JAN-B-9
OUR FINAL MORNING AT EDWARDS AND TECH AFTER POST-OP ROUNDS
ON ALL THE PATIENTS WHO HAD NOT YET GONE HOME
TO GO ON TO SURALLAH, AN AIRSTRIP CLOSED TO ALL BUT US,
TO GET THE SIL NAVAJO LIGHT PLANE TO FLY OVER CENTRAL MINDANAO
TO ARRIVE IN NASULI TO BEGIN THE JAN-C-SERIES
IN MALAYBALAY, BUKIDNON AT BBH
January 18, 2003
We scrambled with our entire
security guard after the final rounds with the patients and the inevitable
rounds of further final pictures. We
drove to the Surallah airstrip and waited with the group and the guard deployed
around us as the Navajo flown in by Ken Van Huizen who had flown us last year,
a friend and substitute pilot who had known Martin Branham who was killed in a
shootout with the Philippine Army regulars sent to look for Abu Sayef with the
help of US army after 15 months as a hostage with his wife Gracia.
We made a takeoff roll which was
aborted when several Brahmin cattle and their herder, along with a whole
motorcycle load of about eight passengers came on the strip as we were in full
forward roll. We returned to try again.
We flew up and over the aqua culture
ponds and the Mount Apo on our right, highest peak in the Philippines and the
home of the Philippine Eagle. We also
flew over the militant Islamic separatists training camps. We flew into Nasuli, where I went to the
clear cool pool that is a wonder of recreation potential and clean water were
it not for the milky turbidity added by everyone who comes to wash dishes, do
laundry and take a full bath with foamy mounds of soap. We then drove up to BBH
on its fiftieth anniversary year, and I settled in at the Guesthouse. I scrambled next door to the Kovac Internet
café—and “mirable dictu”----I not only SENT, but also RECEIVED messages, which
seemed to go out without a hitch. Even
if this is a one-time only event, it should keep you up to speed on what I am
doing and where I am doing it as we move through this transition now.
Tomorrow I awake to a New Year in a
new venue.