I've been home from Scotland nearly six weeks now so it must be time to hit the road again and I leave October 12 for a two week trip to Thailand. I'll be working one week for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok then moving to the southeast at a coastal town named Sriracha to do a two-day job with a transport company and finishing up with a two-day job even further inland at a village named Rayong. As it's panning out, this will be a two-week job.
The medical mission trip to Peru is ticketed and the itinerary is set--very subject to change. We are basically a Texas-based group this trip and will meet at Houston for a flight to Lima on November 3. There are seventeen of us and I understand I'm not the only first-timer so we will basically be meeting at the airport for the first time. From Lima we will be flying north to the city of Piura near the Bolivian border and will be spending the week at a hotel there then commuting each day to the small village of Vivate. At Vivate they will convert the local school into a medical clinic for five days and we will be providing medical, dental and optical services for the villagers. I don't know what I'll be doing but it may involve assembling eye glasses, cleaning dental instruments, maintaining crowd control or any number of other things. I really anticipate this will be a meaningful week and am looking forward to it.
The medical mission trip to Peru is ticketed and the itinerary is set--very subject to change. We are basically a Texas-based group this trip and will meet at Houston for a flight to Lima on November 3. There are seventeen of us and I understand I'm not the only first-timer so we will basically be meeting at the airport for the first time. From Lima we will be flying north to the city of Piura near the Bolivian border and will be spending the week at a hotel there then commuting each day to the small village of Vivate. At Vivate they will convert the local school into a medical clinic for five days and we will be providing medical, dental and optical services for the villagers. I don't know what I'll be doing but it may involve assembling eye glasses, cleaning dental instruments, maintaining crowd control or any number of other things. I really anticipate this will be a meaningful week and am looking forward to it.
After we close the clinic we will be flying back to Lima where about half of us will stay over and catch a plane to Cusco, high in the Andes Mountains. From there we will take a train to Pisac, a Peruvian village in the Sacred Valley on the Urubamba River with a famous craft market. From there we will spend a day at the Machu Picchu world heritage site before returning to Lima and Houston.
In December, I am tentatively scheduled for a 3 1/2 week job in West Africa in Cameroon to work with the Cameroon-Chad Oil Transport Company (COTCO)--a company I've worked with in the past both in Cameroon and Chad. I will be located in Douala and from my past experience, it’s a hardship location, but at least I'll know what to expect this time. As it's scheduled right now, I would be leaving immediately after Thanksgiving and returning three days before Christmas. There's an outside chance the job might be postponed until January but either way, it will be the end of a very unusual year work wise…..
No comments:
Post a Comment