I am officially back in Zim and it wasn’t as easy this time, I really had to work for it. It all started on Friday before I left. My passport hadn’t come back from Ottawa where it was at the Zimbabwean Embassy being assessed for a visa. I had paid to have it sent overnight. Recent experience had taught me that it wouldn’t take long, Murphy’s Law would prove otherwise. Friday morning it still hadn’t arrived, so I decided to track it online, well the number wasn’t in the system so I called the 800 number and after 15 minutes on hold I was told that it had just left Ottawa and would arrive Monday morning before noon. This would make things tight but not impossible. I was suppose to spend the weekend with nana before I left and mum said that her and dad would wait for my passport and I could still go to nana’s. Nana’s was as always a good time and I enjoyed some quality time with her. Monday morning came around and I called home at 9 to check and big surprise it wasn’t there yet. I called every 30 minutes to get an update. The fantastic things about mothers are that when it comes to their children they don’t take any nonsense from everyone. In true mummy fashion, my mum called everyone from the post office to dispatch to the man in the truck to tell them that her daughter was leaving for Africa that night and needed her passport to go. She ended sending my dad to get it from the dispatch office and in true dad fashion he went. It was about 1pm when I got a call saying that she had the passport and they were going to try to catch the 3pm ferry. They arrived at nana’s just after 5 where we had a fantastic roast dinner followed by a mad dash for the door and airport. We made it and I said my goodbyes and got on my first flight. I had never flown KLM before, I would highly recommend it, it was one of the nicest planes and the service was brilliant. The plane was empty so many of us had a whole row to ourselves. I had asked for the ER exit row as they have more room, thinking that it would be nice if there was a full flight. I got the row but the arm rests don’t go up since your tray is in the arm so I couldn’t spread out. Amsterdam has a nice airport, I had about 6 hours to kill before my next flight, I had a brilliant idea that I would go online, send some emails maybe watch a movie….. Well that didn’t happen, I had put my computer on sleep and the battery was in the red zone, I thought I would just plug it in and everything would be gravy but I couldn’t find an outlet anywhere. I went to the internet café and there were no outlets everyone was just using their computer battery. So I walked around, drank coffee and relaxed. My flight to Nairobi was packed! I was able to get some sleep and watch a movie. My ticket gave me a 50 minute window to get from one gate to the next. I was a little nervous, and was happy when the flight attendant read out a list of flights and gates while we still were on the plane. My flight was leaving from gate 14. I landed and I was able to get off the plane pretty quickly, and went to gate 14, well my flight wasn’t leaving from there, I started to panic, so I ran around looking for a screen with a list of departures, my flight was infact leaving from gate 8. I walked to the gate and people were already boarding and I checked in. I also found out that it was making a stop on the way to Harare in the Congo. So I have spent 50 minutes in Kenya and 50 minutes in the Congo. I made it to Harare still intact. Bev met me at the other end and we drove to her place. It’s like I never left, we got to her place and surprise, surprise there was no ZESA. She had to go back to work and I passed out on her bed until about 7. I woke up to chicken and fries. We had a visit and I called home and reported that I had made it and that I would email as soon as I could. So that’s the last few days in a nut shell, it’s hard to believe it’s already Thursday, I feel like I’ve lost the week.