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Kenya. Spent Christmas Eve partially at
the night vigil at one of the churches. The Kenyans are hardcore and were there from 7pm to 6am (we did 9pm to
12:30am) and then we met them again at 6am for baptisms at the river…there
were between 50-60 baptisms…mostly the youth. That was definitely a first in all my Christmases thus far.
pastor’s houses in the area. I was
teamed up with Sara & Neil and we drove to a community called Nabuin, where
they don’t have vehicles…the huts (made from sticks & grass) are all
about 2km apart…and they work hard to farm their maize & sorghum fields
by hand. We were able to meet a lot of
the church members and pray for their health. We found a lot of people had malaria or were just unwell. Also were asked to pray for finances for
schooling. Primary school is free up to
Standard 8 (aka: Grade 8), but secondary school costs a lot of money because
the students need to attend boarding school. The only way for most kids to attend secondary school is if they have
someone decide to sponsor them, so they cherish meeting people and ask you to
tell family & friends about them. They send warm greetings to our families at
home…and they hope and pray that that meeting might be their chance to get an
education, so they in return can provide for their families. Life is definitely difficult for them, but
I’m amazed at their hospitality. That
though they have little, they give what they have.
Okay, so back to the bus ride…
This bus ride back to our debrief location
could take anywhere from 8 to 14 hours. We decided to take the 6pm bus because of the uncertainty of time and
because it was at night…so hopefully not so hot & sweaty. The buses in Kenya are equipped with an
armed police officer. Ours just
happened to be a drunk police officer carrying a rifle. Interesting combination.
I find my seat, which happened to be behind
a woman with live chickens as her carry-on….somewhere on the over-packed bus
with again my hair being torn out and people body checking me as we go over the
bumpiest road I’ve ever experienced, I start to feel something tickling my
feet. I try kicking it out of the way
or reaching down from time to time, but felt nothing….finally I get my light
out and see that the chicken has found it’s way to my feet and it’s tail is
grazing me on every bump. Dennis kicked
it about every 5 minutes so it would not creep any farther back. Not to mention the drunk police officer with
the rifle is sitting on an armrest behind me and has rested the rifle in
between the seats next to mine & Dennis’ heads. And the aisles were again packed with more bodies than the bus
should be capable of handling.
We arrived at Kitale at 3am and they opened
up the bus ticket office for us to sleep on a couple of benches until we could
figure out when we could hop on a bus that would take us to the debrief
location. Eventually around 8ish we got
on a 15-seater bus with 15 people, packs, carry-ons, guitars, mosquito nets,
the works…with my knee dug into the seat in front of me and my head tilted
sideways because I am way too tall for the seat…we arrive at almost
noon….and now I’m about to crash.
Travel days are always an adventure and I’m
wishing I had some of that African resilience right about now as I’m not looking forward to our bus ride to Uganda in 2 days…but I am excited for Uganda. We are going to be working with Team Judah (Janina, Aaron, Steph, Becka, John, Elizabeth, Marisa) in the capital, Kampala and working in the slums and doing door-to-door visits.
