Africa Prep

A few months ago my friend Allison asked me if I wanted to volunteer with Music for Life, the supporting organization of the African Children's Choir, volunteering in Uganda with children.  I decided that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, simultaneously a humanitarian effort, a mission trip, a vacation, and an opportunity to hang out with old friends and make new ones so I accepted.  Music for Life is an organization that believes in using education and Christianity to help Africa's children grow up to become Africa's future leaders.  Our team of 7 people will be providing day camps for children in Uganda.  Each day we will have a Bible study, a health and wellness seession, crafts, games, and music.  We will be offering camps in different locations over the course of a three week period.

Finding cheap flights to anywhere in Africa is hard.  Our first attempts would have left us paying upwards of $3000 each for flights.  Allison decided to google "missionary airfares" and, sure enough, a company from the states poped up.  Thanks to EconomyTravel.com we ended up paying about $2000 for our flights because we are going to do mission work.

Now, you can't go all the way to Africa without going on a safari, of course!  So we have a 3 week safari booked too!  We did a fair amount of research and decided to book with African Budget Safaris.  We scoped out a bunch of different options, but chose these guys.  So far they've been really great to deal with.  We're headed to several different countries: Zimbabwae, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzinia and Kenya.

Things that need doing before going to Africa:

• Last Wedensday I spent $550 on vacinations and today I spent another $370 on Malaria medication. 
• Doctor check up (to make sure Malaria meds won't kill me)
• Dentist visit (because I don't want my teeth falling out while in Africa)
• Contact Lens appointment (because I think contact lenses are hard to buy in the Serengeti)
• Buy supplies: sleeping bag, power converter, new camera with 20x optical zoom (because if there is a hippo on the horizon, I want a good picture of it...), tons of memory cards, etc, etc, etc
• Pay for mission trip, pay for flight, pay for safari
• Book hostels and hotels
• Figure out bus schedules
• Shave my head
• Figure out travel insurance, health insurance
• Try and calm my mom down
• Take my dukoral
• Plan out VBS stuff, figure out supplies
• Inform credit card companies of overseas use
• Get my life together so when I come home I am not overwhelmed
• and the list goes on.........

There is so much more to do before departing (including taking 25 teenage girls to Ottawa for a week - click here to learn more about that adventure).  I have been to Wal-Mart about a dozen times picking up this and that (btw, how much pit stick does a guy bring on a two-month African adventure?), I have been to the mall trying to find clothes that will work when dry, wet, dirty, stinky, ripped, etc.  Deciding on a camera has been really hard.......  I have been to Mountain Equiptment Co-op in Caglary once already, and it looks like I need to make another trip there before departure. 

My po-ang is my official Africa packing pile.