Kawangware vision clinic is open for business!

We had a wonderful day from start to finish.  We had a hurried breakfast at 7am because we needed to be on the road at 7:20 to setup the rest of the clinic.  Our cook, Kennedy, made some good fried eggs with sausage and we had bread and fruit from a buffet.  There was hot milk, but no hot water, so I made my Nescafe with hot milk and it was actually quite good.  Our ride into the slum was uneventful, but it was fun to see the looks on Linda’s face as she saw new things and got a taste of a weekday rush hour in Nairobi.  It’s pretty much like a high speed video game, but you get used to it pretty quickly.  We had a nice surprise when we arrived at the church. Our old friend Pastor Zedekiah and his wife Karen were there to greet us.  They had an 8:30 commitment, so we could only visit for a minute or two.  We hope to see them again before the end of the clinic. 

We got all of our footlockers situated and other last minute details taken care of, had a morning devotion led by Pastor James and then got to work seeing our first patients.  We only had a few minor first day glitches which included getting the right lighting and technique down to work the autorefractors and the usual getting used to each job in the clinic.  With a small team, it was remarkable how smoothly things were running by noon, when we had seen about 180 people.  This was due to having seasoned volunteers like Barrack, Paul, Max, Frank and others with us again, the excellent work of Nuru (LHM in Kenya) and our driver Steven helping in many, many ways from crowd control to translating to anything else that needed doing.  By the time we ended the day, we had seen nearly 300 people, pretty respectable for a first day.  We had Max out in the neighborhood twice during the day with a megaphone.  Tomorrow we will have our driver Steven take him around a little larger area to drum up business for the vision clinic.  Word of mouth spreads quickly among the concentrated population in the slum and if our clinic holds true to form, the number of patients we will see will increase daily.

We went to Catherine’s mother’s for dinner tonight right after the clinic closed with the whole team including Steven.  Our friend Shara, who works with Catherine in the Nairobi LCMS Mission Office, was also there.  Mama, one of her best friends Margaret and Catherine's other brothers and sisters were there as well.  Not an empty seat or stomach in the house and lots of love and laughs.  Kenyans really know how to fellowship over a good meal.  It was a great night and we felt particularly honored to have been invited into Mama’s home.  Each day just gets better and better!

Well, it’s almost 10pm local time, I will sleep the sleep of the exhausted and we’ll get up and do it again tomorrow.  More to follow and some pictures soon since we will have 2 free nights in a row before a possible nice dinner, probably Thursday night, maybe at a new Brazilian steak house.  Thank you Lord for a day in which people came to know you and for letting us be your hands and feet.  Amen.

Sunday worship in Kawangware

We got up early and breakfasted with the other teams that were heading out to do vision clinics all over Kenya, some had to go 6 hours or more to reach their destinations.  We got a big group picture in front of the beautiful compound we had stayed in the first 2 nights and then we helped the other teams load up and head ‘em on out.  We were the last to leave, as we only needed to be at church by 10am.  Pastor Kevin was prepared to preach, having been asked the evening before.  The local pastors are very gracious with giving our pastors the opportunity to preach and teach in their churches wherever we go.

