Zimbabwe Trip 4 - Part K

Friday - May 26, 2006

Today was a rather laid back day, all things considered. I showed Casey what I had done, and it turns out I made a bit of a mistake. I shouldn't have replaced all the values for stickers with what was in the AFI system. I should have had a separate column. This is because the sticker amount is what was originally put into the stickers by the measles program. The final amount in the AFI is what was "left" after all the money was moved about from here to there over a 2 year period. So having a separate AFI column shows how much WHO moved the money around to pay for other things. Whoops.

The rest of the work day went relatively quickly. Casey took me to get takeout Thai again. It's such a relief to have something different. There aren't many different places to eat in Harare. Well, those that do exist are in the suburbs, and I can't get to them. So a little Thai takeout is a nice change of pace.

I missed the regular bus. Turns out it left promptly at 2:15pm. Of course, all week the buses have been late, but I should have known they wouldn't be on Friday. Luckily, the smaller van was still there, so it took me back to the Meikles. I had a short nap in the hotel before both Mike and my mom called. Mike called to tell me to turn on CNN because there was some drama about shots being fired in the House office garage. Turned out that it was some hydraulic thing backfiring, because there was no evidence of a gunshot or of injury. Nevertheless, they shut down the House side of the Capitol. Better safe than sorry, though. Mom called to tell me she's been sick. Apparently, she's had a wicked illness that gives her severe diarrhea and vomiting. The doctor didn't do much for her on Thursday, so she didn't know if she should call back on Friday and say nothing was better. But she was at the point that she couldn't even keep down dry toast. The only thing she could keep down was Gatorade, which is lucky considering her diarrhea, which apparently is green. Oh, and her urine was blue. BLUE?? Good Lord. Anyway, she called the doctor and he gave her antibiotics for the weekend and said to call back on Tuesday since Monday is Memorial Day in the USA. I hope she'll be OK. Being sick like that when you're by yourself is never fun.

I ordered dinner in the room, watched some BBC Food, and then watched Alien vs. Predator on MNet. It was pretty good...independent of the two franchises, but at least the story was plausible. I then settled down to sleep. But I keep waking up to sneeze, so I hope I'm not catching a cold. That's all I need for my flight back on Thursday...a cold.