Oh Holy Niiiiiiiiiiight........

Oh Holy Cow. One week tomorrow and I head off to Vancouver. The time has gone so fast. I guess I am as prepared as I'll ever be. I seem to have come down with some sort of Obsessive-Compulsive disorder concerning my suitcase however. I have packed and re-packed and packed yet again. It all fits too neatly, so obviously I am forgetting something crucial. But I keep telling myself that whatever I forget, I can always buy over there. Unless of course it's my passport or money or credit cards or glasses or medications. Hmmm....maybe I had better go and check out that suitcase again....

And guess what? I was surprised the night before last with this fantastic digital camera...oh my God, I was SO happy! Thank you, I just love you guys. What a great thing to do! Mind you, my head is almost exploding with the reading of the manuals, I feel like I am cramming for an exam, trying to learn all the basics before I leave. I have been fooling around with it though, and it doesn't really seem that hard to figure out. I'll have 22 hours on the plane with nothing else to do, I should be a pro by the time we land.

So when I return, I'll be able to post all sorts of great pictures on here, theoretically anyhow, whether I'll actually be able to figure it out may be a whole other story.

I can hardly believe that in only 15 more days I will be heading towards Africa! Well, I'll actually be heading towards Vancouver, but that's the start of the trip. Everything is purchased, the suitcase is packed ( more or less...I still need to do some serious fine tuning there.) and Nicole has e-mailed me our itinerary, complete with phone numbers of the hotels we have booked. Even they, the phone numbers, seem exotic; long and not in the 3-3-4 sequence that we have in North America. I like the idea of a phone number being 0747 787088, (just in case you ever need to call the Dhow Palace in Zanzibar.)

Scott will be home sometime tonight for Christmas, the roads are covered with black ice right now, so I hope the weather warms up a bit before he leaves Edmonton. This morning I couldn't walk down our driveway, it was a sheer sheet of ice, I had to slide and slither my way down. A very faint mist of rain is falling, and the temperature is just 0, so it will be a trecherous day for travel unless it warms up a degree or two.

I just came back from the hairdresser, with a very short cut which will hopefully be "care-free" during our trip. We won't have any blow-driers or curling irons with us, so hair will all be "wash n' wear", mind you, I guess we will have hats on for most of the time, so "hat-hair" will be my biggest worry!

A Sepia Coloured Walk.

I went for a walk in the woods behind our house yesterday, it was just about 4 PM, close to twilight at this time of year. I had actually planned to just go up the road a little ways, i don't relish the idea of being in the woods once the sun sets, especially when the temperature is -16. Even though I have walked those paths for more than 20 years, it's still very easy (for me anyhow) to get turned around and lost.

I looked yearningly at the path that I usually take, it's a little bit off the beaten trail, and there was 3 or 4 inches of fresh snow, I could see that no one had walked there since the snow had fallen, and I like to be the first one to leave footsteps, it reminds me of a Currier & Ives card. So off I went.

The sky was dark gray, heavy with unfallen snow and as soon as I was beneath the trees the temperature dropped and it was a little darker. The trees were extremely laden with snow and all I could see was trunks and limbs in a dark shade of brown, and all the snow, one shade of white. Usually you can see green needles from the ponderosa pine and different colours of bark and branches, but I suppose the combination of dark sky, twilight and fresh snow gave it this sepia colour. I felt like I had quickly been transported back into an old photograph and I almost didn't want to look down for fear I'd find my feet encased in high black button boots and my hands tucked into a rabbit-fur muff. I have often thought that I belong in another time, but I didn't want to be there just then.

I walked a little further down the path and came into a bit of an open area where the light was brighter. I looked behind me and I could see the green needles of the trees and the red bear berries as vivid as drops of blood in the snow, no shades of sepia at all. I wondered if I had imagined it all, or maybe I walked into a little bit of the past.

Well, I had the last of my shots today. In total I have had:
-Diptheria
-Tetanus
-Yellow fever
-Hep A
-Hep B
-Influenza
-Typhoid
I will drink the cholera vaccine and eat the Malaria pills and hope for the best! Our mosquito nets are treated (and some socks as well) and we have an ample supply of hand sanitizer, repellant's and other various health related items. So now watch me be trampled by an elephant and all the immunizations will be for naught. Although I have good health insurance too.

I did learn that the Malaria mosquitoes come out at twilight and the Dengue fever mosquitoes come out during the day, so you are never totally free from the disease ridden things. 35 more days until I leave! Yipeeeee!

Beautiful British Columbia! Just look at that scenery, why would a person want to live anywhere else?
And this is my beautiful friend Coral. I just love this picture.

Life is a Catch-22.

So I picked up my malaria meds today ($128.00 for 26 Malarone tablets) and I also got a prescription for Ciproflaxin ($45.00) which is a pretty potent antibiotic in case I get really bad Traveller's Diarrhea. Dr O'brien was a little reluctant to prescribe it, but I convinced him that I wouldn't take it foolishly or needlessly.