We arrived a few minutes late to a packed church and had a wonderful worship service, with all different styles of music ranging from traditional hymns to Swahili choirs to praise music and everything in between.  All the elements of a Lutheran church service were there including confession and absolution, the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Benediction, etc.  Pastor Kevin chose the passage from Luke 4 where Jesus returns to Nazareth, reads the scripture from Isaiah pointing to Him as the Messiah and is rejected in His own home town.  The theme was “Is God here in church today?” and Kevin did a wonderful job of involving the congregation in answering this question.  After nearly 3 hours of worship, which flew by as it always does, we went outside where the choir did one more song and then Pastor James gave the Benediction.  We spent about half an hour greeting old friends and introducing Billy and Linda to everybody.  We then rearranged the church for the clinic and this took some brainstorming on our parts, since the flow of the clinic has changed a little since we first started doing clinics in Kawangware.  This took about another half hour, so we left the church around 2:30pm and had a nice lunch at the Java House restaurant (think Starbuck’s with a full menu!) with Catherine and Sylvester at the Junction Shopping Center, a block from where we will be staying the rest of the week.  After lunch, we walked to the Nakumatt and were glad to see heightened security.  Guards were running wands over everyone coming into the mall and they were also present at every turn.  We thanked them for their service and told them we felt safer due to their presence.  We bought snacks for the week and supplies for the eye clinic including hand sanitizer, toilet paper and other essentials.  We are blessed to be staying a block away from such great shopping and restaurants, knowing we can stock up on anything on any given day.  They even have the first Subway in Nairobi, which was just opened by an American entrepreneur.  As Billy stated it so eloquently “I didn’t come 8,000 miles to eat in a Subway!” so I doubt there will be any group meals there anytime soon.

All is well, we are raring to get started on the clinic tomorrow and are now in our rooms around 8:30pm.  Internet access is sketchy in the building where we are staying here at Rosa Mystica, so I may have to walk down near the office to post this.  If I had a better signal in my room, there might already be the first of the pictures for you to see.  I have a wireless repeater with me, but I can’t reset it to factory condition to make it work here without a paper clip. My BIC ballpoint pen won’t do it, so hopefully a paper clip will appear in the next day or so.  That’s all for now.  Keep a safe and effective mission in your prayers, we’re ready to serve.

Saturday safari and more...

We got up bright and early for a 6am breakfast and were on the road to Lake Naivasha with our driver Humphrey.  He pointed out many interesting things along the way and took us to a different lodge than we had ever set sail from before.  We were pleasantly surprised that the entry fee for each of us was only 2,000 Kenyan shillings or about $25.  We saw many birds, nesting and in flight, and Linda and I both used our DSLR cameras to the max.  All of my practice with the new camera really paid off in what I know are going to be some high quality photos of hippos, zebras, wildebeests, water bucks, many more animals as well as birds in flight.  I was a little surprised to see that I had taken nearly 1,000 pictures, a new daily record, but I did do many multiple shot action sequences, which accounts for a lot of shots that will more than likely end up on the cutting room floor.  Pictures will hopefully begin to trickle up to the blog over the next couple of days as time and Internet availability permit.  As always, about 2 weeks after we return to Austin, I will have many of the very best of the best photos linked into the blog.  We had a nice lunch at the lodge that costs us another $25 or so each, which offset some of the savings from the safari.  Still, a very affordable, enjoyable day trip was had by all.

Our ride back to Nairobi found most, if not all, of us dozing off on occasion.  This was due both to sleep deprivation and travel jet lag but also from being out on the water in the wind and the sun all morning.  Upon arrival at the convent where we are staying, the St. Joseph Spirituality Center, Pastor Kevin and I were immediately summoned to a meeting of all of the team leaders with Catherine, Shara and leaders from the Central Diocese who are hosting our clinics.  We were welcomed warmly by all of our friends and we discussed our partnership in sharing the Gospel as effectively as possible. 

We worshipped with the other teams, since many will be traveling long distances and will not get the opportunity to worship on Sunday with the congregations they will be serving.  One of the blessings of doing urban ministry within Nairobi is that we worship with the people we will be working with during the week, renewing old friendships and starting on new ones.

Worship was followed by a very good dinner of chicken, rice, greens and watermelon and pineapple for dessert.  We all turned in fairly early, since the coming days will be very busy indeed.  Next up, worship in Kawangware on Sunday and our other activities…

London to Nairobi and safely at our lodgings

We got away from the gate in London right on time and headed east towards Continental Europe.  Our flight path has taken us past Bosnia, over the beautiful mountains surrounding Sarejevo and Montenegro and we are now just about past Greece in our southward trip towards first north Africa and finally Kenya, which is on the east coast of Africa straddling the Equator.  We expect the weather to be around 80 every day for a high and in the low 60’s at night.  Our missions always coincide with the rainy seasons in the spring and the fall, this is why our airfare is lower than at the high tourist times, such as spring break for European college kids.  If the pattern holds true to form, we will be in jackets in the morning on the way to work at the clinic, the clouds will burn off by 10am and it will be warm the rest of the day.  The rains usually come late in the afternoon.  More than once, a torrential late afternoon rain has cut our clinic short for the day, since people don’t go out in that kind of weather or will be scrambling home to try to prevent damage from flash flooding, etc.

