Monday, May 11, 2015 midnight
I have to give a nice shout out
to our son Matt who bit the bullet and took us to the airport early Mother’s
Day morning, hopefully getting back in time to give his wife breakfast in
bed. (Hope you all had a Happy Mother’s
Day!)
Did you ever think you ought to
just scrap a trip and start all over again another time? Ever since we first checked with the humanitarian
couple about the best time to travel with them in Kenya, everything has gone
wrong. The trip has changed 3 times
during the last few weeks; but to top it all off, our luggage didn’t show
up. It is still in London. We were supposed to leave tomorrow for Dar es
Salaam, but now will wait for our luggage, picking it up at the airport after 9
PM tomorrow, and then move all other arrangements back a day, causing a few cost
penalties with it.
Our friend Sarah picked us up at
the airport where we exchanged money, got a sim card for a phone, and purchased
some Internet time on a modem we had purchased several years ago for Sierra
Leone that also has service in Kenya. We
are glad we did since we’ve heard how poorly the Internet works in most places
we’ll be travelling on this trip. It
came in handy right away because we were able to use it to contact Church
travel to make yet another change, and the people in Tanzania to tell them of
the delay and to inform the hotel we won’t be there tomorrow night.
Right now we are in the apartment
complex where we used to live, bringing back some happy memories. E/S Christensen are the office couple and had
to stay awake till we showed up to give us the keys. They also provided us with a light bulb, soap,
shampoo, a blow dryer and some brushes.
Shakespeare’s had already put some food in the apartment for us to eat. We are staying where E/S Banks and E/S Herr
stayed years ago as missionary couples.
The apartment looks mostly the same as it did when Sister Herr decorated
it. They have added more security since
last year the guards allowed someone to break into the couples’ apartments (3
of them) and the people that own the apartment complex did nothing—they didn’t
even fire the guards involved in the thefts (it’s always an inside job).
When we last visited
Kenya we noticed that Bonnie Lamb’s painted deco board in her apartment had
been painted over. She had hand painted jungle
print all along the board and it looked amazing. We were more upset than Bonnie was to hear
about it. So, we were pleased to be in
Banks’/Herr’s apartment to see that Mary Herr’s painted rooms edged with
wallpaper boarder were still there. The
entry way, hallway and dining room walls were still red with the wallpaper
boarder.
This is a picture of the newly
extended wrought iron above where it used to be, covering a space that was used
in the last theft of 3 couples’ apartments.
They also added the razor wire.
They figure the robbers put up a ladder, coming in that way to avoid the
iron gates on the other side; then they were able to break the locks on the
doors and get in. We were disappointed
to hear that the security guard agency was not fired, no guards were
fired—nothing happened. So instead the
Church figured out more ways to try to keep robbers out. They pay guards painfully little so it is no
wonder that they would be involved.
We washed our underwear by hand
and used their slow dryer. I was anxious
to get out of these clothes, but they will be with us all day tomorrow. The best thing about our trip was how much
sleep I got on the last flight. After
dinner I slept through till breakfast—maybe 5 hours of fitful sleep--pretty
good on a plane. We flew from LA to
Chicago on a 1-hour late flight, onto London where our luggage has found a new
home, and then to Nairobi. Poor Sarah
spent 3 hours getting to the airport (huge rains, flooded roads like rivers in
some places) and then another 2 hours waiting for us to show up after we
decided our luggage was not going to make it. Two accidents on the way to the
apartments made traveling slow—welcome to Nairobi. We got to bed about 2:30 AM and still
couldn’t sleep.
Tuesday morning Sarah
picked us up so that we could run errands and go to the office, Jim armed with
a little sleep, me with none. Because of
E/S Christensen, I was able to fix my hair.
We had travel toothbrushes and toothpaste. Nevertheless, I went to the office with nice
hair, 3-day old eye makeup, lip gloss and without deodorant (go native!); hope
our old friends didn’t notice. Afterwards
we went to our old haunt, the YaYa center—a mall with a grocery store and
everything else you can think of. One
thing we have noticed: the church has new security measures to keep people out
of the building that do not belong. The
YaYa also had added security measures not seen before for obvious reasons. We also noticed that even though the city is
cleaned up and there are more traffic lights and street signs with better roads,
the traffic is awful ALL of the time now, not just at peak hours. It is torture to drive anywhere at all.
 |
| Sarah is like a daughter to us. Her father has never been in the picture, and her mother was killed in a home robbery few years ago. She named her son after you-know-who. She drove us to the office and then to the YaYa Center. We bought a few things to eat at the grocery store since we'll be here several time. We ate lunch there also. She is driving us around until the Shakespeare's return or we need Victor to take us around to projects. |
 |
| While in the office we ran into so many good friends. Victor was there visiting Dorothy. Victor said he is feeling better after a home invasion last year. He said his memory is improving and even though his leg was also badly injured he is doing okay. Dorothy used to be in distribution (Church books, etc.) but is now in translation. Victor will probably accompany us or even take us to see some water projects later in our trip. We also saw Jadmire and kidded him about how I used to pay him in cookies after doing me a favor--when I would suggest that he could share, he'd hide them in is desk! We love these people! |
Love, mom and dad, Jim &
Karen, E/S Greding
PS: E/S Hale who are now serving
in Johannesburg at the family history center, told us that the couples there
pray all the time for the Saints in Kenya.
Hale’s were in Kenya years ago when we were—they did vision
training. They serve one mission after
another; I’ve lost track of how many.
Actually, so do Herr’s.
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