DEC-B-3
ATTEMPTING TO ARRANGE THE MALAWI
MISSION
ON SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE CIRCUMNAVIGATION
FOLLOWING MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES
John and I are trying to coordinate what might be possible for mid-February to try to go to Malawi. We are asking to work on a month, starting around Feb.17, that will be either and/or in Malawi and/or Ethiopia, and trying to work out the travel schedules for that. I would be coming directly from Mindanao Philippines where I will be the sole surgeon in a volunteer team opearting around the clock. I am finished there on the 16th of February, and then will come around the bottom, possibly up through South Africa. Whether or not I go to Ethiopia, I must be coming back around toward home --in time to get through Jamaica to Havana by March 10!
I know that you are looking into air fare options and also excursions with breaks along the route, and perhaps we might consolidate a group of tickets, since I will also have my advisee, Elizabeth Yellen, senior student at GWU, whom I recommend highly. She had spent some time in her youth in Ethiopia with her anthropologist parents. I had also had an invitation from the new medical school in Gondor Ethiopia to give some lectures there. Through surgeon Harold Adolph, long-term missionary with SIM, we had made arrangements for one or more of us to work in the rural Ethiopian bush with one or more of his children, still in service there.
I had suggested to John that we might need to have a general conference call or--even better--a get together, to make plans. Tell me when and how! I seem to have lost a few email transmissions in your directions, so I will try to relay this through him also. By the time such a plan can be set up, we may have Elizabeth back here from her pediatric rotations in Boston.
Cheers!
GWG
Dr. Poehlman, here coordinating with Dr. Geelhoed regarding plans for the winter/spring. Hopefully we will all be able to work together in the trips to come. We will get in touch, perhaps a conference call.
John Sutter
jpsutter@gwu.edu