How MAF is bringing light and hope to Guinea
by Annelie Edsmyr
There’s a friendly welcome in Guinea that MAF Country Director Lisa Blomberg treasures, but behind the smiles is a nation struggling with serious challenges.
“Here is the secret about Guinea,” Lisa says. “Everywhere you go in West Africa, people will point to Guinea and say that Guineans are the nicest, most hospitable people you will find in West Africa.”
Lisa’s face lights up when she talks about the people and the culture she has gotten to know since she, her husband Jonathan, a pilot for MAF, and their five children, moved to the country two years ago.
The joy-filled population does not reflect the underlying challenges that exist in relation to health, nutrition, education, and poverty.
As a country, Guinea is growing and seeking to improve its infrastructure and economic reality, but currently 55 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day. One in four children under the age of five is malnourished, and one in five families lives with food insecurity.
Of Guinea’s 14 million people, less than one percent are evangelical Christians and more than 85 percent are Muslims, with a large percentage of the population practicing animism and dark spirituality.
“There is much that is the opposite of the love of Jesus,” says Lisa. “A lot of greed, corruption, death and destruction because of this spiritual darkness.”
While Guinea has rich deposits of bauxite, aluminium, gold, and diamonds, most of the country’s support resources, including aviation, are used primarily to serve mining businesses.
This means many remote areas are cut off from essential services, especially during the rainy season.
Serving the Poorest
Anja Erickson is a nurse who, together with her husband, started the Hope Clinic in southeastern Guinea 21 years ago. Since then, the hospital has been serving the people of one of the poorest parts of the country, the forest area.
“We started on a very small scale, and we had maybe 30 patients a day. But today we see between 100 and 130 patients a day,” she says.
The hospital also receives patients from surrounding countries, but can’t always treat them on-site. When in need of more advanced medical equipment, patients need to be referred to the capital deity of Conakry. Staff and visitors who come to help often need to travel days on terrible roads to be able to reach the hospital.
“We don’t count the distance in kilometres, we count the hours,” says Anja. “Because 900 kilometres (about 560 miles) as it is to the capital, can take two days if it’s at all possible. To now be able to make that journey in 2.5 hours with MAF is much better.”
MAF’s shortest flight in Guinea takes an hour and the longest takes about two hours and fifteen minutes, crossing neighbouring Liberia on the way.
“Currently, there are runways in most major cities, but beyond that, there is not much access to the remote parts of the country,” says Jonathan Blomberg.
Lisa says MAF is strategically looking at how they can work with partners to reach the most remote areas and develop more runways.
Primed for Growth
Despite the difficulties of starting a new MAF program in a country marked by decades of challenges, Lisa and Jonathan hope that MAF can shine a light in the darkness for Guineans in isolated communities.
“We’re at a point where there are seeds that have been planted, and now we need to get those seeds to start growing. This means that we need to show more and more what we are here to do,” says Lisa.
Anja says the arrival of MAF in Guinea in 2022 has already made a difference to the work of their clinic.
“We really hope that MAF will fly for many, many years to come, because it really helps our work a lot,” she says.
Lisa says the MAF program in Guinea, which is operated jointly by MAF-US and MAF International, has a unique opportunity to help partners go into areas of the country where there are no churches and little to no education.
“To help these partners push back the darkness and serve the people of Guinea—that is the heart of MAF in Guinea.”
Story ran in the January 2025 edition of FlightWatch. Read the entire issue here: