I arrived safe and sound with the rest of the group of 17, on Monday evening June 6.  It was quite a trip; 7.5 hours to London, 11 hrs waiting at Heathrow airport, 8.5 hours to Entebbe, Uganda, and then an 8-hour trip by SUV to Karagwe, Tanzania.  Needless to say we were all exhausted.  I am so happy to be here with no problems.  All of our luggage made it through and all of the border crossings were without incident.  Once here, though, I found that my global phone that is supposed to work in almost all countries, including Uganda and Tanzania didn’t work!  But I can text on my iPhone and I purchased a new Tanzania phone card, which works just fine.  The only other glitch is that the Internet is not readily available anymore where I am.  There is a chance I may have access at some point but for now be prepared for blog silence from my end.  I have read this entry to my daughter who is uploading it to the blog so that you are aware of the situation.

Before I close, I want to tell you a little more about Africa.  First the landscape is quite different from the US and it is beautiful.  There are many banana trees over here.  From the air all I could see was multiple shades of green and red clay dirt roads.  It turns out that they do have some major roads that are paved but during this dry season the dirt makes for lots of red dust that gets onto everything.  The people waiting for us at Nyakahang Hospital were so happy to see us and greeted us with hugs, smiles and lots of delicious food.  We had an opportunity to meet with the local people through our interaction at the mobile phone store as well as with one of the doctors at the hospital.  At night I sleep like a princess under a mosquito net and wake up to a rooster crowing.