Goodbye Africa

I tried to leave Lilongwe this morning on a 6 a.m. flight that didn't actually exist. Got to the airport at 5 a.m. to find a security guard waking up around 5:15 and pulling on his pants. Drove back to town on a ramshackle, bumpy, dusty little road filled with hundreds of women with babies on their backs and buckets on their heads and dozens of men hunched over and cutting grass with large machetes.

Fortunately (or unfortunately?) I have re-booked an Air Malawi flight for later today and it looks like I'll actually make my international flight later tonight from Joburg.

In the Houston airport I met a Jamaican woman who had spent several months in Africa. When she found out where I was going she told me, "After going to Africa, you will never be the same again. It will change you forever." How right she was.

I have seen more than I ever imagined I would see in Africa but now that my eyes have been opened, I realize that I have so much more to see and do here. I can only imagine what I will learn from Africa on my next trip and I simply can't wait to come back.