Final Day in Zambia

Today was it! The final full day of this amazing trip before the long flight home. Just for fun (or for torture, depending on how you look at it), I added up the amount of time it’ll take to get back. I leave tomorrow about noon, and get home mid-afternoon Sunday. With layovers and flights, I’ve got almost 36 hours of travel time. How exciting….

We had another great day today. Many office meetings, but also two short road trips. The first was to visit a hospice facility. Initially, the clinic functioned totally as hospice care for those dying of AIDS. Now, many of the folks they admit initially are actually able to leave the clinic after starting the ARV therapy! The medicines by a government group, but all other items for the hospital are provided through monetary and product gifts. The facility is well maintained, and has beautiful grounds. It also has a positive message, as many people are now seen provided medicines, and then able to go home and live full, productive lives while taking the drugs. However, there were still several people in the hospice center that were dying.

We were taken to each and every one of the rooms to see the patients. Today, there were about 20 people in care. Only one had family present with them. Family visits are encouraged, but there is still a stigma attached to AIDS, plus some of these people come from very far away, so family visits are impossible. The disease, plus the difficult lifestyle takes a serious toll on their bodies. We’ve visited with people who are living in poverty, where life is so hard, they may not know if they will eat today. With each of these people though, life still sparkled in their eyes. Sometimes, it was pained, but life was there. This is the first place we’ve visited where people had no life in their eyes.

We then went to a community center. The center had a variety of services from sewing classes for women, to farming, to a small school, to a recreation room. The center started through a grant from a local group, and after several years, has now become self-sufficient. Even this is a struggle though. A month ago, floods covered the center grounds, and killed all the chickens they were raising for sale (total of 450 chickens), and now the center is working to find other income to support themselves. The team is resourceful, and I think they make it, but their story shows just how tenuous the balance is here.

Well…. We’ve come to the end of the journey. I obviously still have the flight home, but I don’t intend for that to be interesting enough to write about. I

Thank you all for traveling with me through Amsterdam, Dubai, Nairobi, and Zambia. In the last 19 days, we’ve been to one of Europe’s oldest cities and one of the world’s newest cities. We’ve been to one of the world’s richest countries, and one of the world’s poorest. We’ve seen areas of incredible beauty, and areas devastated by floods, poverty, and sickness. We’ve been to very permissive countries, to very restrictive countries. We’ve been to places moved by recent violence, and incredibly peaceful places. It’s a bit hard to process all that has happened on this trip, but sharing it with you will certainly help me remember all that I’ve seen.

Let me know how the blog concept works for you, as this is very new to me. I’m always happy to go back to e-mails! I can’t imagine I’d have anything to share unless (until) I travel again, so this site will probably be inactive for a bit, unless one of you can come up with something to write about. So send me an e-mail and let me know if you want to be on the list for future updates if I have the opportunity to travel again.

Can’t wait to see where we go next!