken with a favourite toy or together with a friend or two or three, take a look at these in our photo gallery. No sooner had we knocked back a cup or two of cool drink and coffee preceded by as many, “vetkoek”, “koeksisters” bacon wraps, samoosas, sausage rolls, and chocolate filled cone wrap thingies, before it became too apparent that we were pigging out, it was time to head back to the airfield for our somewhat slower but more adventurous flight home.