I'm Home!

Ok, well, I'm not home home, but I'm home. We were told to be at the airport this morning at 10:30am. We actually ended up leaving ourselves a lot of time, since logistically, it could have been a nightmare to get all of our stuff and all of our people to the right place at the right time. But as it turned out, things moved very smoothly and we ended up at the airport EARLY. Amazing. Of course, the flight was delayed. And delayed. And delayed some more. Finally, at about 1 pm, Jackie went in search of a snack to put in my poor rumbling tummy (all I'd had all morning was 1/3 of a grapefruit, a very small piece of bread with jam and a cup of tea). But, because so many people were leaving on the UN flights that had been organized for the education meetings we were at, the airport canteen had run out of food! Not even a packet of biscuits to be had. At least they had a warm Coke.

At about 2-ish (I think), we were finally able to board the little plane and make our way back home. It was probably a good thing we didn't have more for lunch, since it was a pretty turbulent flight, and poor Jackie woke me up from my nap, urgently in need of a plastic bag. I will now add an empty plastic bag to my list of "be-prepared-for-everything" travel kit!

Turns out, I did pretty good being prepared for most eventualities on this trip. My Swiss Army knife was in great demand a couple times a day for various tasks, my headlamp served its purpose very well, and my extra mini-light was also used by Moses every night (which reminds me that I forgot to get that back from him!). I also had my amazing "equatorial" sleeping bag from MEC which kept me clean and cool each night. It's a great little sleeping bag, and doubles as a good pillow, as well. I even managed to bring my flip flops with me to use in the bathroom! So I lacked nothing on this trip.

But man, it sure was good to get home this evening. Lynne came and picked us up from the airport, and on the way home, I was amazed to see all the construction and new things that have sprung up, even in less than three weeks of being away. On the airport road, there's a brand new gas station that looks like a "proper" gas station - the pumps aren't housed in a metal shipping container and there's a little shop where, presumably, you could buy sodas and car snacks!

My little cat seemed pretty happy to see me. He's got a pretty nasty infection on his tail - I think he got into one too many scraps with the neighbor cat. But he's already back to his usual self of whining for food every 10 minutes!

I hope that tomorrow I'll be able to condense some of the "journal" that I've been keeping for the past few weeks and post some of the highlights of our trip here. But for now, I'm just so happy to be in my own house, even though we've come back to broken water pipes! No running water for us until Richard comes next week... at least our kind neighbors have put a water barrel in the house and filled it up for us! So we're no worse off than we were at the guesthouse that we've been staying in. And there are plenty of other showers on this compound for us to use when we get stinky!

I'm really tired out now, so I'm going to go have a nice long drink of bore hole water (mmm... salty!) and then go to sleep... in my own little bed.