I must apologize for my delay in posting the first blog of the season, though as often happens, other things get in the way, and then there is the matter of writer’s block, that subtle little thing that is so hard to overcome. Thankfully, I’ve gotten the bug to jot down some of our experiences to share with you in these following paragraphs that will hopefully give you some perspective on what it’s like to travel halfway around the world to a completely different culture and practice neurology.

As you may well recall, our trip last spring, though quite successful, had a few wrinkles as far as our transportation was concerned given the unfortunate, and completely needless, turmoil that erupted in the Middle East, and has continued to smolder with no end in sight, thanks to our incompetent administration. As we had flown through Doha, Qatar, en route to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, over the last ten years with no significant difficulties (other than one canceled flight that I won’t bore you with the details now), it was a near disaster when the three of my residents were diverted back to Philadelphia after 8 hours in the air (a total of 16 hours including the return) and the other resident was diverted to Rome, not quite the African continent, but I guess closer than Philadelphia. Everyone eventually made it after several days and obtaining completely new bookings, and life went on.

For this trip, several of us booked our flights once again on Qatar, who was now back flying their regular routes (well, mostly) and two others flew on Turkish Air and Air Ethiopia, respectively, as they were leaving from NYC and Washington, D.C. For some reason, Qatar couldn’t book us direct from Doha to Kilimanjaro and routed us instead through Nairobi for a brief stopover and a quick hop down to Tanzania as long as everything went smoothly. The flight from Doha was delayed on the tarmac, and once landing in Nairobi, we had to hoof it quite a long way to get to our next gate – when we arrived, the person at the gate handed us our boarding passes as everyone had already boarded the bus to get to the plane. I asked her about our luggage, thinking for certain that it wouldn’t make it, but she told us she had already confirmed it was coming – I was still incredibly doubtful. Kyle and I were on a Precision Air flight, and Becca had been booked on a Kenya Airways flight that had apparently been delayed two hours, so we had to separate and hope that everything would go according to plan with everyone rendezvousing at Kilimanjaro. Colin, who had flown on Turkish Air, had already arrived in country after midnight, and was lying low at the KIA Lodge where he could get some sleep and a nice breakfast before we picked him up later in the morning. Shannon, who was flying on Air Ethiopia, would not be arriving until nearly two hours after us, though now along with Becca, who had been delayed in Nairobi. Sound confusing? It was, but everyone amazingly made it through in one piece along with our luggage which was key, as getting it delivered in the middle of nowhere can be a real challenge.

Once through customs (which can be a real challenge for me) and with our passports stamped, we all met up with Shwaibu, our driver who had driven the Land Rover to the airport to take us back to Arusha where we would drop him off and finally head on our own to Karatu, a two-hour drive through some amazing scenery, though the residents always get some sleep given how the two days of travel to get here. It has always been a tradition that we would stop at Pendo and Leonard’s house, my Tanzanian family, for brunch before we continued our trek to Karatu, and Pendo, even though she wouldn’t be there, had already communicated to me that brunch was waiting for us. After a quick meal of sausage, pancakes, yams, fruit, delicious fresh-squeezed juice, and tea masala, we loaded back into the Land Rover for the remainder of our drive. One small little glitch, though, was getting the stretch Land Rover, which is the size of a small school bus with the turning radius of the Exxon Valdez, backed out of their gate onto the less than single lane road across which is a several foot drop into a vacant field. Well, needless to say, it didn’t go to well and I backed the Land Rover over the edge so one rear wheel was completely in the air with one of the front wheels off the ground as well. This was certainly not a good situation.

We quickly gathered a crowd of young men who from the area or who had been passing by and spotted our precarious situation, and it seemed everyone had a different idea of how to get us out of our predicament. We unloaded the baggage from the overhanging back of the vehicle, which was sitting at least four feet in the air now, and placed on the hood to weigh the front end down and try to get the front wheel some traction, but to no avail. Pushing seemed to be hopeless given the size of the vehicle and the fact that the rear suspension seemed to be hung up on the drop off. Finally, we pulled our hi-lift jack out of the back, propped it up on a cement block and a rock for extra elevation, and raised the back end of the vehicle to the height of the height of the road. With several people sitting on the hood along with our luggage to weigh down the front end, and several individuals pushing from the back, I got in and slowly let out the clutch, hoping we wouldn’t slip backward. Somehow, we had enough traction in the front to free up the rear suspension and lurch forward with the wall of their gate only several feet in front of me. We were finally free and on the tiny road that ran in front of their house.

There was still the matter of making the ten-point turn to get the vehicle pointed in the right direction, which, without power steering in a vehicle that weighs many, many tons, was as difficult as it sounds. Seeing how hard I was struggling to point the front wheels in the right direction, one of the young men relieved me of my duty only to struggle the same amount, though we were finally headed in the right direction. After loading all the luggage back in and giving a few dollars to the crowd that had helped, we were finally on our way to Karatu with nary a scratch, though my ego had been quite deflated. Thankfully, the remainder of the drive was entirely uneventful, and we met Saidi at the Raynes House, my second home for much of the year. Being back at FAME, a place I have come to know so well over the last sixteen years, made every we had been through to get here seem like a distant memory, though I would have to say that the pure exhaustion I felt at that moment, managed to remind me of the hurdles we’d overcome. It was nothing, though, that nice hot shower (my first in over 48 hours) and a good meal at the Lilac Café couldn’t cure, and it was soon time to retire to our rooms and get some well-deserved sleep as tomorrow we would begin our work in earnest.