Back in Africa!!

Greetings from chilly Mozambique!!! I'm happy to report that both flights went well....and they let me through without questioning the name discrepancy (praise the Lord!). The first flight was uneventful, Mary watched movies and I dozed off for most of it.

We arrived in London with less than hour to catch our second flight. We waited forever for the plane to pull up to the terminal. We had to transfer from terminal 4 to 1 via bus and the hallways in both seemed never-ending! I'm afraid I left poor Mary in the dust, trying to hurry along. We made it fortunately and (in true African style) they were running late. It looked like half of South Africa was trying to get on the plane. There was much confusion as British Airways is enforcing a new rule that passengers can carry only one piece of carry-on luggage. Fortunately we knew about this ahead of time and were prepared. Many people had to either fit their handbags in their carry-on luggage or discard them right there. It made for many disgruntled people!!

Finally we boarded the plane, but though our seats were in the same row, they were on opposite sides of the plane. We each had a window seat - we also had an empty seat each next to us, so we were able to sprawl a bit which was nice. Mary watched about 4 movies and I must confess I slept almost the entire way.

It didn't really, truly hit me that we were heading back to Africa until I woke up and looked out the window to find most glorious sunrise! (we were flying over Angola at that point) Reduced me to tears!!

All day yesterday was a feast for the senses... Dad got us some driewors/biltong (dried beef/antelope venison -sort of like jerky) to snack on and we were delightedly sniffing the smells and gazing out the window the whole trip. We drove through the Kingdom of Swaziland to Mozambique and got the chance to see the new highway from the cities of Mbabane to Manzini... and I must say, the roads more than rival those of Boston!!

We stopped in Manzini to stock up on groceries and unfortunately it was dark when we passed through the town of Siteki (where we lived back in 1991-2) we saw our old house though as we drove past. We made it through the border into Mozambique very quickly (always a blessing) and about an hour later...home again!!

It's pretty cool here and as expected, there is woodsmoke heavy in the air...with all the cooking fires and veld fires. I don't like to think about breathing it in, but it does make for GORGEOUS sunsets!!

We pulled out just what we needed for the night, had a bowl of soup and headed for bed soon after. Exhausted, but thrilled to be back!