What they don't tell you in the guidebooks.

Hello Everyone, just a quick greeting from Janet.  Everything is going very well here. This trip has been enormously productive and points us where we need to go to achieve our upcoming goals for The Gretta Foundation. Meg just finished blogging about our meeting with the Minister of Health (himself!) as well as our Thanksgiving dinner with Sr. Cathy at her convent. These were both awesome experiences.

 A less awesome experience happened the other morning when we got to visit yet another health clinic. This time I was on the opposite side of the bed...this time as the patient. I had woken up with what I thought was numerous mosquito bites. However within a very short time my body overall was covered with nasty itchy welts and my face was swelling up. Eyes, lips and ears all swelled up and it was very alarming. The hotel took us quickly to a clinic frequented by Westerners. I received excellent care and with the help of prednisone I was on my way within a few hours. It slowed me down for a day or so but I'm back to full speed now.

Meg and I are still reflecting on our last road trip to Lira last week. We blogged already about the good things that came out of that time for our foundation. I'm still shaking my head though at some of the non-health healthcare experiences we had. The road stop was for one something! It was a somewhat sophisticated affair with gas and a grocery store. It had a large set of restrooms for travelers. I waited in line with other ladies and was pleased to see that the toilets were of the flush variety even though they had no seats. However, I was quite unnerved to see that the flushing water was brown. And then when I went to wash my hands I was even more so when I saw that that water was the same. I'm afraid to wonder why it was that shade of brown! (JP)