Nairobi

Where are the others...?
It feels wierd being without two of our team members... Lori and I dropped off Pat and Danette at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport yesterday morning at the crack of dawn so they could fly to Entebbe, Uganda. We are unable to communicate with them at this stage, and are trusting that our teammates are doing fine. We'll be relieved to pick them up at the airport again tomorrow morning!

Accomodations
While in Nairobi, we're staying at the Flora Hostel. The reservations were made by the travel agency Empowering Lives work through, so it was interesting to just show up at a place you know nothing about... We were only told that our hostel is on Fifth Ngong Rd. After we got our rental car on Saturday (a big old Pajero), Danette played navigator and we easily found our way to Ngong Rd and then found a little side road, the one we currently call home. It's close enough to downtown Nairobi to get where we need to be without spending too much time on the road, yet far enough out of downtown to be safe.

We turned up Fifth Ngong Rd and saw this huge, gray building: Flora Hostel. Flora's Hostel (or Flora's Place, as we've dubbed it), is a Catholic hostel. There's a huge cathedral on the grounds, and you cannot walk anywhere and not bump into a nun. The place is clean, though we doubt our mosquito nets have ever been washed. Not a nice thought! Every bed has its own mosquito net, and by now we've all become quite good at tucking our nets in under the mattress while in bed. You just tend to think twice before going to bed since you can't just hop out of bed to get the alarm or whatever you may have forgotten outside of your little mosquito barrier.

Back to Flora's Place. Meals are included in the $35/room per night deal, and the food is not too bad at all. It's amazing how your perspective on what's good and what's not good changes when you're exposed to utter poverty!

Sunday around and about Nairobi
Lori is writing a little bit about her and my excursion yesterday, driving around Nairobi National Park. It blows my mind that this park is virtually IN the city of Nairobi! Before she and I went to the park for a Sunday afternoon drive, we had to find a place near the airport to have breakfast. We drove around the town of Karen, named after Karen Blixen, the lady who wrote OUT OF AFRICA. We discovered the Blixen B&B and Gardens, so we sat outside and had English breakfast... The house originally belonged to Bror and Karen Blixen, but was used mostly as a hunter's house for the Swedes. (Karen was Danish, but she married a Swede, Bror. See the movie if you haven't yet!) Her house is right next door, but we couldn't go there.

After breakfast, we drove around looking for a church. We saw the sign for Karen Vineyard Church and thought, "Why not go to a Vineyard church?" We got out and started chatting with some of the people outside the church who were setting up for their final Sunday of FOURTY DAYS OF PURPOSE. The only "problem" was that church was only to start in 90 minutes, and it's a mostly expat church. So we left. We felt like we were playing hooky!

Our journey looking for a church continued. There are tons of churches, but we'd drive up to one and hear them talking only in Swahili, or the next church we drove up happened to be Catholic. We finally pulled into a humungous church. May it suffice to say that I REALLY appreciate Bob's teachings at NCBC... The message was "interesting," to say the least.

Monday: Where's a Laundromat??
This morning Lori and I packed all of our laundry and headed to what Lonely Planet cited as the only Laundromat in town. For about $12 we were able to drop off ALL of our team laundry and we'll pick it back up this afternoon at 5:00. We just trust we can find the place again! The city backstreets are a maze... The map we have is basically useless, and we had to stop and ask for directions at least 5 times. Not a problem!

Right now we're at a local mall just to update the blog and purchase some books which we'll be sending back to Eldoret to all the pastors. Every now and then, Lori and I look at each other and one would say, "I wonder how Pat and Danette are doing..." Like I said, it feels odd not having them here with us. If all is according to plan, Danette is conducting a diabetes training session right now while Pat is meeting with the Kyomyos.

The rest of this week
This afternoon, Lori and I will be meeting with Judy Mbugua, one of Kenya's "main women" in terms of domestic violence and women's issues. She's apparantly quite the woman, and we are honored to be able to meet with her. The main purpose of the meeting would be to find out how Global Action Canada can partner with what she is doing in Kenya.

Tomorrow morning we'll pick up the other two from the airport again and drive around the city. We will drive by the former US Embassy which was bombed a few years ago. I hope Danette will drive a bit, simply for the experience of driving in a city where the usual road rules simly don't count. It's quite an experience! I am used to crazy traffic like this, having driven in Maputo (Mozambique) as well as in Taipei (Taiwan) and Manilla (Philippines). What makes driving here a bit more of a challenge for the Americans is the fact that in Africa, we drive on the left side of the road. Which means, the wheel is on the right side, and you shift with your left hand. Imagine doing all that while trying to cross four lanes of minibus taxis... Ah, Africa!

We'll return the rental car in the afternoon, and we'll head to the south of the country on Wednesday morning for a time of debriefing. Having done short-term missions before, I absolutely believe in the necessity of spending time away from your ministry site and outside of your home country to evaluate the time spent in ministry. It helps you to solidify the experience and to make resolutions whether for future trips or for life changes.

Photos
Due to the fact that Lori and I were going to be out in the city all of today--and the fact that this city is also known as Nairobbery--I did not want to lug around my computer with me to upload photos at the Internet cafe. So, sorry! I WILL upload photos once we are back in the US so that you can all be sure to see more of what we experienced.

Thank you
Whether at meal times or during our personal devotions, we have been praying for you and thanking God for you, our supporters. Thank you for supporting us through prayer and finances. We pray that this journey truly is transformational for you, too!

Any more updates?
Though I cannot promise we'll get to an Internet cafe again, I do hope Danette and Pat will be able sometime tomorrow to write something about their time in Uganda. After that, we will most likely not be able to blog again. Just so you know. :)

So, from a hot Nairobi, I'm off to the meeting with Mrs. Mbugua!