5 Miles

Here’s my attempt to tell those of you who are interested more details of our trip. I’m going to try to go in order of our time there, so we’re starting at the beginning here and I’ll try to add a bit each day. If you’ve checked out my Facebook pictures or the team blog, there may be some repeat, but I’ll try to mix things up to give everyone a bit new. (The nice thing about this, verses making you sit down to a slide show of our vacation pictures, is you can walk away any time! I’m doing this partly for us, so I can remember our trip…as I do this I’m amazed at how fuzzy details already are getting. I won’t be upset if you skip over these!)

First, two days before we drove to Philly, we had a packing party where we gathered together, packed & WEIGHED bags (important, no one wants to pay overage fees) and then prayed for the trip.

James was a huge help with the weigh-in.

Saturday we drove out to James’ sister’s house in PA. It was an uneventful trip and we were thankful there was no bad weather on the drive. The boys did a really good job–and considering they had just done that 2 weeks earlier, it was even MORE impressive. But I’m not going to start driving out that way ever month or so to keep them used to it!

We flew out Sunday, the day of the AFC/NFC Championship games. We flew out of Philly, so we saw lots of Eagle and Steeler Pride on display. We got to Detroit in time to see the beginning of the Cardinals/Eagles game…we got to watch the first half in a bar while waiting for the rest of our team to show up. We were a bit nervous to see one of the flights from Indy was delayed (and projected to get in just as our fly to Amsterdam was to take off), so we were quite relieved to see our team members appear at the gate (they were on the other flight). We got on the flight with the Cardinals quite in the lead, and were shocked to find out in Amsterdam that the Eagles had come back to make it a close game (and we had to use one team member’s Blackberry to find out the final score. By then we found out who the two teams in the Super Bowl would be, and that was the last we heard. Kind of nice to miss out on the two weeks of Press Coverage!)

We landed in Nairobi around 7 pm local time. By the time we got through immigration & bought our visas, got all our luggage and gotten out the door, it was dark out and we were all a bit weary. But this was a nice sight to see:

Thankfully, ALL our luggage arrived!

We were met by David, a friend of Ed’s and the man who helped plan much of our travel arrangements. We were able to get all the luggage on the top of the bus (as you can see below) but a tiny bit uncertain if they tied the bags down…all the luggage did make it with us, but we hit a few bumps that made me really wonder if they would.

We were told it’d take about 30-45 minutes to get to the Guest House from the airport. But there was a tiny problem—no one was sure the name of the guest house. It seems the site on NEGST’s campus we were going to stay at was full for the week, and they had recommended another Guest House in the area. But that house was new, and no one knew where it was. We finally found it at 1 am. Tired, we fell into bed and were thankful we could sleep in until 9 am.

We were staying in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi. Karen not very populated–it’s an area of more expensive houses on large lots of land. Karen does have a small shopping center, and the next morning we went there to exchange our money.

They drive on the other side of the road there—one of many British influences we saw there. (Michelle, one of the women on our team, is from Ireland, and she comment how at home she felt, because of the Irish influences. This became a huge source of teasing. Another time I was working with the kids in VBS and trying to get them to form a line. They wouldn’t, until a teacher said “Get in queue”. Flashlights are torches, you drive on the tarmac…you get the idea.)

After that & lunch, we headed over to NEGST. James, Michelle and Colleen got to go to a planning meeting with officals at the school to help them work on their IT stratgey. The rest of us got a tour of the campus (we did more, but I’m going going to show you the tour now, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow).

Here’s a picture of the gate:

 NEGST stands for Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology. Locals pronounce it NE-Gest. Other (like those who helped start it) say it rhymns with Next.

This is the classroom building, where we did the teaching.

Where we ate lunch each day.

The Admin Building

Our team on the steps of the Admin. Building

(Top Row: Ruth, Tina, James, Kim…3rd Road: Michelle, Carol, Colleen…2nd row: Brantly, Ali, Ruth…1st row: Leona, Judy, Phil…front & center, our leader: Ed)

The library

Between the library and Admin building is the chapel, and I can’t find a picture of it right now. I’m sure I’ll find one tomorrow, we’ll see if it gets updated.

These buildings are built around a grassy square that we often gathered in.

(From L to R: Polly, Colleen, Ruth, Kim and Michelle)

Another view of the commens area, with the chapel on the left and the library behind the trees. This is Colleen & Polly relaxing in between classes.

But–this takes time and I’ve been up long enough. So that’s it until tomorrow!