Hello Backpack, My Old Friend.

After finally nailing down tickets 10 days ago, a friend kindly informed me that Vancouver and Cape Town are exact opposite points of the globe, making it one of the longest flights ever. Thank goodness I'm flying Seattle to Cape Town... far more bearable.

Tentative flight plan: Seattle to Frankfurt [11 hours]. 14-hour layover in Frankfurt (hopefully spent in Frankfurt itself vs. just the airport). Frankfurt to Cape Town [another 11 hours].

The tentative route once in Africa:

The tentative plan: Meet my friend, Ina, in the Cape Town airport on Wednesday morning. Stay for a few weeks. Explore, check out UCT's Public Health Masters program, and intern with an AIDS project. The trip up to Zambia will most likely be via plane, and we'll be in a small town called Chingola for 2 weeks, where Ina has UK friends starting a self-sustaining farm/orphanage. A train will supposedly get us from Zambia to the coast of Tanzania (over the course of 3 days, or 5, depending on the number of track delays), and after a day or two in Dar Es Salaam, we'll (enthusiastically) jump on a bus for the 2-day trip north to Kenya. Our last stop is the dearly-loved Kitale, to see some much-missed faces and places from our internships there in 2008, and hopefully help Transformed International get it's first AIDS home started. Then fly home from Nairobi the end of May.

As I said, tenative, because that's how things go in Africa.

More from the other side of the world!