Dragonfly Photography

PTO (paid time off)

YES!!!! I came to work on friday and found a letter in my mailbox… From the CEO of the hospital (confidential and in an open envelope got to love that….) There was a letter in it that my request to donate some of my PTO to Ginny was approved!!! WOW. I honestly did not think that would happen. Of course with all kind of stipulations, CYA (for my Dutch friends: cover your ass) but none the less APPROVED!!!! That means to me that it is always worth it to fight the establishment even though everyone else will say it will not work. Because what is it going to hurt….There are two answers, yes or no. And if you don’t try, you’ll never know and maybe always wonder ‘what if…” And that is not a very good feeling.

So we are getting really close now. Three weeks from tomorrow and then we will be on our way. Ginny and I are meeting in Amsterdam to board the plane to Arusha, Tanzania on Wednesday morning October 7. It will be a really strange thing for me to land in Amsterdam and not leave the airport to go home… but instead getting on another plane and fly over my home country. At least I’ll get a different view of the country for a change. Hoepfully it will be a clear day so I can take some pictures from the plane. We’ll get to Arusha around 8 PM and will spend the night there. The next morning we drive to Haydom and then the work will start. I received an email yesterday and there is so much work to do!! So the most important thing is to not get overwhelmed and just go with the flow… It is going to be a long term project and we are the beginning.

I bought a Swahili phrase book last week, just to be able to say at least some basic things like: ‘Good morning’, ‘how are you’, ‘thank you’ or ‘no thank you’. Since coming from a country with a language that is not spoken in a lot of other places in the world, I remember getting so annoyed by tourists who would not even try to speak a couple of Dutch words. If someone would at least try a couple of words, it is so much appreciated and considered thoughtful, and we Dutch people are usual multi lingual, so no problem to find a commonly spoken language. So I have to start practicing. Maybe the cats will finally listen to me..since their forefathers came from this continent….Maybe it will sound somewhat familiar to them, who knows. Hopefully it will help that I am already bi-lingual.

Then I also got a book from Lonely Planet about Tanzania. Just flipping through some of the pages make me think I just have to move there for a while to see what I want to see. I finally will get to see Mount Kilimajaro! The airport we land at is at the foot of Mt Meru and  in the northern part of the country. Form there we will drive down south to Central Tanzania and end up in Haydom. THe hospital is surprisingly big, about 440 beds. Compared to the hospital I work in now, about 600 beds….

Anyway, I am so very excited to go! Today I reserved my seat arrangment on the flight from Amsterdam to Tanzania, hopefully we’ll have a good view flying in….