On Our Way to Zimbabwe in One Week

As I write this shortly after 9:00 a.m. PDT on Monday, I realize that exactly one week from today, Annette and I will be well on our way across the Atlantic Ocean. Our South African Airways flight leaves Atlanta at 10:30 a.m. Monday, May 1, beginning an 18-hour flight that includes a one-hour refueling and crew-change stop on Sal Island (Cape Verde) before turning southeast to Johannesburg. We land at Jo'burg shortly after 10:00 a.m. local time, wait about nine hours, then begin a short flight to Harare, Zimbabwe, arriving at 9:00 p.m. Local time there is nine hours in advance of local time here in Portland; those 20 hours of flying have moved us much further south than east. We will have crossed both the Equator and the Prime Meridian. We will have moved from spring to fall. Far more important, we will have moved from a thriving, modern American city to rural Zimbabwe, an awesome but enticing cultural shift.

The pictures were taken last summer. Above, Annette works with her class of enthusiastic quilting students. To the right, the kids are at Nyakatsapa High School, a few kilometers from Old Mutare where I will be working with students much like these.