This is a continuation of the trip that began on June 10th, 2008 in Capetown South Africa June 16, 2008 The entire group was ready to go, before the crack of dawn, at 04:15 AM. It was a quick ride to the airport and check-in was reasonably quick. We had an uneventful flight to Johannesburg, with a scrambled egg breakfast served enroute. In Johannesburg, it was a long walk to the International Terminal, where we had about 2 hours to browse through the numerous duty free shops. I went to checkout the Wi-Fi Hotspot, but needed to purchase a subscription to [View Full Entry]

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It's definitely winter here, and I hear the UK has been having some particularly good weather the last few days. The temperature has been down to about 8-9 degrees at night and is just about struggling to the early 20s at lunchtime. Even so, the weather news on the television last night said that Chipata was the warmest place in the country. In the last week I have gone from one blanket on my bed to three; at least it means the mozzies have given up on me for a bit! Speaking of television, I have joined the Sisters in becoming [View Full Entry]

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I made it! I got in last night just before 9:00 pm (around 3 EST). It was the longest flight known to man. I stayed on one plane for about 20 hours. We stopped to drop off and add some people in Dakar, which is on the west coast in Senegal. I've never been claustrophobic in my life, but I think I was getting insanely close. It also didn't help that I was stuck next to two (one before and one after Dakar) people who never got up to go to the bathroom or walk around. I don't know if they [View Full Entry]

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Tikondane is a community centre run for and by the people of Katete. It has a thriving community school and adult education programme and there are various income generating activities such as the garden and skill training initiatives, as well as important community development work, the implementation of which Tikondane has pioneered. Tikondane is a gem for the tourist interested in finding the real Africa outside the usual lodges or hostels. Tikondane began on the premise of helping local villagers to improve their literacy, which would in turn benefit the individual communities to which they belonged. There are now 30 villages [View Full Entry]

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So I wasn't quite as productive today as I'd intended to be. The plan had been to go into Bwafwano early, have Rebecca and Amanda head off to Chazanga to start in on the contraceptives stuff, then meet with the Ubuntu guys, then head to UTH, visit the patients I've referred, and maybe say hello to Dr. Samwe. But, Rebecca and Amanda were at Chazanga longer than anticipated, lunch took an unreasonably long time to get done, Nicholas from Ubuntu couldn't meet till Monday, and when I got to UTH it turned out that Dr. Samwe was gone and the children [View Full Entry]

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So it's been a busy couple of days since Amanda and Rebecca arrived, with some interesting medical cases. Yesterday we were out at Mungule again, and we had a pretty solid turnout for the clinic. We even enrolled a new child for CTC. I spent a lot of the time teaching Amanda and Rebecca about Peds stuff, mostly how to do exams, including a few tricks that I've found useful here for keeping the kids from screaming excessively (white people tend to scare children). There was one very interesting case, though. A young boy came in with opsoclonus, which is a [View Full Entry]

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Some pictures are worth a thousand words. Others leave you speechless. In other news, after a number of mishaps of Amanda's flights, she finally got here, about two days later than she was supposed to. Rebecca arrived right on schedule. Since the schedule didn't permit me to go to Bwafwano today, it ended up being a little low-key, with me showing them around. I had a restaurant meal for the first time in a couple weeks, too, and gave them an introduction to the country. Tomorrow, it's back to work, and this time with extra help! I'm working on getting projects [View Full Entry]

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I heard your retinas can detach when you go bungy jumping. I couldn't believe it - going blind just from jumping off a bridge! Whatever next? Armed with this knowledge, I made sure I didn't tell my Mum about my jump at the 3rd highest jump site in the world until AFTER I had done it. The jump was a thrill, I have a nice video of it too. It was 365 feet or 111 metres high (sounds better in feet, doesn't it?) and the girl that went before me started crying hysterically right when she was meant to do her [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived in Nairobi Airport 6.30 am (4.30 am Blairgowrie time) the group stopped for 2 hours before boarding another flight to Lusaka, Zambia where they stopped briefly before continuing their journey to Lilongwe, Malawi. All are well but very tired and "don't want to be bothered with airports and planes anymore". [View Full Entry]

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After Lake Malawi, the second of my two big weekends away was to the South Luangwa Game Reserve. We stayed at Wildlife Camp (http://www.wildlifecamp-zambia.com/) for two nights in very posh tents and had 3 drives into the reserve. The camp was great- a bit of luxury after Chipata, with proper steak and other decent pubstyle food. It was right on the river, with hippos and crocodiles basking outside; have attached a video of the night noises made by the hippos as recorded from outside my tent. Also had my first ever outside shower (with hot water!) and with the sun in [View Full Entry]

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