Sunday in Johannesburg

I write from the very elegant airport hotel at the Oliver Tambo (formerly Johannesburg) Airport. I am in the midest of a whirlwind tour of Africa site visiting potential grantees for a US Foundation with a team of Americans and South Africans--we will be joined by a gentleman from Mali on the next leg which will take us to Tanzania. I've just come from exercising in a gym at the top of the hotel where you can see planes landing out the windows. Very posh--and a big contrast to the places we visited in Zambia on Thursday and Friday.

The pictures are from a District clinic and a rural clinic in Chongwe District just outside of Lusaka. All of the sights feel very familiar and somehow comforting; I always like being back in Africa. It's hard to remember that my first visit to this part of the world was only eight years ago; my perspective has certainly changed since then. We met a number of remarkable people including a very impressive midwife who delivers about 30 babies a month all by herself at the rural clinic in the bottom picture.

The picture of the team walking into a building was taken after considerable travel over slow and muddy roads--it's rainy season now. We went to the District office which was too small to house our meeting and so drove to another site with nothing much around it--but when we got inside the people waiting for us had a television tuned to CNN on which they were watching New York's remarkable airplane story. It certainly has become a very small world.

Everyone here is of course excited about Tuesday; in Zambia the Americans have organized a black tie dinner at which everyone will watch the actual inauguration on television before proceeding to an evening of dancing. I'll be in Dar es Salaam and plan to find someplace to watch with other people.