My attempt to meet with George Poehlman
to integrate
a Malawi Medical Mission into the plans for January of
2002 before circumnavigating the Southern Hemisphere to reach the Mindanao
From: Glenn Geelhoed
To: George Poehlman
Date: 6/21/01 9:07AM
Subject: Thanks for your note
Dear George:
PLANS FOR INTEGRATING A MALAWI VISIT INTO THE FIRST TWO MONTHS OF 2002 TRAVEL PLANS
My schedule is tightening up‑‑as is yours. I envy your trip to China, since I had appreciated what they can do there with fewer resources directed toward health, and it will be a great educational trip, as I have found each time I have been there.
I am gone when you return from China. I will be going to Ladakh with an extension to Lingshed in Tibet July 17‑‑Aug. 6 . I will be going to Kamchatka, Siberia, probably about Aug. 19‑‑31.
I then return to the Himalayas on a saga that starts on Sep. 12, through presentations in Michigan (9/12), Boston (Halsted Society 9/13), then to Spiti and the Chang/ Thang plateau of Himachal Sep 14‑Oct 1, then on to Kathmandu and a clinic in Lukla Nepal until I bail out at Namche Bazar (10/7) on the Everest Trek Route to return on October 9 for a New Orleans presentation to the American College of Surgeons on Oct 10.
I will then start a series of "seven in seven" marathons beginning with Hartford Conn on Oct 13, Baltimore's Inaugural marathon on Oct. 20, the 26th Marine Corps marathon on Oct. 28, and on to the next weeks in New York, San Antonio on Nov. 11 (when I will get to see my new twin grandsons for the first time who will be born as I am in Ladakh) and completing the series in Marathon in the Parks in Montgomery County on Nov. 18.
I have John P. Sutter on tap for a visit in which we might work out the details of a Malawi visit‑‑probably before, rather than after, the Mindanao Philippines trip Feb. 2‑‑16. I may be going to Goa the second week of January, if there are enough people to be filling this trip I had been designated to lead last January which has been postponed. If I do go to Goa, I could drop down to Southern Africa and visit some friends there who have been expecting me, and we could see each other the third week in January from which I could go up to Malawi.
After working in Malawi‑‑and if you are able to continue with me, we might go from Southern Africa through a return through Jo'burgh to take the Southern hemisphere route to get to the Philippines for that February intensive surgical schedule of 2‑‑16 in Mindanao (Edwards in T'boli land and malaybalay at Bethel Mission Hospital), continuing on an Eastward circumnavigation to return home in later February.
We might get together to talk about this if you and I will both be nearer home around the second week of August or wherever it might fit thereafter.
Like my summer and fall schedules that will require some "smershing" of multiple trips to the far sides of the world, we may be able to put it all together with enough planning and commitment of resources, such as some equipment that I am going to be carrying that will be making a one way trip to be left with the health facilities we will be trying to help.
I will be reviewing Hayden Boyd's Fulbright proposal and helping with a few suggestions for his economic plans for Malawi. We will try to coordinate it all, and see when we might get together before then.
Cheers!
GWG