We're Here!

I once got a smart-alecky reply to an email with that subject line ('we're all "here", Cathy'). Specifically, Dad and I are now in Jos, Nigeria, settled into the guest flat that Faith Alive Foundation uses to house the many volunteers that rotate in and out, staying for varying lengths of time.

The trip over was long but uneventful. We left Ft. Collins around 11:30 am on Friday (Dad frantically packing at the last minute and both of us stuffing as many donations and supplies into our bags as physically possible before making a mad dash to the Denver airport.) Our checked luggage was three 50-lb boxes full of medical supplies, books, eyeglasses, vitamins, clothes, shoes, and a laptop computer. We flew through Houston and then Amsterdam, finally arriving in Abuja (Nigeria's capital) around 8 pm on Saturday. For those of you doing the math, Abuja is 7 hours ahead of mountain time and 5 ahead of eastern time; that makes the trip a little over 25 hours.

Saturday night, we stayed in a guest house in Abuja before making the 3+ hour drive out to Jos on Sunday morning. The drivers here are like Central American drivers on speed. I managed to nap most of the way, but Dad was in the passenger seat and had to endure the literal front-row view of the adventure. At one point he turned around (when Godwin, our driver, was still driving) and said, "It's better than a roller coaster!" At another point (when we had stopped and Godwin was out of the car buying milk on the roadside), he said to me, "Someone almost dies about every five minutes." The roads are actually fairly recently paved and in decent condition, save the occasional bus-sized pothole. Godwin had no qualms whatsoever about serving into oncoming traffic in order to avoid them. Exciting!

More to come soon...