We are a little more than 5 hours away from Nairobi at this point and have just had lunch.  I had curry chicken with spinach and a rice dish.  A small salad, a roll and some chocolate mousse rounded out the meal.  Our first flight was too warm for my liking.  This flight has been absolutely frigid.  Even I, who am always too warm, am bundled up in a blanket.  The hot meal plus a cup of coffee afterwards has helped to take the chill away and it’s now looking pretty likely that a nap is in my future.

I did get some good sleep of a little more than an hour and feel much better now.  I’ve done some stretching and went back to the galley and got some juice and a snack.  The current estimate has us arriving in Nairobi around 9:20pm local time.  I’m sure it will be midnight by the time we get our visas, a t4iour footlockers and other luggage, get everything loaded up into a truck, arrive at our lodgings by bus, unload everything and then get assigned a room.  We will have an early morning because we are going up to Lake Naivasha for a photo safari.  Those of you who regularly follow this blog will know that we’ve been there more than a few times and there were some outstanding wildlife photos captured by Pastor Robert Tiner on the last trip in April.  Those photos made me jealous enough that I got a comparable Nikon camera (D5200) to the Canon (t4i) that he had used.  I consider myself a serious amateur photographer and have worked hard all summer to learn all of the features of this camera and some stunning new photo techniques.  I hope that all of this effort will pay off in some fabulous animal pictures, portraits of the people we encounter and a great landscape or two.  Each safari and each clinic have their own personality, with differing people, weather, places and situations.  My goal is to give you a taste of the incredible variety of flavors we will experience.

We made it through immigration and customs without too much trouble.  Since the International Terminal at Kenyatta Airport burned down in August, they have gotten a pretty good replacement for it up and running in the cargo area.  We were bused from our plane on the tarmac to the cargo area and things did go pretty smoothly.  We then loaded up all of the footlockers and luggage onto a truck and took two small buses to our lodgings in Karen, a suburb of Nairobi.  We got our room assignments and I was showered and in bed by 1am.  I set the alarm for 5:45am and had a short but decent rest before getting up to breakfast and the safari.  More on the Saturday's safari and the rest of the day to follow.

Travel from Houston to London - we're at Heathrow now!

Well, I have my first funny story of the trip.  There was heightened security while boarding Flight 194.  After we were already heading down the gangway to board the plane, we were stopped in groups of 15 or so, told to get against the right hand wall side by side with our luggage in front of us.  The next thing I knew, there was a nice lady in a police type uniform with a German shepherd going down the aisle, sniffing each set of carry-on bags.  It spent about two to three seconds on each bag until it came to me.  The dog showed heightened interest and wouldn’t leave my bags until ordered to do so.  One lady in my group had a similar experience and we were both ordered to go to a table where all of our stuff was thoroughly searched.  I thanked the TSA personnel for what they were doing and they said most people get upset.  I said I was glad they were doing a good job and that my guess was the dog was either fascinated by the smell of my long-haired Calico cat or wanted some of my snacks.  It was probably a little of each, as they said the dog had a sweet tooth.  I always bring some Payday candy bars and some bags of Teriyaki Beef Jerky with me to tide me over during our busiest days at the clinic when we may not be able to break for a proper lunch.  Sure enough, everyone got a good laugh when they saw cat hair on my camera bag (Fluffin likes to lay on it for some unknown reason!) and when the snacks were uncovered.  I thanked everyone again for taking our safety seriously and was one of the last ones to board the plane.  Pastor Kevin and the rest of the team liked my story about the sniffer dog with a sweet tooth.  I am writing this at 35,000 feet as we pass over Little Rock Arkansas, a little less than an hour after a 4:36pm takeoff.  We’re on a newer British Air plane, with USB ports for charging up small devices and a nice interactive entertainment system for the 8.5 hour flight.