I came home and read the inserts very carefully, figuring I should know all that there is to know about NOT getting malaria. I see that one of the side effects of Malarone is diarrhea. Oh well, not a big deal because I have my Ciproflaxin. As I read the side effects for it, I see that, oddly enough, one of them is actually diarrhea. Oh well, I also have a package of Immodium. I check that out and see that one of it's side effects is an upset stomach. Well guess what ? I also have a bottle of Pepto Bismal! I read the insert of that only to discover that you should not take Pepto if you are taking Malarone!

Maybe I just won't even eat over there, I'll survive on fruit roll-ups and trail mix from home...

Winter has arrived! This is a picture from my friend Linda. Even though I hate the cold, it is so beautiful when it snows, everything is blue & white and fresh & clean.

Remember this song? "A quarter has a caribou on it, on it..."
Well, "Moyie has a caribou in it, in it..."

I am feeling very thrifty today. I have been pricing out mosquito nets for months now and I am horrified (HORRIFIED) at how much they cost. On line they are about $50 or so, and then of course shipping as well, and in town they have none, but will order them in at the insane price of $60-$75. I was aghast! The reason they are so pricey is because they need to be treated with permethrine, which is like a repellent, but more so. An untreated net is next to useless, the mosquitoes simply hang around until you emerge from the net. Normally that wouldn't be a huge problem, we have all had mosquito bites, but these Tanzanian ones carry not only malaria, but dengue fever as well.

So. What to do, what to do? It really bothered me to have to spend that amount of money on something that not only would I probably never use again, but after approximately 6 months, they need to be re-treated. Well, I did some research and discovered that you can purchase this permethrin and treat your own nets (untreated ones available at your local Wal-mart for $15) However, permethrin in not available in Canada., at least not to the likes of regular folks like us. You need to have special lisense and be some sort of industrialist. Which is silly because the main ingredient is made from chrysanthemum petals.

I found lots of it on the internet, but each time I tried to order it, la-di-da, "we cannot ship to Canada" Geez. I can go downtown and buy cough medicine and antifreeze and whip up some crystal meth, but I can't order chrysanthemums? But as it turned out, I have a friend in the states who was coming for a visit, and I ordered a can through Amazon, for $3.99 and had it sent to him, and he brought it here. Wal-mart had their nets on sale for $10. Yesterday, so I picked one up and I now have my treated net for the grand sum of $13.99, plus taxes. So I felt really quite smug about the whole thing.

Treating the Net:

This was an adventure on it's own. I very carefully read the instructions, they were mildly nerve-wracking, things like "Hazardous to humans and animals.Causes moderate eye irritation. Harmful if absorbed through the skin. Avoid contact with face, eyes and skin. Wash thoroughly after using and before eating, drinking, using tobacco and using the toilet." Well. Then they tell you to spray your clothes with it!

However, it's only dangerous in it's liquid form, once dry, it is simply a repellent. So I came downstairs, opened the basement door and windows (use in well ventilated area, away from wind), locked away the dog, wrapped a towel around my mouth, put on my winter gloves and opened the mosquito net which proceeded to explode from the package like some sort of living bridal veil, there were yards and yards of this fine netting swirling around me, blowing in the well ventilated area, (apparently not away from the wind) I thought perhaps I had purchased a multitude of nets by mistake, there seemed to be enough material there for a whole hotel. I managed to slap it down and get it under control; sprayed as instructed, then hung it to dry for 4 hours and ran out of the house.

When I returned, it was dry, there were no peculiar smells in the house, so I squished it all together, jammed it in a large zip-loc bag and brushed my hands off, heady with success.

Some hotels are very cheap. This is the Desert Rose. It is less than $1 a night. We shall not be staying here, I doubt they have internet connections...

You should "click" on the picture of Gypsy to enlarge it, you can see her worried little eyes "Do I look OK in this?? Don't laugh at me..." and the tip of her tongue sticking out. (the picture is down a little, below the pictures of the duck and goose)

Well I'll be damned, there it is. Maybe I can only do one at a time? Although it did ask me if I wanted to add another. I'll try 2 this time, and see what happens.

How annoying. I have tried 3 times to download pictures (or upload, ot WHATEVER!) and each time it tells me I am successful, yet no pictures appear. I'll try one more time and then call it quits for the night before I burst into old-lady-I-hate-this-computer tears. Tomorrow there will be 37 pictures of ducks and geese.....

All about Ducks and Dogs.

I just discovered that you can get film developed on a disk (disc?) and download the pictures that you like & then send them to people. Apparently this is very common knowledge, but it was a revelation to me! So I won't have to get a digital camera for my holiday, I can hopefully manage this way. We'll see, this entry will be all about experimenting.

