September 25, 2012 Nairobi

Greetings

Now that I am on the ground I should be able to blog a little more often.  Last night I arrived safely in Nairobi after such a long long journey.  As with any trip there always seems to be surprises to add some excitement to the trip.  I gave myself plenty of time to get to Newark International from Wilmington and I am glad I did.  My commuter train out of Philly to Trenton was canceled and the alternative means took almost three hours to complete.  I made it to my gate with about 30 minutes to spare.  Of course I can not sleep on planes.  After being fed I took in a movie, Men in Black 3.  After the movie I thought I could possibly get a wink of sleep.  Not a chance so I took out a book that was highly recommended to me “Kisses from Katie” and started reading.  My eyes were already burning from lack of sleep and now I have enough tears running down my cheeks to fill the ocean that I am crossing.  I finished about half the book before it was time to be fed again and land in Brussels.

Brussels has two terminals and like last time I arrived in one and had to go to other.  But in order to go to the other terminal you have to go to a special place where there are lots of people waiting to take a shuttle to the African terminal.  The lady checking passports told me that the shuttle leaves every 10 minutes.  I already knew this since I had done it before and there is a LED timer on the wall that says next shuttle is leaving in 10 minutes.  The first thing you notice is that there are no empty seats and much of the floor is taken up as well.  But not to worry the next shuttle leaves in 10 minutes.  Then the next thing you notice is that the timer still says 10 minutes and about 50 minutes go by.  Since I was standing I positioned myself near the door for whenever the shuttle did come I would not be the one they closed the door on.  It would be safe to assume that everyone in that room has had a lengthy first or second part of their journey.  While I was standing waiting I was talking with three guys that were headed to Freetown, Sierra Leone.  Somewhere in the conversation I asked one of the guys where he was from and he told me that he lives in Claymont, Delaware.  Small world I lived in Claymont for 10 years.  So Bobby if you are reading this I think I got you another vote.

The flight from Brussels to Nairobi was just about empty.  Most everyone had an empty seat next to them and a few lucky souls had a row of four all to themselves.  I still can’t sleep, it’s daylight and every announcement is repeated in a couple different languages so they take extra long to complete.  I decided not to do any reading until I felt that the announcements were over.  I started out reading another of my assignments “The Orphan Report” and after an hour or so I thought it be best to finish “Kisses from Katie”.  This time instead of filling an ocean I could have turned the Sahara Desert we just so happened to be flying over green with the amount of tears flowing down my cheeks.  It was good that I had an empty seat next to me.  What an inspiration she is and if you haven’t read her book take the time to do it.  The book is by Katie Davis and it is called “Kisses from Katie”.  It started as a life changing mission trip.  She is now mommy to a whole village in Uganda and in the process of adopting 13 orphan girls.

I finished the book as we were landing in Nairobi and the thought of getting to sleep soon was filling my mind.  However once I got off the plane I needed to get a few shillings and fill up my cell phone and modem with some air time.  I went to Safaricom but the nice young man told me that both my sim cards had expired.  I guess you only get ninety days before they deactivate your number.  They told me they could reactivate them but it would take a few days so I plucked out a few bucks and got new numbers.  By this time the eyes were feeling the pain but I still had a few more chores to do.  My next stop was to get a Kenyan Visa and to my surprise when I went to the bottom of the ramp was there were absolutely no other passengers but me.  How lucky can one be?  Of course I had my choice of whatever line I wanted so I picked the one with the pretty smile.  I asked her what was going on and where were all the people?  She told me that all the jumbo jets except the one I was on were running really late.  Well my joy was short lived.  I went down to find my one and only piece of luggage.  I looked everywhere, had others looking and it could not be found.  Too tired to be angry I went to the baggage guy and started to fill out the forms for lost baggage.  Just as I was finishing the paper work some other guy came up behind me and said “Mr. Wood”.  I turned and he had my bag.  Again how lucky can one be?  He told me that my bag had fallen off the belt in the back.  Being half asleep and thanking the gentleman I proceeded to hunt for a ride to the hotel.  This guy just saved my day and I was walking off.  I quickly turned around ran back and called out to him.  This time I pulled out 500 and thanked him again.  The smile on his face made my day again. 

After a little haggling I got a taxi to my hotel in downtown Nairobi.  Not the best place in the world but it was finally a chance to get some sleep.  I quickly checked my emails and found one from Pastor Ososo and he was called to Kampala so I was not going to be able to meet with him today.  I then had a change of plans and decided that I would be heading to Western today instead of in a few days.  I checked the Easy Coach website to see when the bus leaves and it was at 9 am.  It was already past 1 am and I knew that in order to get a bus ride I needed to be there early enough if the seats were not already booked.  I set the alarm for 6 am and tried to get some sleep.  Why is it when you really want to go to sleep and you can’t because your mind is racing like wildfire?  I was too tired to pull down the skitto net and before I knew it my hand was itchy in like two spots.  It was either bed bugs or those nasty little things with buzzy wings.  Then I heard it flying around my head.  You know those little critters have a distinctive noise about them and it was pretty upsetting that I now had to get out of bed to pull down the net.  I jumped back in thinking this is it, sweet, finally some sleep time.  Not so, I couldn’t go to sleep as long as those two bites on my hand were taking my attention from falling asleep.  Not sure what time I finally went to sleep but I can tell you that the alarm went off way too early this morning.

Breakfast consisted of one malaria tablet and some passion fruit juice.  The other items on the menu did not look that appetizing.  I was able to get a ride to the bus station and my luck was coming back.  There just so happened to be a couple of extra seats on the Kakamega bus and one of those was a great seat.  It was right up front next to the driver and the door.  Plenty of leg room, no one sitting next to me and no one close enough to close my windows.  For an eight hour bus ride across Kenya this was the seat to have.  I had a nice cool breeze and a great view of the countryside.  The only draw back was the bus would only do 80 kph max.  There are other buses that take only 5 to 6 hours to get to Kakamega if it doesn’t break down like a few I saw on the way.

Both Hezron and Robert were at the bus station in Kakamega to meet me.  The Sheywe is booked for a couple more nights so I am staying at another place.  Hezron and Robert suggested that I look at the room first before I accept it.  Last night I stayed at a place that wasn’t that great for like 4000 shillings.  This place is only 700 shillings (~84 ksh to a $) so my expectations are not that high.  We check out the room, a few bugs smashed on the walls, the windows won’t close, and the toilet doesn’t have a seat.  I asked Hezron to ask the lady if there was a room that has a toilet with a seat other wise it was adequate.  She came back and said all the rooms have toilets with no seats.  This is nothing new I have been to quite a few hotels in Kenya that don’t have toilet seats.  In America people run off with the towels but here the prize is toilet seats.  Since my windows don’t completely close there are now mosquitoes stalking me so it’s time to cut this off.

Tomorrow Hezron, Robert, and I are going to go visit a few of the orchards that are doing well to see if there is some magic formula to making this work.  Robert told me that today they harvested 42 kilos of passion fruit from his orchard or about 85 pounds.  It is still quite a few months away before the vines will be producing at their maximum yield but harvesting some is good.

Take care and God bless

Dave