DEPARTURES AND ARRIVALS

It's always good to begin and end a journey with some consistency, for us this was the universality of beer. Heffy in the States and Primus in Africa. Especially when the country welcomes you with open arms into it.













Our first group of travelers made it here safely, including all of our personal luggage. Our trunks are having a sleep over in Customs. Sandy, Hal and Dr. Mucumbitsi plan to retrieve them on the morrow.

The rest of us will also be up and at 'em on our way to King Faisal Hospital to unload all of our beautiful shipping boxes. And it will be like Christmas going through all of our belongings we left here last year.

Good luck to the three remaining waves of travelers, we will see you all soon. And you will be just as happy as Brooke to take off your support stockings!!

MISINTERPRETATION (aka WEIGHT=WAIT)

As it turns out this number of boxes at King Faisal Hospital does not translate into the number of boxes that left Spokane, oops. So while we were ecstatic that our shipment cleared Kigali Customs, we did not realize only two thirds of the shipment had arrived. (The weight of the Supplies that left Spokane did not equal the weight of supplies that arrived in Kigali.) We believe one third of our shipment is still in London somewheres. We are like hound dogs on a fox hunt trying to locate them.

Katie Bland, Jane VanTassel, Jim Dixon and Jennifer Day helping to unpack the Supplies that actually arrived.

Our second, mostly surgical, team arrived tonight. Finally able to relax and have a bite to eat at the Top Tower Hotel before going to King Faisal tommorrow to assess the situation.

Wish us luck as we try and locate the rest of our supplies and deal with our ever-changing surgical schedule. We are hopeful we will still be able to commence surgery on Monday, since we are all eager to start changing young adults' lives.

WE HAVE ARRIVED!

Dr. Hal Goldbert, Sandy Goldberg and Jim Dixon relieved to finally be on the plane.

Andrea Daugherty, Katie Bland and Morgan Lonsford entertain themselves while waiting in the San Francisco Airport.

Jane Vantassel at the "Yotel, Motel, Holiday Inn..." at Heathrow's Airport in London.

The first team arrived at noon yesterday. We cleared Customs at Kigali International Airport with no problems and we were greeted by our wonderful colleagues from King Faisal Hospital, there to make sure our Customs experience went smoothly.

It was great to see all of our pallets of supplies unloaded in the CICU and ready for us to unpack tomorrow. We are all looking forward to a quick dinner and a long rest as we plan to start this organizational process.