If the pictures work, you'll see my "grand-dog" dressed up in her winter clothes, which she really does like, even though she seems to be sticking her tongue out at me. The jacket keeps her little bare city-bred belly a little warmer while we are on out walks,plus we praise her & tell her how beautiful she is, she rather likes that. She has a bit of an attitude...

On our walks we go to Idlewild Park, a 10 minute walk from my house. During the fall, the ducks and Canadian geese stop by to rest a bit prior to their journey south. The have become quite used to people feeding them bread, so as you walk by the lake, they paddle furiously over to you, honking and quacking and looking for treats.The drakes push the females out of the way, preening and stretching their glowing green heads towards me, the dowdy females wait and eat afterwards. The geese however, share their food and walk nicely with each other.I have read that geese mate for life, they certainly treat each other with the bird version of respect. I think you could fed them from your hand, although I don't want to try, it's really bad enough to be feeding them in the first place, but they are so gorgeous and to see them so close is such a treat. Gypsy sits amazingly still and watches, her body tense and eyes riveted on them. She is just aching for me to say "Ok...GO!" but of course (to her dismay) she isn't going to get that command. She is the best behaved dog I have ever met.

This is Haydom, the town that Nicole and I will be spending some time at. The red-roofed buildings are (we think) the hospital complex, and they are also in the process of building a new childcare clinic, which we will also be able to visit. It's quite exciting because this is "real" Tanzania, which many tourists simply don't get to see. I suspect that this is where our mosquito nets and water purification tablets will come in handy. I don't think that there is much in the line of hotels here, but the hospital will hopefully have some sort of sleeping arrangements for us. I don't relish the idea of sleeping under a baobob tree....mosquito net or not!

Wow! Will you take a look at this? This is the Dhow Palace, an Omani Sultan's home from the 1800's that has been turned into a 16 room hotel and this is where Nicole & I will be staying for 3 nights in January! The rooms are furnished with Zanzibarian antiques and each room has a balcony that overlooks the courtyard and pool. It's only $90 US a night (for the both of us) and breakfast is included. I don't think I have ever stayed anywhere quite this exotic and I am pretty excited about it!

Hmmm, I may have found another picture hidden in the depths of various document and folders. I will just try to download it here and see if it works. If it works, you'll see Steven and I when we were in Arizona this summer. This was waaaaay above Sedona, about 9500 feet above!

Why is everything so expensive? Why can I not be rich? I had 2 more shots today, the second Hep B from that series and a typhoid also. That came to another $60.00. Then, the health nurse mentioned that I really should consider cholera as well, which comes in tandem with a diarrhea med (yeah, always nice to not have diarrhea while on holiday...) but that's another $80.00. I'll have to think about that one, but you KNOW I'll end up getting that one too.

Then I went to have my eyes checked, which was $30.00, although that made me happy because it should have been $75.00 (lousy BC Government anyhow) I went to a new place (because they give Airmiles, and anything free is worthwhile!) He looked at my eye history and said that since I had had 2 eye surgeries I was entitled to a discount on the $75.00. The guy I usually go to had never bothered to check that out, so this new guy has a patient for life now. However the new glasses are just over $600.00, which made the $45.00 savings on the check up seem like a moot point.

I came home and checked out our Health Care Plan, and they pay $250.00 for vision care once every 24 months, and of course it hasn't been 24 months since I last got new glasses (this whole getting older thing simply sucks...eyes shouldn't change in less than 2 years, bad enough that the hair turns grey, the ass gets a mind of it's own and the flab under my arms keeps waving long after my hands have stopped, now my eyes grow weak as well?) However, it will be 24 months in January so I'll just wait and get new ones when I come back from my holiday. Really, my luck I 'd get new ones before we leave and I'd lose them in a wildebeest stampede.

That's the travel update for now!

I had my first comment on my blog today, thanks Pauline, I feel like such an author now! 82 more days to go until I leave Cranbrook, I think I am pretty organized until I realize that we haven't even booked any rooms yet, we have to wait at least another week until Nicole finds out which hospitals (and when) she'll be going to. Now it looks like she'll be going to Jo'burg for 3 or 4 days and I'll be going to Zanzibar. I spent yesterday doing a bit of research for Zanzibar and it just seems so exotic, it will definately be the most "foreign" place I have been to so far.

I get my final innoculation tomorrow and then it's just a matter of making a doctors appointment and getting malaria meds. The shots were the Hep A and B series, tetanus, typhoid, yellow fever and diptheria.

Well this is my first entry and this is the only picture I have! Our computer had a complete nervous collapse and I lost all the pictures that I had, which, granted, were not many, but this is the lone snap that remained. Just goes to show the tenacity of pitbulls! (and is he not a gorgeous one???)

I am just checking out this whole blog thing to see how it works and to get the hang of it so that when I take my holiday in January...to AFRICA, I can write about it here, and post photos for you all. You may care, you may not, but it will all be here for your reading pleasure, the good, the bad and the expensive.