Cold in Africa?

The day has finally arrived for me to start my 4th trip to Africa.

For weeks I have been taking extra care to stay well, popping those echinacea every morning, washing my hands often and not letting my boys play with all of those other germ-infested kids. I thought I was doing it all correctly, and it wasn't until 1 o'clock this afternoon that I started to feel sick.

Now, here it is, 7pm and I'm sitting in the Air New Zealand lounge at LAX, waiting for my flight surrounded by boxes of kleenex and non-prescription cold meds. Luckily, they have a very good chicken-noodle soup and I'm enjoying that instead of helping myself to the wall of premium liquor that they have available.

Hopefully I'll get over this cold in about 24 hours, which is how long I'll be travelling before I reach Nairobi at 6:30am local time.