As any World Racer can tell you, sometimes things just don’t go the way you planned. Especially if you’re in Africa. In fact, we have our own phrase for times like that: T.I.A. This is Africa. When plans change because of slow Internet, broken down vehicles, or because people are running on African time, we simply look at each other and say, “T.I.A.” To give you an example of this, I’m going to tell you about a classic T.I.A. kind of day. One day when we have a good Internet connection, I will post Part 2 of this blog that will include a video of the experience.
We got up in the morning, had breakfast, and packed a lunch. The plan was to drive to some nearby waterfalls to see them and use them as a backdrop for the music videos that our pastor had asked us to film. Yes, you read that right…our ministry this month has turned out to include shooting music videos. Am I qualified for this? Absolutely not. But welcome to life on the World Race. We have stopped asking, “Do I possess the necessary skills or experience to accomplish this task?” and started saying, “Sure, we can do that!” to every request made of us. So when our pastor explained that while S Squad was here in January they helped sing backup vocals in the studio while he recorded his first album, but that music videos in Kenya are far too expensive to film, we took his hint and offered to shoot a few ourselves.
So, off to the waterfalls we went. Except not really. We got as far as town, made a stop at the hospital to pay a child’s medical bill, and then the van broke down. The steering column broke so we sat in Eldoret for a couple hours waiting for them to try to fix it. After it became apparent that it was unfixable, we got another van and went on our way. We arrived at the waterfalls about an hour later, hiked down to where there was a good view for the video, and began to plan out our shots.
After about fifteen minutes of filming, the sky opened up and it began to pour. We hiked back to the van as quickly as we could, piled in, and set out for home. About two hundred feet down the road, the van got stuck. If you want a mental picture of the van we were driving, go watch Little Miss Sunshine. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly created for off-roading. Our driver somehow wedged us on top of a large boulder that was right under the axel, so we were going nowhere fast.
We all piled out of the van to push, getting sprayed with mud as the wheels spun. After pushing in vain for awhile, a group of random men showed up to help. It turned out that their van was also stuck further up the road, so it became a team effort to get all the cars unstuck. We finally dislodged the boulder, and for about five minutes we thought we were good to go. And then the ditch happened. Our van slipped off the road into a ditch of deep mud, and we were stuck all over again.
Fast forward about two hours…more pushing, more mud, more rain, more seeing our breath. At one point the van tipped sideways into a ditch and almost rolled over. Finally, when everyone was dirtier and colder than we ever could have imagined, the van began to move. After pushing the other cars out of the way, we could reach the main road!
A few miles down the road we stopped to eat the lunch we had packed…except that it was almost 5 pm. After our quick snack, we climbed back into the van, presumably to go home, but that would have been too simple. Instead, we stopped for awhile at the local police station to file a report because apparently our driver had hit a motorcyclist earlier in the day and was being prosecuted. After sorting that out, we were finally on our way home where we boiled water and took the world’s hottest bucket showers! If you think it’s always warm on the Equator, think again!
At the end of the day we just had to laugh because it turned out so different from how we had planned. T.I.A. We went out today to shoot more of the music video, and we’ll start working on the editing tonight. At some point when the Internet is better, I’ll post the video of the day that Joel is working on and the music videos we’re making.
As always, thank you for your prayers! We have eight more days in Kenya before we head to Uganda for month 8…hard to believe!
