Sunday June 9, 2024 Home at last!

June 9, 2024

My flight from London to Austin started out nearly an hour late but the estimated arrival now is around 4:30pm, only half an hour behind.  I suppose it depends a lot on how the jetstream cooperates. My 6 hour planned layover allowed me to have a big breakfast in a sit down restaurant at Heathrow after I cleared security. The delayed flight meant I bought an egg sandwich before boarding.  One thing about Heathrow.  Their security is tight. They don’t announce your departure gate until you only have a few minutes to get there. So, you need to stay on your toes and keep an eye on the screens or have an app on your phone for the airline you are using. The app beat the screens by a couple of minutes. 

I’m waiting for the early part of the the flight meal, then I’ll sleep for a while. I’ll decide whether purchasing onboard wifi  is worth it for the second half of the flight or not. The meal was a chicken stew that was really pretty good, with some kind of cheesy potatoes,  veggies, a roll and a fudge brownie cup, plus cheddar cheese and crackers. It filled me up and I slept a little over an hour, waking up around 10am Austin time. If I get wifi, it will only be for 4 hours for about $6.50 (after converting from English pounds). A full flight is about $15.

I texted Pastor Michael early this morning from Heathrow before our prayer group blessed the sanctuary and all who would come to worship at Redeemer.  He was happy I was going to get back without incident.

As I write this, I have traveled about 1600 miles from London and we are nearing the southern tip of Greenland, with about 3300 miles remaining. 

I’m still a little too close to the clinic we conducted at Dandora to reflect on it much. We served 2255 people by my count, but with all the mayhem the final 3 mornings I can hardly say I’m as confident in that number compared to past vision camps. For one thing, I has a statistician from Nairobi County recording information from the cards until after each day. I typically keep up with categorizing them for our purposes and count numerous times during the day. Also, we kept some cards aside to supply reading or distance glasses to the patients later, after we’re gone and that number grew each day as our inventory dwindled.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number we served isn’t closer to 2500. God knows!

I’m now less than an hour and a half from Austin. Woohoo! It will be good to sleep in my own bed laying down instead of sitting up in a plane or airport. I’ll be editing lots of pictures soon, so stay tuned here or on my Facebook as I start to publish them. Only about 2000 this time, usually 5-6000. I’m hoping for at least 200 keepers. Blessings everybody and thanks for following along thus far! Check back, more to follow soon!

Saturday safari and more

Just as we had planned, Jeff picked me up at 6am sharp, we'll before breakfast was available at the Jimlizer Hotel where the team and I had stayed during our clinic. I introduced him to trail mix and Nature Valley granola bars. We arrived at the Nairobi Game Park around its 6:30 opening time and there must have been 50 or more safari vehicles in line already. Wow! On my early trips to this park,  we used to have to send someone into the park office with cash and it took forever to get checked in. With phone payments possible in advance speeding things up, we only waited about 15 minutes and we were motoring into the park. Having a driver and vehicle to myself had pluses and minuses. I could go to my favorite spots in the park, reposition frequently for the perfect photo, stay as long as I wanted and move on when I was ready. Also, I had more time to get to know Jeff. We shared each other's faith walk and talked about anything and everything. It brought back strong memories of my dear, dear friend and brother Jay and endless hours in my boat. It was cathartic for me. The downside was the $300 cost between entrance fees for me, Jeff and our popup Toyota van with no one to split it with. It was worth it. Leaving Kenya having done no nature photography would have been far worse!

I had Jeff take me to a water feature with an island rookery similar to Murphy Park. It had Egyptian Geese, Sacred Ibises, Egrets, Herons and other shorebirds like Plovers and Killdeer-like ones. I even got flyby shots of an African Fish Eagle! There are Crocodiles and Hippos there too. Jeff yelled when one large Croc near us went from absolutely motionless to violently thrashing. I wheeled and cranked off a burst of shots that revealed a large fish in its jaws sideways. But not for long. One big gulp took care of it!

It's been very rainy around Nairobi for weeks, so the dirt roads were rutted and muddy. And the grass was tall and with plentiful food, the wildlife was scattered. As weird as it may sound,  some of my best safaris have been in drought years when wildlife is concentrated. I saw Hippos,  Rhinos,  Giraffes, Water Buffalo,  Hartebeests,  Gazelles, Impalas and a few more animals but no Lions or Zebras which are always there. My primary focus was birds, but that was tough too and it was a grey morning. I took about 1200 pictures over a 6 hour period and I know maybe 100 will be winners. Some of my tracking and auto focus settings quit working about halfway through the day, so I had to go old school and rely on my years of practice before modern features were even invented. 

I had lunch with Catherine and Jeff and settled accounts as best as we could. I also brought her refurbished laptops for the Kongasis school for when they get electricity and several personal gifts. We hugged and I returned to my hotel room for a short nap, a shower and to finish packing. I left for the airport at 6:30pm. I was 3 hours before my flight and said a fond farewell to Jeff until we meet again. He had dropped me in the middle of the Terminals. I asked a policeman where Terminal 1A was and he head 1E! I ended up getting plenty of exercise finding 1A over the next 20 minutes. My overnight flight was routine.

I have a 6 hour layover at Heathrow and it looks like my flight to Austin will leave at least half an hour late but we can probably make that up. I've gotten word that the rest of the team got back OK.  I'm bringing up the rear! More to follow as I can. Blessings!