Oh Rats...

Received a message from Mom that as she was driving along there were some locals selling rats on skewers. They ranged from small to large and were 8-10 on a skewer. Her words...yuck! I told her to give it a try; when in Rome...

She is now in Lilongway. It is a big city and she is in one of the nicer areas. The house they are in has a great view of the sugar cane fields. The benefits of a city are the things that come with a large city including internet access. She should be able to send out a few emails in the next day or so. The drawback is the crowds to get vaccinated are big and at times unruly. Unfortunately there are still reports of children deaths from the measles. Because of that the emergency vaccination campaign has been extended another month. In the end, they will have vaccinated 2,000,000 people! Mom will not be there until the end as her assignment starts in Uganda in July. I guess that could be moved, but for now she is on schedule as previously planned.

Mom was able to connect with some of the others she was in training with. She though she had it bad until she spoke with someone else that has her same job in another part of the campaign. That person has had many challenges to say the least.

Mom says it is really dark there at night. There are no street lights and there are a lot of folks out at night, and because the natives have a dark complexion already it hard to see people at night and not hit them while driving. But Mom has a driver. Her last driver was Hippo, the current one is Socrates. She has really bonded with her fleet of drivers.

Everyone thinks she is doing a great job and continue to give her more responsibility. No surprise there. She is remaining up-beat, keeping her sense of humor, etc. She is having a great time.

The one 'adventure' she told me about is too long to go into on this blog (the story took almost 10 minutes to tell), but it involved almost non-existent roads, river crossings, having to have a crude bridge built so they could get to where they needed to, long walks in the last several miles, and then one of the vehicles getting stuck on the way back which had to be pulled out by a tractor from the sugar cane fields (after 2 1/2 hours of trying and waiting for the right vehicle). It was quite the adventure.

Mom is still planning for her 1 week 'vacation'. She appreciates the ideas from Dana, Judy and Susan thus far. We'll see where she goes.

Finally Mom is off this weekend (or at least today). It is her first break since she started about a month ago. She is in what sounds like a wonderful place. Her exact words were "...in a sanctuary, heavenly."

Well that is it for now. I will let you know more as I know more...