A few weeks ago MAF pilot Roy Rissanen flew a team of American missionaries from a remote part of Guinea – the journey representing the first operational flight of MAF’s latest African programme.
With only 5% of Guinea’s roads being paved and the country’s railway network no longer running, the severe lack of transport makes life difficult for aid and development agencies, churches and missions in isolated areas.
Guinea also has some of the wettest weather in western Africa, with flash floods rendering rural roads impassable. So, after three years of extensive research, MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) launched its most recent programme to provide NGOs and Christian ministries with faster, safer and more reliable transport.
Roy flew the first passengers from remote Nzérékoré in the south-east to Conakry, enabling the missionaries to attend a quarterly team meeting.
The flight, which took under two hours, enabled the grateful family of four to avoid two days of gruelling road travel to the country’s capital.
The missionaries help deliver agriculture projects to rural areas and are working to provide a 300,000-strong unreached people group with the Scriptures in their own language.
‘We’ve been praying for transportation since we got here over a decade ago,’ the family explains. ‘There are no domestic aircraft in Guinea, so we have to drive. We drive and cry! It’s dehumanising and demoralising. MAF will be a lifesaver!
‘Driving at night is very dangerous and the potholes on the main roads can be eight feet wide. Mountain passes are dangerously narrow. We never take a trip where we don’t see an overturned vehicle along the way.’
Thanks to MAF (apart from the UN, it’s the only non-governmental air operator to fly in Guinea), vegetables, buckets, pipes and solar panels can now be transported by plane.
Flights such as these enable isolated communities to have better access to healthcare, food, education and development, and will help church workers reach about 30 unreached people groups with the gospel.
More recently, the organisation transported a patient suffering from suspected appendicitis to a hospital run by missionaries, and delivered tropical fruit trees to an agricultural project improving nutrition in an impoverished area.
