Thank God for showers at the Amsterdam Airport!!! Well maybe I’m getting a head of myself, lets start at the beginning. Last week started out like any other week, I got up Tuesday morning to a phone message from Zimbabwe telling me I had to come back ASAP or they would need to find someone else. I had planned to go back but was trying to make a little more money to go back with but I was needed. So after I listened to the message, looked at mum and said “I need to leave now!” and I booked a ticket for the following Monday. So the week became a rush of work, buy a ticket, getting insurance, packing my bags, picking up last minute things, trying to say goodbye to as many people as I could and caught the Monday morning ferry to Vancouver for a Monday night flight! And that’s how I got to appreciate the showers at the Amsterdam Airport! The flight from Vancouver to Amsterdam in 9 hours with an 9 hour difference and a 6 hour waiting period, the flight to Nairobi is 8.5 hours with an additional 2 hour difference and a 2.5 hour waiting period and the flight to Harare is 3 hours minus 1 of the hours from Nairobi for a total flight time of 20.5 hours flying time, 10 hour time difference and a waiting time of 8.5 hours, for a grand total of 39 hours of travel! The bonus I think is that both long flights are over night flights and God has blessed me with the gift of sleeping anywhere, anytime. So not only am I clean BUT I’m not exhausted!!! It’s the little things isn’t it? And to make things sweeter I was in a row of 3 with only 2 people so I was able to use the middle seat for my legs to sleep, which is a total bonus!!! Now if only Nairobi had showers. These showers aren’t the garbage kind at roadside motels, these are nice rain showers with fantastic hot water and amazing pressure, they put most households to shame. Did I tell you about the showers? At 15 Euros everybody wins!

I was fortunate enough to get my own row on the Amsterdam to Nairobi flight, which is 8.5 hours, so I was able to sleep most of the way. From there I went I flew to Harare!

I arrived in Harare and went through passport control. What I had was to get in was an acceptance letter from immigration but not the original, a copy because I couldn’t be in the country while the visa was being processed and the acceptance letter couldn’t come to me. Passport control had to have a conference while I was waiting to decide if that was enough to let me in. My contact wasn’t picking me up and so the original letter was in Nyanga. The decided to let me through with a 7 day pass, a form to let me pick up my permit, however I wasn’t allowed to travel outside Harare. From there I went to pick up my luggage, which I am pleased to say was NOT OVER WEIGHT! Then I had to clear customs, I had nothing to declare and went through that door, I was pulled over by an officer to have my suitcases go through security as you do when you are traveling. They decided they wanted to go through both suitcases, both were emptied and everything was questions, each cd was checked, all my textbooks, my safe was opened, all pockets were checked. I brought 2 bags of used glasses to donate to an optometrist who checks peoples eyes and gives them glasses for free. The officer wanted a detailed explanation of why I had them, how much they were worth, what was going to happen them. He then wanted me to clear them with customs. So I packed up my stuff and went to the other side, where a new officer asked me to empty my suitcases AGAIN! However this time he just looked at the glasses and asked me the same questions, he looked at the glasses and said, “I don’t want these, you can take them, pack up and go”. So it all ended ok except it took me 2 hours to get to the terminal. From the airport I went to immigration to sort out my work permit. The office found my file relatively quickly but it took them an hour to re-read it and write out my permit. Luckily I was able to get it just before the office closed.

The next 2 days were spent running errands and getting reacquainted with the city and the country, readjusting to life in Zimbabwe.

I then left Saturday morning for Nyanga. I had forgotten how beautiful the drive is or how bad the roads are but I made it with a dog in tow, Molly, my new roommate to keep me company. She’s 3 months old, she half Alsatian, half mixed breed. So we arrived at our new home which is across the street from the site and I can see construction from the yard.

The house is HUGE! It’s a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom house, with a covered garage, mud room, living room, dining room and kitchen. The yard is also massive, I could play a real soccer game on the side lawn! They have a fantastic porch with a brai (bbq), table and deck chairs! I feel like I should run it as a guest house.

So now to work, I met with the contractor on site and we went around and talked about issues and what’s been going on, they’ve started digging, and making bricks!! It’s starting to take shape.