Out Of Africa

I’ve started the long journey home.  We had a leisurely breakfast at Kim’s Breeze Hotel with Dave and Joy and finally circled in the parking lot to pray and to say our goodbyes.  We loaded up in the Land Cruiser for the three-hour trip back to Nairobi.

Kim’s Breeze Hotel gave me one last souvenir just as we were leaving.  I used the bathroom one last time just before checking out, and the bathroom door is about a quarter inch shorter than I am.  In my haste to get downstairs, I forgot to duck when leaving the bathroom, and connected solidly with the top of the doorframe.  I was seeing stars for a bit.  That’s one of the reasons I wear a hat--to hide all the scars on the top of my head.

The trip to Nairobi was uneventful, although slow at times.  The road from Narok to Nairobi is not just the main route, it’s the only route, so it sees a lot of heavy truck traffic.  This road climbs an escarpment for several miles, gaining 1500 feet in elevation while winding around the contours of the escarpment, creating a narrow, winding road with few opportunities for passing slow vehicles.  And there are some slow ones.  Many trucks climb this grade in granny gear at about 3 miles per hour, much to the frustration of everyone else, including other truckers who could probably manage six miles per hour.  So in true Kenyan driving spirit, the thing to do is attempt to pass.  Never mind the blind corners or oncoming traffic, just pull out in the other lane and pass.

Michael, our driver, was more on the cautious side, for which I was grateful, and so did not attempt these hair-raising maneuvers.  He got us to Nairobi safe and without a scratch.

We stopped at the Galleria Mall for a bite to eat and to do some last minute shopping.  We have had such a full schedule the last couple of weeks that there has not been any opportunity for this, so today, our first travel day, we had a couple hours to shop for trinkets to take back home.  At one end of the mall is a Maasai market with a lot of little booths set up crammed with souvenirs and the people eager to sell them.  I managed to pick up a few gifts, negotiating each one.  We then headed over to the Biblical Conference Center, where we had stayed for a couple nights coming in, just to have a peaceful place to rest for a few hours.  We bade goodbye to Michael, who had been our driver for the last couple of weeks.  So many new friends to say goodbye to.  He expressed a desire to come to Michigan to experience snow.  I told him to come on over, we can have a snowball fight and make snow angels and attempt to drive on icy roads.  Can’t be any worse than slippery muddy roads, right?

On the way to the conference center, we passed through Kibera, the largest urban slum in all of Africa and a place where Kenya Hope has one of their Hope Centers.  Packed with tiny tin-roofed and mud structures, this is home to hundreds of thousands of people making less than a dollar a day.  It’s easy to look at the endless patchwork of rusty tin roofs from the freeway and take a picture from the car; it’s much harder to enter into the lives of the people living here.  Kenya Hope does just that, providing lunches for schoolchildren, providing clean water through the use of water filters, and teaching skills to widowed women to allow them to provide for themselves and their families.  Hope to those in desperate need.

George came at 6pm and gave us a lift to the airport.  From here on out, we are on our own.  Check-in was hakuna metata (no problem) and now we are waiting at gate 13 to board the plane to Amsterdam