Feb 22/23, 2008 – Day 1/2
Welcome to the blog of the IVUmed trip to Nigeria of 2008. We have just arrived in Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) from various locations around the US. Sherry Young and Pauletta Hampton set off from Tucson…and without a hitch arrived at Chicago O’Hare. They were joined by Catherine deVries who also had an uneventful flight from Salt Lake City. I (Tim Davies) had flown in from Norfolk and spied 3 women who matched their descriptions (from the FBI’s most wanted list). I managed to get up the courage to speak to 3 lovely women, and for the first time in my life…a group of women didn’t tell me to get lost! Having made the introductions we caught our flight to Frankfurt.
On arrival in Frankfurt(at 6am local time), we stopped for a pleasant sit down breakfast with Pauletta choosing the Munich breakfast. Nothing like starting your day off with 2 boiled German sausages, a pretzel and some mustard! The rest of us wimped out with some more standard fare. However, all of us did get treated to the traditional European form of greeting known as the $30 breakfast. Danke!
A few hours later we caught our flight to Abuja and surprisingly arrived on time with all of our baggage. The flight from Frankfurt was beautiful - I can’t remember the last time I spent hours peeking outside the windows of an airplane. It started with the towering peaks of the Alps and the clear skies continued over the Mediterrean. I, having never been to Africa, was stunned by the never ending sand dunes of the Sahara desert.
After a benign trip through immigration and customs, we met our drivers, Ezekiel and Ben at the airport. We traveled into Abuja to spend the night at a local guesthouse run by a missionary couple. The car ride into town was eye opening. Fires and garbage by the (paved) roadside and vans/buses stopping on the shoulder as cars zip closely by at 60-70 mph. Lots of people everywhere - buying bags of water, sprinting across the street, waving hello, sharing a laugh at a roadside table.
We retired to the guesthouse to enjoy a meal of lip lik’n good chicken and fries. A few hours later, Kurt McCammon joined us here in Abuja after a trouble-free KLM flight from Norfolk via Amsterdam. He enjoyed the leftover fried chicken – made him feel like he had never left Virginia. But he did claim that he
Unfortunately, Tom Hicks and Susan Kalota were not as lucky. They had to reschedule their flights and were now traveling through London (instead of meeting Kurt in Amsterdam). We are planning to meet them first thing in the morning at the airport as we travel up to Jos tomorrow.
Tim Davies
~Catherine deVries
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