A Honky on the Horn of Africa - in Soddo at last

A Honky on the Horn of Africa - in Soddo at last.

We've finally arrived.  The girls are finally nodding off  (even though it's only about 1:00pm Wisconsin time) after nearly 48hours of constant travel.  I will take advantage of the jetlag and stay up a bit to post this and update all who are following along.  I'll link to it on face book.  Disclaimers are that blogspot is technically blocked in Ethiopia - I'll have to post via e-mail, so I don't think pictures can be uploaded.  I'll try to post some pics to Facebook, but it looks like internet speed may be a limiting factor there (it is much faster than two years ago, however).  

The big blessing so far is that the girls did extremely well with the travel.  Thanks to all who offered prayers to this end, but their travel stamina was something to behold.  They got enough rest on the first flight (Chicago to London) to stay fresh - Tessa slept about 5h, Emma about 4.  The London layover (5hours) went faster than we expected, and they ended up sleeping for about 8 hours straight on the 11h flight from London to Addis Ababa via Amman, Jordan.  They didn't even know we were in Jordan.  

We landed in Addis around 2:30am local time, but it took us about 2 hours to clear customs due to haggling over duties on laboratory equipment we were bringing back into the country after some repairs.  The Ethiopian Customs people are quite meticulous, playing everything by the book.  This makes for slow going, but it all worked out well.  The amazing thing was that the girls just played with each other without making much of a peep for the entire two hours.  They just kept putting each other through the x-ray machine while I would give the other one anatomy lessons… just kidding.  They really did do well, though, and we finally made it to the van at around 4:45am.  It was about 20 minutes to the SIM guest house where we sipped some orange Fanta, then laid down for about 5 hours of sleep.  We were to pack up and leave the guest house by about 11:00am so we could do some grocery shopping in Addis before the drive to Soddo.

All that went as planned.  We pulled out of Addis a little after noon and made it to Soddo at 7:00 just after sunset.  This included a scheduled lunch/ potty break in Butajira - the culinary scene along the Addis/ Butajira road have improved substantially since I was last here (so have the toilets).  The girls did get a bit car sick, but only Tessa puked.  She had just sipped some Sprite and eaten a mango, so it really didn't smell that bad.  They slept for about half the drive and really only got whiny towards the very end.  

Had a nice evening settling in and finally meeting our hosts, the Grays.  We've been friends on Facebook, we've talked on the phone, I filled in for Paul on the job two years ago and even lived in their house before it was their house, so it was nice to finally meet them.  I think we're going to enjoy getting to know them a lot more closely over the next two weeks - more on that to come I'm sure.  

Well, I'm going to go and attempt sleep.  If I can manage to nod off, rounds start around 7:00am here (10pm CST).  That is when I will meet the residents, the patients, and find out what surgical adventures await.  Wendy and the girls will likely sleep in, though that gets hard to do here once the sun rises.  Thanks again for all the prayers and well wishes.  Remember, comments on the blog may not get to us since I can't access the site in country.  Best to communicate with us via Facebook.  We might not do much personal emailing as we want to be on the computer constantly when we need to be builing relationships here.  We'll likely stick mostly to group mails and blog posts.   Night all.