Final Saturday and travel home

After finishing packing my stuff, I went down early for breakfast and worked with Martha on my smartphone to complete getting seat assignments for the rest of our group.  In every case, we had been assigned and aisle or window seat and had been able to change them all to aisles.  As any experienced traveler knows, the aisle is the most desired seat, you can stretch whenever you want without bothering others.  Since we stress not getting dehydrated, if you are going to drink lots of fluids, you will need to get up more frequently than others.  I only get the window seat if I want to sleep most of the way or take pictures of clouds and other sights of interest.

We were blessed to have our friend Barrack from Kawangware join us for our Lake Naivasha safari.  We had breakfast, gathered our luggage into a conference room for delivery over to another convent where all of our teams would gather later in the day and we headed out a little after 8am.  We made a brief stop for pictures at a scenic overlook at the Great Rift Valley and then drove on. We arrived at the lodge on Lake Naivasha at 10am and, after paying admission and a restroom stop, we donned our lifejackets and boarded a boat with a guide.  We spent about 45 minutes getting numerous pictures of many of the water birds and animals along the shore. We also got up close and personal to several groups of hippos along the way.  We arrived at the smaller of two islands and got out for a 45 minute walk during which we saw wildebeests, zebra, gazelles and many more birds and interesting flowers and other flora.  It’s really quite an experience to walk among the animals with no fences.  Everyone really enjoyed this adventure.  After arriving back at the lodge around 12:30pm, we had a very nice lunch outdoors at a shaded table.  A perfect end to a great morning!

After lunch, we headed back towards town, with one short stop for photos at a Catholic church that was built by Italian prisoners of war during World War II.  William and I tried to get artsy shots and I think he may have won.  I’ll know when I review several thousand pictures from this trip over the next week or two.  We got back to the Karen, a nice suburb of Nairobi, around 3pm and freshened up, bought some souvenirs from some women that Catherine always brings in that use the proceeds of their sales for work with orphans and other worthy causes.  They know all the veteran members of our team by now, we’ve bought from them for years now.

We had a nice meeting of all the teams and members from each team, veteran and new members alike, shared some of the amazing things God had done through us.  One team was involved in healing a demon possessed woman in a tribal area, another took care of a 97 year old man that received surgery for his cataracts.  The story about him had a humorous side, he came without the assistance of his family and was obviously not fully clothed under his robe.  Our team had its travel adventure and a strong clinic to report on.

We left for the airport around 5:30, with one bus and several vans full of team members and a truck with all of our footlockers for the clinics and our personal luggage.  We made sure to put our things in last, so that we could lead the way through security and clear the way for the others when we got our stuff unloaded first at the airport.  We always try to have a team leader go through security first and this time it was me.  We have had newcomers jump the gun and make a mess of the whole process for all the teams before.  We have learned from experience and it went well this time.  The teams spent the rest of the time in and around the Java House Restaurant, meeting old friends, making new ones and sharing more stories of our clinics.

We cleared one more security screening, boarded our flight and were in the air before midnight.  We were slated to arrive just before 6am, because Heathrow closes overnight and opens then every day, out of respect for their surrounding neighborhood.  Once airborne, 2 members of other teams got pretty sick, one even was at the point that the flight crew called for any doctors on board to report to them. I heard them discussion among the flight attendants of maybe going back to Nairobi and my first thought was “Here we go again, my trip number 13 truly is unlucky as far as travel goes!”  They eventually stabilized the woman and she seemed fine when we arrived at Heathrow.  I’m writing this as we wait about 2 hours to board our direct flight to Austin.  We should arrive at Bergstrom about 4pm.  It will be good to have all of the amenities of home, but I pray that the deep faith and gentle spirit of the Kenyan people continues to work on each of our hearts and we can display that kind of joy in our own community.

More posts to the blog will be added regularly for a while as pictures become available and more stories are needed to be told, so keep coming back.  Thanks be to God for another safe and effective mission!