The travel ordeal: 17-hour flights and no sleep

Dan details the brutal travel: Des Moines to Chicago to DC to Ethiopia (13.5 hours), then four hours to Harare, a six-hour pothole drive, and a 17.5-hour return flight via Dublin without deplaning. The hosts commiserate about long-haul helplessness, and Dan adds he barely slept — a bad plank bed plus seven hours of jet lag, taking a week and a half to adjust.