Fly Emirates!After meeting at the church to load bags and pray, we left for the airport. Our ALAG team joined up with three others from California at SFO before departing on a red-eye flight to New York on Friday, September 28th. We met up with the remainder of our team (from North Carolina) at JFK with moments to spare (they had a very tight connection) and we boarded for flight on Emirates Air to Dubai.
Don't even ask me how much my latte cost... It was in dirhams!After a 3 hour layover in Dubai (last chance for Starbucks!) we departed on the last leg of our journey, arriving in Dar Es Salaam on Sunday afternoon. After some general chaos, we were escorted through customs by the local chief of police who had arranged to meet us (we have been hassled in the past by local customs officials who demanded bribes in order to release our bags).
The landscaping at the airport in Dar Es Salaam says, "Karibu" (Welcome!)
Outside the airport, we met up with R McD from CHaRA. After towering all our bags onto one small truck, we got on our rented bus and went to our hotel. After a little time to rest, we had a team meeting where we got a chance to meet everyone and were briefed on local customs, what to expect etc. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant owned by a friend of R's (After doing two trips with R- I am convinced that he has friends who own restaurants in every village or town across Tanzania!).
We returned to our hotel to repack our bags (J and I only needed to take one bag to Zanzibar between us, we left the other bag at the hotel in Dar). In spite of the jet lag and general exhaustion, I only managed to get 4 hours of sleep before we were up again at 5am. We left the hotel at 6am to catch a flight to Zanzibar and arrived in time for breakfast.
Boarding our flight on national airline, Precision Air, notice the propellers!Next post... Malaria clinics in Zanzibar!
-LeeAnn
