Back in the UK now after 11 weeks away. This has been my first weblog and it has been fun sharing the journey with friends and family, but now back to harsh reality - 42C in Kruger last week and 4C when we landed back at Heathrow yesterday morning. The principal objective for me of the Congo trip was achieved - I visited Bolobo hospital - and Jack was so pleased to hear that his great work there was being carried on by Congolese doctors, that that alone made the...

One summer in the early 1960's whilst holidaying in the Scottish Borders, my mother decided that we should visit her favourite cousin, Jack Gray. Jack was a GP in Hexham, but I had never met him because he had been in Africa between 1948 and 1961 - as a surgeon in a mission hospital. The hospital was on the banks of the Congo River, at a place called Bolobo - about 250 km north east of Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). Almost 50 years later I met Jack for the secon...