Amsterdam

It is 6:35 AM in Amsterdam, 11:35 PM in Burnsville.  The flight was pleasant, especially sitting next to a pretty young Swedish lawyer on her way home from holiday with her Duluth host family in Hawaii.  From a small town on the coast near Uppsala, she was an exchange student in Duluth in 2003.  Impeccable English, nice tan too. (Boyfriend, dear.)

I dozed through Harry Potter Deathly Hallows 2, but I don’t think I slept much. Didn’t open the Kindle.  I put a ton of .pdfs on the Kindle, some to read, some to use as references as needed.  “You’ll erase them, won’t you?” the Kindle owner said.  “Ya, sure,” said the borrower.

I was pleased to have phone conversation with Gary Moody before I left.  Back safe and sound and already back in the fray working.  He told me of the group’s adventures with transportation.  There was so much baggage from the Day of Grace that they needed to rent another vehicle to get it to Iringa!

Here is a paraphrase from a book called something like “If Life is a Game, These are the Rules.”  One of the rules is: “You will have lessons.  You will have the same lessons over and over until you learn.”  (I am a slow learner, but I can recognize that I am having the same lessons over and over.)

Here is how that relates.  As time goes on, “we” are bringing fewer things to Tanzania, e.g. medicines, and in this case some bulky things we may have been able to get in TZ.  Not only are some things bulky, making travel a bit uncomfortable (and with unanticipated consequences, like a second vehicle), but buying what we can in TZ benefits the economy.

Regarding medicines, if we are bringing samples of expensive new drugs, usually in small bottles with only a few doses, where will the refills come form when the samples run out?  We do not bring outdated medicines.  If they aren’t good for us, why would we use them for our Tanzanian brethren?

Also, equipment made for American electrical systems does not work well in Tanzania, even when converted to the 230 volt system.  It wears out sooner, so I am told.  Of course, “better than nothing” still applies in many cases.    I believe the above is our current thinking, certainly mine, but here I am with 100# of luggage and a really heavy backpack.

It may be a couple days before more appears on this blog.  I should arrive in Dar tonight, leave for Ilula in the morning and get to Iringa Monday for my work permit.

Jambo!