It’s official, my flight leaves in less than 40 hours. That’s 1.7 days to packing everything I need for a month and a half abroad, 2400 minutes to make final preparations, and a paltry 144,932 seconds to get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.

With that scary (well, for me at least) introduction, I would like to welcome you to my blog. This website is where I will attempt to keep friends, family, and all those who are interested up-to-date on my activities in Tanzania.

I titled this blog “Empowering FAME: Helping FAME, The Foundation for African Medicine and Education, provide medical care in rural Tanzania,” because it appropriately summarized the purpose of my travels. FAME is a small nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Frank Artress and Susan Gustafson, a dynamic husband-and-wife duo who left their comfortable Californian lifestyles eight years ago to address the pressing need for medical care in rural Tanzania. By conducting remote clinics in the back of a retrofitted minibus, Dr. Frank already provides a much needed medical service to impoverished Tanzanians living in rural villages. This past April, FAME expanded their services with the grand opening of a medical dispensary on a luscious plot of land near the Ngorongoro crater. This dispensary is where I will be spending the majority of my time in Africa and where you will most likely hear from me next. 

Of course, the only thing that prevents that from happening, aside from an ocean and two continents, is my luggage.

It’s time to pack.