Safe and Sound (and tired)

After a 6 hour flight to London, an 8 hour flight to Nairobi, an 8 hour layover in Nairobi, a 1 hour flight to Kisumu, and a 2 hour drive, I am settled into Bungoma, Kenya.  I arrived at 10:00pm Sunday night and started work at 7:45am Monday morning.

The journey to Bungoma was LONG.  On the way to London I sat next to a nice older woman who I startled by bawling during takeoff after saying goodbye to Matt in the airport, and just being overwhelmed in general at what was ahead of me, and then conking out for a good 4 hours.  When I finally woke up she was very concerned.  We started talking and she told me about her 10 children.  10!  And how she lived in Guyana and her husband died when her children were young and she was left to raise them all alone.  Now they live all over the world and are engineers and chemists and she already has twenty-something grandchildren.  What a woman!

On the flight from London to Nairobi I sat next to an older Kenyan man named James who had grown up in Nairobi but now lives in San Diego.  He was very encouraging of what I was coming to Kenya to do and then started to share his story with me.  He married an American woman who couldn’t stop drinking, destroyed her liver, and died within 2 years of their wedding.  But before she died she asked him to promise to take care of her father who has alzheimers.  This man quit his job and now spends every day caring for his father-in-law.  I was very touched by his devotion but also so sad for him.  When we got off the plane he told me that God’s grace is good and would carry me through.

And then I was in Nairobi!  Visa granted and cell phone purchased, I had an 8 hour layover until my flight to Kisumu and was planning on staying in the airport but after being approached by 5 different random men offering to help me, and knowing I had a lot of money on me, I decided to just rent a hotel for the day.  So I took off in a car towards the hotel with a random man, a lot of money, and all my earthly possessions and immediately spotted a giraffe!  The random man was very sweet and pulled over so I could oohh and aahhh.   

When I arrived in Kisumu I got picked up by one of the people I will be working with.  We had dinner at a restaurant on Lake Victoria in Kisumu with some of his friends and I got to watch the sun set over the lake.  It was surreal.  I had my first Tusker and it turns out that I have several friends in common with my dinner mates, which is a good, comforting feeling.

After dinner, we drove for 2 hours, in the dark, to Bungoma, my new home for the summer.  The potholes are like meteor craters and people drive giant trucks and bikes at night with no lights.  At home, I am the person who checks twice that their seatbelt is securely fastened but it’s time to get used to a new reality.

More later.