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[Montréal, Québec, Canada 17°C] Southern Sudan was a place I had not heard much about before my seven-week visit to the East African region of the continent’s largest country. It is a part of Sudan where over eight million people are now recovering from a 21-year civil war that ended six years ago after the [...]
[Montréal, Québec, Canada 13°C] It has been just over three weeks since I returned to Montréal from ten weeks in East Africa, most of which were spent in Southern Sudan. I’ve been back long enough to discard the lag that fogs the spirit after flying between continents. Sufficient time has passed to deplete the novelty [...]
[Nairobi, Kenya 28°C] It’s now one week before my arrival in Juba and according to the prescription of apo-mefloquine that sits on my desk, I should be starting my antimalarial treatment today by taking my first 250-gram tablet. One tablet to be taken one week before arriving in a malarial area (some areas of Kenya [...]
[Nairobi, Kenya] My Flight to Nairobi straddles three continents, 13 hours of flying time and oceans of sea water and desert sand. The initial 6-hour flight brought me in Amsterdam to languish three hours in the busy Schiphol Airport, before continuing on to Nairobi on another 7-hour flight. North America to Europe to Africa. Three disparate continents just a plane ride or two away from each other. But if the demographics onboard flight KL0565 from Amsterdam to Nairobi are any indication, Africa is still the downtrodden, the unrepresented, the absent continent among the three.
[MONTRÉAL] Today, I bought my airline ticket, leaving me with two weeks, two days, 22 hours and two minutes before departure time. Actually, the accurate time is constantly changing in the Countdown columnn to the right, which will benchmark various phases of the trip. Arrivals, departures, events. Something to string you along.
Today, I had my first set of vaccinations. Initially, I planned on making an appointment with the McGill Centre for Tropical Diseases, but I could’nt wait the 3-4 weeks waiting time. I went to the Santé Voyage Clinic at Montréal’s Hôpital St-Luc, which has a walk-in travel health clinic. I waited about two hourse before seeing the nurse.
[MONTRÉAL] This morning I consulted the website of the McGill Centre for Tropical Diseases, which operates in Montréal within the McGill University Faculty of Medicine, to learn more about what preventative measures they recommend for travel to Sudan. I still haven’t made an appointment for getting the vaccinations but from what I’ve read on their website, and in the international travel and health information of the World Health Organization, I will probably have to get vaccinations for Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A + B, Typhoid, Meningitis, Rabies, Diptheria, Tetanus, maybe Cholera. The documentation also encourages Malaria pills but not chloroquine because the malaria in Sudan is immune to chloroquine.
Pete Muller in Sudan Sudan Watch AlertNet - Sudan Making Sense of Sudan Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting AllAfrica - Sudan Irin News Resolve Uganda