Day 0

We checked in at Sea-Tac and prepared for our dreaded 14-hour flight to Dubai. How the heck are us movement experts going to sit still for that long?!?! I have to say though, the flight was more tolerable because it was Emirates, and they fed us every 3 hours and we had a complimentary beer and wine. We arrived in Dubai that night at 8pm to check into our hotel complimentary of our airline. We ate dinner at 9:30 that was free courtesy of our airline before signing up for a $30 tour of all the big sights of Dubai. Other than it being 100 degrees during our tour at 11PM, we saw some amazing sights, including the tallest building in the world in Burj Khalifa, the largest mall in the world, and the only 7-star hotel in the world. After the tour of the Middle East’s modern and progressive city, we headed to bed to rest up for our 10-hour flight the next day.

A 10-hour flight was way easier after suffering through a 14-hour flight from the day before. We had a layover in Lusaka, Zambia before arriving to Harare, Zimbabwe. We met up with 2 ambulance drivers from the Chidamoyo Christian Hospital to drive us up to our site, which we were told was going to be a 5-hour drive. But thanks to our drivers’ ability to maintain an 80-mph average speed and pass 100 cars, we shed an hour off our drive that included rough and gravel roads. We arrived to Chidamoyo at 1 AM, exhausted after only sleeping 5 hours each the past two nights.