September 6-8

Thursday – Saturday, September 6-8, 2012

I left Philadelphia at 10 pm on Thursday night to travel to London.  Most of the team is from Dallas and arrived before I did, a few later.  We had a long layover, so I took the tube into the city and had a great day.  I went to Trafalger square which had a huge sceen up displaying the Paralympics.  Then they had a band entitled “Spaceships are cool”!  I went into the National Gallery, had lunch at Wagamama Noodle house, walked through St Martin in the Fields, by the horse guards, Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.  The tube back to Heathrow was easy and we had plenty of time at the airport for socializing before we boarded another night flight to Johannesburg.  This was an almost 11 hour flight, and fortunately I spent for much of it.  We had another five hour layover in Johannesburg before our short less than two hour flight to Harare, Zimbabwe.

All of our team and luggage arrived safely today.  One other team member joins us tomorrow.  It took awhile to go through customs, but everything was fine.  We took a short bus ride to our hotel and checked in.  It is a very nice hotel, owned by friends of the group we are working with.  Some of us quickly changed and went out with one of our hosts to a local shopping area.  We had hoped the shops were still open as we won’t have much time for shopping later in the week, but they were closed.  We had a nice dinner sitting in an outdoor patio.  It was a very western menu with pizza, seafood, pita sandwiches.  Some stayed at the hotel for dinner.

It was warm, around 80 with a few clouds when we arrived, lows in the mid 50s.  The streets were very orderly and not too much traffic, but it is a weekend.  There is the smell of dust and traffic in the air, reminiscent to me of Ethiopia but not nearly as congested, as least what I have seen so far.

Time for bed – first night in three for sleeping in a bed!  Looking forward to it!

Tomorrow- evaluate patients for surgery and set up the Ors.