South Africa – Day 2-3

We are finally here. While its 10am in Sarnia, its 4pm here and we are all exhausted. Charity and Shane lost their main big piece of luggage and found out that it is all the way in Detroit. It never ever made it at all along the way. We’re going to try to get it shipped here, but its not looking good for that. It was four flights in total, and three of them were booked separately. So we were surprised our luggage made it all the way here. We then rented a car and followed Jayme into where we will be staying.

We spent the day in London, England yesterday with Charity and Shane’e friend Ahmed. He took us around and out for Lebanese food, and we watched the Canadian tennis team beat the British team on a big screen at Trafalgar square. Then we caught our connecting flight yesterday night to make it here for this morning.

We are staying at a place called the ACTS clinic near Masoyi. It is one of the best hospitals/programs in all of South Africa for AIDS victims. There are dorm room types spots here so we have moved all of our stuff in here and are getting settled, we are probably going to spend the next bunch of hours just recuperating from our 7 or so hours of lost sleep and the long flights with obnoxious people (one guy got arrested on our flight this morning when we landed.) The Hands at Work office is right across the street. We are heading out for our first visits in the morning with the Home Based Care teams.

But we are here, safe and sound, Jayme has brought us around to a bit of the places we will need to know and has helped us get settled in. Driving on the other side of the road is an interesting adventure, especially because I don’t know how many times I have grabbed the window crank to shift gears. Joe would be happy to know we rented a Volkswagen Polo. So far things have been great . People are very receptive and have been awesome to get to know; especially the people in the place that we are staying, different people who have given up years of their lives to be here and work with AIDS victims.

So far we haven’t had to do much adjusting. Our rooms come complete with showers and beds and toilets for all those that said I would be having rough bowel movements. So far so good.