Message from: James Appel

I feel a cold sweat creeping along the surface of my skin. A sensation of nausea rises to my throat. I desperately try to focus my eyes somewhere that will calm the waves of motion sickness but as the Cessna 172 lurges and plunges in the turbulence 7500 feet above the surface of a desert in a wall of dust and clouds there seems to be no escape.

"I think I might need one of those barf bags Sarah just brought you." I stoically mention to Gary.

"Here, you better start flying again, that often helps...gives you a little sense of control when it's turbulent."

I grab the controls and try to remember to make small adjustments back and forth and side to side as my gaze shifts rapidly between the horizon and the various instruments on the panel as I try to maintain altitude, direction, vertical speed, and bearings as the thermals rising from the hot sand below buffet us up and down and side to side.

My nausea slowly disappears.

An hour later we as we approach Bere I give the controls back to Gary for the landing. The two men in the back from the Chadian government who have come to evaluate our work at the hospital break the silence with a heartfelt "Dieu merci" as the plane touches down smoothly and taxis in to the waiting hospital van.

I greet Levi warmly and we pack up and head to the hospital.

What was starting to turn green with the early April rains has changed to a dreary brown.

"I guess I must have taken the rain with me to the US," I joke with Levi. "A week after arriving in Florida they had a two week long rain storm that ended their drought. Don't worry, though, I brought it back with me!"

We both laugh, but half hope it's true as people are already starting to talk about famine this year (although they do every year no matter how much rain we get.)

I get our visitors settled in the guest house and change into scrubs to take a quick tour of the hospitalized patients.

The arab man with the broken tibia and jaw is elated to see me and immediately asks to have the PVC pipe external fixator removed. The wiring on his jaw was taken off a few days ago and seems to be well healed. The leg looks good too, we'll have to send him to Moundou for an x-ray since ours has been broken for years.

Mathieu, our friend who spent a month collecting a seriously infected fracture with the local traditional bone setters before coming to us just in time to save his leg waves to me from across the room. I greet him and take a brief look at the wound which has closed up somewhat but is still quite deep into the gap left where we'd removed the infected bone.

All the other patients are new.

That evening I am woken up by a fierce wind followed by a scattered rain. The next few days we have several intense thunderstorms. The drought is over. It's good to be back.