Mission Trip to Sierra Leone

I have my visa to enter Sierra Leone - wow! REALLY getting scared now.

Little things like, everyone drinks bottled water, so that means, don't you think, that eating fresh veg and fruits is not a good idea, since they may have been washed in the regular water.

And trip insurance - since my part in this trip is being paid by a grant, I should be able to get insurance to cover the church in case something happens that I can't go and the church has to pay back the grant. But can you find such a thing? NO! Not unless you also pay for a lot of other coverage I neither need nor want, which jacks the price up. I know I'm unreasonable - I think $200+ for this insurance, which will have to come out of my own money, is way out of line. But in the end I'm going to have to do it because I am a hyper-responsible person.

And breakfast - it is supposedly included, but it is a free continental breakfast, which means no protein, only unhealthy, sugary carbohydrates, which I cannot eat first thing in the day, and juice, which I don't drink, and I still can't tolerate milk or tomatoes since the chemo. So I worry how I will start my day. I might just have to accept that I have only tea in the morning and will eat rice and maybe some fish and come home lots slimmer (always look for the silver lining!).

Truthfully, I have no business traveling anywhere outside the United States, Canada and Great Britain. I've become like the older women who traveled with Newlin and me to Israel and Egypt in 1984. They wanted to make that pilgrimage but they wanted to have nothing to do with anything indigenous. They wanted expensive United States style cuisine and Newlin and I, having very little money, were eating humous and falafels. All they did was complain (according to my perception).

Now that I'm older, and have the usual health issues of a woman of over 63, I worry for my comfort and my health. I'm chock full of immunizations for exotic diseases, and burdened with pills against malaria and traveler's diarrhea. I want to meet the girls of the school in Waterloo. I also want to stay home where I know the food and the water and the terrain and the climate won't do me in.

But I will go, and I will try as hard as I can not to make my fellow travelers miserable. There is nothing at all on my calendar for this week, so that's good. I have time to do my "practice packing" ( ! ). Next week, Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, Ash Wednesday two services plus a couple of visits to shut-ins, Thursday in the office giving last minute instructions to my secretary, and Thursday night at 10:30 p.m., I'll be rambling off into the wild blue yonder, headed east for Africa.

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Meanwhile, I heard from one of my friends from my one term at Westcott House in Michaelmas 1996. She found this blog and isn't that just a miracle! Way cool. Cheers, all.