We just finished dinner, the choice was between a beef dish and pasta.  I took the pasta, since I had eaten a huge Swiss cheeseburger at the airport around 3pm.  We are now approaching Toledo, Ohio at about 2 hours into the flight.  Soon, it will be lights out in the cabin so those that wish to sleep can do so more easily.  I just discovered that this plane also has power taps, even back here in the cattle car section.  This is the first time I’ve ever been able to both use and recharge my devices in economy class.  I am an American Airlines frequent flier and have occasionally been bumped up to business or first class on fairly empty flights, but this is a new level of amenities for the common man.  Three cheers British Air!  I am hopeful I’ll get a wifi signal in the morning at Heathrow so I can post what our travel experience has been so far.

We’re about an hour out from London now.  I was able to get maybe 2 hours of sleep total over the last 7 hours or so.  Flight was very bumpy, especially over Nova Scotia and not very conducive to slumbering.  It was much more just resting my eyes with an eyeshade on, listening to music and various podcasts and a little pecking away at this blog than sleep.  I’m afraid I’ll end up napping a little too much on the next flight as a result and the first night’s sleep in Nairobi may be fitful as a result.  Oh well, it is what it is.  We just were served a breakfast of a croissant with strawberry jam, a granola bar and some Craisins, which are sun-dried cranberries.  It was actually much better than it sounds and a step up for British Air.  We used to joke about their tasteless cardboard biscuits for breakfast on past journeys.  I chased it with some black coffee and will be asking for some juice or water soon.  On these long travels it is very important to stay hydrated, particularly since our final destination will be at about 6,500 feet of elevation.  This is similar to traveling to the mountains in Colorado, but includes the extra kicker of the ease with which you can get behind the curve on hydration during two long flights.  I’m always like a mother hen on these trips with my team, driving them nuts with asking when was the last time they had something to drink.  It beats altitude sickness.  Over the years, several people have fallen ill on these trips that haven’t kept up on their fluids, but never on one of my teams.  The proof is in the pudding!

We’ve made it to Heathrow with about an hour to spare before our gate opens.  Everyone is freshening up or trying to send a quick email to family and friends to let them know we’ve made it this far.  More to follow from Nairobi.

We have cleared security in Houston

We have made it through security at Bush International and now we have nothing left to do but get something to eat, phone our families one last time before we leave the country and visit with new team members we have yet to meet from the other churches.  Our flight, British Air 194, is on time and we should be flying out at 4:20pm for London.  Pastor Kevin and I had an uneventful drive down from Austin and he had a surprise for us.  He was able to get AISLE seats for all of us.  What a blessing, since veteran travelers know it's good to get up and move around on a regular basis to avoid various medical issues and to arrive in better shape.  We will try to sleep for much of the flight to England and then will force ourselves to remain awake for most of the trek to Nairobi, since we arrive around 9pm and want to be tired so as to get some sleep the first night there and begin to adjust to a time zone that is 8 hours different than our own.  More to follow as I have electricity and Internet access.

Finally ready to saddle up for Kawangware

After many fits and starts, not the least of which was the tragic attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi  couple of weeks ago, Pastor Kevin and I are heading to Houston this morning to lead a team to the church in Kawangware for an eyeglass clinic.  This is the church where we helped build a water well and we are looking forward to seeing our friends there again.  Due to security concerns, we have not been back there, where we got our start with the Vision for Kenya Project, since November of 2011 when Pastor Dave and Risa joined us.  Stay tuned for stories and a picture or two as our mission unfolds.  As always, many more pictures and reflections will be added shortly after our return from Kenya.  Please keep us in your prayers for a safe and effective mission in which many people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.  And check back here often...

To God be the Glory!