Travel May 12 and 13th

Got to Kenya safe and sound. See details below!
Travel May 12 and 13th
Tom, Leslie and Lupe all arrived at my house a little after 8am and we stowed all of our baggage in the bed of my truck under my handy dandy tarp and cargo net in case we ran into rain. It’s a good thing we did. We made the short ride out to Manor and were joined around 8:45 by Howard, Martha and Ralph. We were surprised to find out that Louise had fallen ill and would not be making the trip. Leslie transferred to Howard’s Expedition and we followed them through blinding rain, with water stacking up on the road to the point that we were forced to slow down for fear of hydroplaning. We made our traditional stop in Brenham at Scoops for Blue Bell and a rest stop before heading to Bush International in Houston. The rain let up during that leg of the trip and it was dry when we arrived at the Kettle Restaurant on the outskirts of the airport for a final American meal. This would be the last meal for a while where we had any say so over what we would be eating, so most of the group had the soup and salad bar, while Ralph and I indulged in good old fashioned burgers and fries. It’s nice to know what the source of the meat in your burger is, something you are not always sure of when you travel the world!
We arrived at the airport at 1:15 as planned to meet with many of our old friends from previous mission trips and began to also make new friends. We placed our gallon Zip-Loc bags with our liquids, razors and other sharp objects in a foot locker designated for this purpose. Those of us assigned to carry an Autorefractor, Howard, Tom, Ralph and myself also place our small carry-on item in footlockers and noted the number, so we could retrieve our stuff in Nairobi. The Autorefractors are amazing devices that automatically examine eyes for distance vision and produce a thermal paper prescription when all goes as planned. They are sensitive and expensive, so we keep them with us at all times, since the vision clinics could not be run as quickly, efficiently or effectively without them. They are a key piece of equipment. We cleared security in about an hour, it was very warm and several of us got varying levels of extra attention, including the dreaded full body scan. I got one in London last year and was the butt of many jokes, so I had no sympathy! We boarded our plane after last minute cell phone calls to loved ones and took off about 15 minutes late due to weather delays. The first half of the ride was pretty bumpy, so the flight attendants really earned their pay serving dinner. For once, the food was not half bad, the choice was curry chicken or lasagna. I had the latter and it filled me up. Dessert was a very good Eli’s strawberry cheesecake from Chicago. I finally started to nod off about the time we were nearing the east coast and there was a really big bump that awoke many of us and the ride became rough for about another half an hour. I probably got a total of three hours of on and off again sleep on the way to London, which is the flight that we really try to sleep on in order to get lined up more easily with Nairobi time. The pilot made up the little bit of lost time from the late start and we arrived in London right on time at 7:30am local time.
We had about a 3 hour layover at Heathrow, taking most of the first hour going through security once again. As usual, several of us were pretty thoroughly searched, both our persons and our possessions. I had bought a small snow globe in Houston as a little gift for Catherine, our liaison in Nairobi, and suddenly realized that it would probably count as something with liquid in it. Duh! I had carefully stowed all of my gels, liquids and pastes in a footlocker in Houston to avoid the hassle of yet another check and here I was with a snow globe with the space shuttle in it. The security lady pointed out it didn’t even have snow in it, but shiny little floating stars. She had mercy on me and let me keep it with a laugh, even letting the guy x-raying the baggage know what to expect. Our flight from London to Nairobi was much smoother than the first leg of the trip, with mostly sunny weather along the way. The food was not very good and pretty much met my low expectations. I ate it anyway, since I needed to keep body and soul together. It reminded me of my Dad when I was a kid telling me “David, you will eat that AND you will like it!” It was the part about liking it that was always particularly hard.
We arrived in Nairobi a little before 9pm local time, got visitor’s visas, collected up all of our footlockers, exchanged some of our money for Kenyan shillings at a rate of 82.75 per dollar. You have so many 1000 shilling bills when you are done you feel like a billionaire. We keep some U.S. dollars because there are tourist attractions and some merchants along the way that prefer them for payment. We loaded up the footlockers into a large truck and took the 45 minute ride to the Norwegian Lutheran Scripture House compound where the whole group will stay for the first 2 nights. It will be the Redeemer team’s home for the entire mission trip. Once there, we brought the footlockers into the compound, retrieved our personal items from them and got our room and roommate assignments before hitting the sack at around midnight. Saturday will bring excursions to local attractions, shopping for snacks, bottled water and other supplies for the week ahead, some afternoon training in various clinic duties, a team leader’s meeting and the day will conclude with a group worship service and then dinner. Sunday will be a travel day for the other teams to get to their respective locations. Those of us in Nairobi will worship at the church in Kawangware and celebrate the progress on the water well with the congregation. We will then go to lunch at a nice restaurant before taking all of our vision supplies and equipment to Springs of Life Lutheran Church in Kibera where we will be serving.