Travel Update

So I’ve clearly been delinquent in keeping up with my travel log. That is just how it rolls some times. I’ll be catching up on my adventures in Zimbabwe over the next week with some best of recaps. In the mean time I wanted to update on the where is Miel status.

In the Harare airport as I type this, but offline at the moment. I’m headed to Nairobi this morning to meet up with a colleague and attend a couple of donor meetings tomorrow. Then I’m on to Kigali on Saturday to meet another colleague for a night there before driving back over to DR Congo.

I’ll be in DRC for minimum of six weeks, and likely closer to two plus months, give or take. I’m helping to fill in for one of my Country Directors who will be enjoying a much deserved holiday in Europe with his family.

Having been on the road now for nearly two months I’m about at the half way point in my travels this time around. Having been gone for six weeks in the fall, the entire month of January, all of March, and since early May, I will have been home for 15 weeks in a year and on the road for the other 37 weeks. I guess that makes it about two thirds gone, and a third at home. Last year it was one third on the road. When I interviewed for my job I was told it could be between 10% and 90%, so I guess that falls within the bell curve.

It’s the journey not the destination.

Indeed the journey, and the wait in some cases. After writing this post in the airport, may travel was delayed. The short story is that I was in the Harare airport for seven hours before my flight was canceled. The long story is that the flight was late, and then it had a technical problem in the air and was sent back to Nairobi, then they had to change planes, then they had to change staff, then the flight left, and then 3 hrs later it turns out the flight never left, at the end, and then they canceled it.

Means another weekend in Harare. Life could be worse.

Miel