I noticed next to the huge dump on which massive rocks were being rolled that a yellow windsock was flying in the breeze.

That meant that there was an airfield there.

Back in Maseru I had heard of the airfield at Letseng-le-Terae being the highest in the mountain kingdom.

There’s a group of pilots in Lesotho from an organisation called Mission Aviation Fellowship whose jobs must be among the most exciting in the world.

Every morning, if the weather allows it, they fly out of the Mejemetana air base in Maseru to take things to clinics deep in the Maluti Mountains. They’re mostly in places so out of the way that the only way to reach them is either by foot, on horseback or by plane.

They carry building materials, medicines, patients, coal for winter fires. Whatever’s needed.

The pilots’ job is not only to fly to remote airfields where the wind, the weather and the mountains put their skills to enormous test, but also to raise money so that they can do their work.

To do this, they go around fundraising, giving talks, usually at churches, during three months of their six months’ leave when they go home every two years. Home, in most cases is the United States and Canada.

I had once taken a flight with a Canadian pilot called Melvin Peters to a little airstrip deep in the mountains, called Matekane. It’s rated among the world’s ten most scary airstrips at which to land.

The pilots cannot waste time on their morning flips. They have to watch the weather. Small morning clouds can easily turn into nasty angry storm clouds and if a pilot loses his way it would be very easy for his plane to crash straight into a mountain.

One rule they follow is never to go into a cloud.

“It could just be what we call ‘a granite cloud’,” said Melvin.

The plane Melvin flew was a Cessna Turbo 206. These aircraft aren’t designed for speed. They’re just powerful and good at altitude.

The pilots aren’t sure what they’ll have to take back to Maseru when they stop for their precious few minutes at the mountain airstrips, anxious to get back into the sky to beat the weather on the home run back to Maseru.

Sometimes they have to take the seats out to fit in a patient on a stretcher. Luckily they can do that very quickly.

Another pilot said: “They’re like bakkies. You can put anything into them and they’ll fly. They fit six people but in ten minutes seats can come out and a stretcher, or cargo, can come in.”

Image: Duncan Guy, CC-BY-SA

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Tell us about a scary flying experience if ever you’ve had one.