Home coming...and reflections

It's hard to believe that after just over a year (quite literally) on opposite sides of the world, my husband is coming home :) It has been a long, hard 365+ days - but it has also not been without many a life lesson.

Fiji is not a place that many from Europe or Africa visit - there is the enormous distance, the cost of flights, the over inflated tourist hotel prices etc etc So for all the difficulties, I do feel privileged for the opportunity to have spent some time there - albeit only for five weeks. The people of Fiji have a fascinating history and an old culture that is slowly being stamped out by the modern world. There is deep embarrassment over their past - over cannibalism and believing in a variety of Gods and Deities. I find this rather gut wrenching - I would really rather learn about another culture than be told 'Look how far we have come - we have a Mcdonalds'.

Postcards of Fiji show the tourist hot spots, five star resorts that are so exclusive one has to take a second mortgage on ones home to pay the bill. However beyond the glitz and the glamour lies the real Fiji. The Fiji that reminds me of Africa. A country split in two with little in the way of the 'middle line'. There are the 'haves and the have-nots'. In Africa, in general, this has resulted in conflict, desperation, soaring crime, and general misery. Yet somehow Fiji manages to fight through the same difficulties with many still holding a smile on their faces. Yes there is crime, health problems, too many stray animals...but people still seem to try and look for the good.

There is a lot to be learned from that....is it really a crises that when you went to the shops and out of the range of 40+ brands of cereal they didn't have your favorite sugar-laden, mass produced, box of zero nutritional value food? Is it not a somewhat surreal feeling to know that whilst you bemoan this, someone, somewhere in the world is barely getting by with a couple of pieces of fruit and water from a river that is also used as a bath? Personally, I often wonder, what would life have been like if I had been born into a different family, under different circumstances....Perspective - unfortunately it's something that is often not easy to obtain when sitting in one place, especially in a comfortable place.

One million and twenty eleven flying hours

Ok so the heading of this blog post will really only be understood by South Africans, but I couldn't resist.

My husband is home soon from a really, really, REALLY ruddy long 'tour' on some exotic island in the Pacific. When I say long, I mean 310 out of 365 days away from home long. He went, because well, it was a pretty decent job, in a pretty decent company, on a pretty decent aircraft that he...you guessed it, had the opportunity to build some good hours on.

I worked in aviation and I am married to a pilot, and I really have to say that I have come to believe that if there is one absolutely unobtainable thing in this world - it is the perfect number of flight hours on the right aircraft at the right time. There seems to forever be a requirement to chase another number, get more flight hours on a turbo prop, get more command hours, the hours need to be on a heavier aircraft, you need jet time. Hours, hours, hours - the more you get of them, it seems the more you need. Only to get the jobs you need to increase your hours or to get onto the aircraft you want -  you need to have a certain amount of hours in the first place. It reminds me a little of our presidents attempt at reading numbers...a real struggle, with success generally only ever coming from a huge smattering of good luck!

I have the privilege of knowing a couple of guys sitting on 15 000+ hours on a variety of aircraft and I can pretty much guarantee they have at least once in their lifetime looked at a job posting for their dream job and gone 'Well dammit, I'm just 20 hours short to apply for this'