Monday, April 6, 2009

A Little Status Report on the May Trip

Taking a team to Sudan is an amazingly complicated thing, an intricate dance of people's schedules and the days planes fly and the various visas required and the cost of room and board, not to mention vaccinations and antimalarial meds and nets, what's acceptable to wear, what you might need for the conferences you think you're doing while there (and what you might need for the things they won't ask you to do till you get there), and how many kilograms you can take on the carefully weighted 10-seater for the final leg.

Here's the status of the current project: We have plane tickets to and from Kampala and arrangements for the flights into Sudan from there. We have reservations at the MAF guesthouse in Kampala going and coming, and I have almost everything I need to send off for Ugandan and Sudanese visas. One of the things I need is an official invitation to go to Sudan (for the South Sudan visas), and our friends in Lui don't have Internet right now, so that's going to be a little tricky to get. But I'm working on it. And I have ordered water filters. Still to do: buy some time on our Thuraya. I don't know why everyone calls it a Thuraya; I guess it's like saying my BlackBerry or my iPhone and just about that cool if you're in Sudan. Still to do: have the big team meeting in which we kind of figure out everything.

Here's why we're going, a reminder to myself in this bogged-down moment:

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2 comments:

  1. Bill SandersApril 7, 2009 at 6:28 PM

    Debra,

    Finally, I can raise my hand in class and go "Oooh! Oooh!", if only because I know geeky stuff -

    Thuraya is the name of the satellite used for satellite communications in that part of the world. The name is Arabic for Pleiades:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuraya

    Had to look into this when Deb G was getting ready to go over the first time.

    Thanks for the updates!

    Bill Sanders
    Advent, Crestwood

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  2. Dan HandschyApril 10, 2009 at 4:47 PM

    Debra,

    Reading about your arrangements makes me wish I was going. Another time. I hope you will say hello for me to Vasco, Gordon, Sosthen, Manyagugu and Stephen among all the rest. I've got some pictures for you to take to the diocesan archives in Lui.

    You will all be in Advent's prayers from now until you're home.

    Dan

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