What a blessing this trip has been for my team and for all that we have become friends with. It was much like yesterday when we got to the clinic only worse! We had given out 219 or so photocopies of our registration cards as "tickets" to get to the front of the line for those whom we couldn't serve by closing time Thursday. There were at least 400 to 500 more than that on the grounds. We couldn't even park in front of the clinic but had to lug our stuff in from the street. Wow! Here is what it looked like:
Our original plan for the day was to see the people with the tickets and then see how many more we might serve. My friend Pastor Dave used to always say "If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans!" Upon further investigation, I learned that people had gone to local copy shops and made copies of the blank copied registration cards we had handed out. I was not nervous at first, but I didn't want three times as many people as we could possibly serve standing in line in the sun all morning only to find out they would not be seen. That could have gone south rapidly.
I made my first priority getting the clinic running efficiently right away. Next we set about announcing to the crowd that it was the last day of the clinic and we were going to limit the number of patients we could see and that most of them would be better off going home and waiting for our next clinic somewhere in and around Nairobi. We had to repeat these announcements throughout the day to even try to thin out the crowd. By 11:30, we had decided who the last patient would be, yet many folks still hung around. We saw the last one at 1:30pm, packed up the clinic and had a devotion and one more goodbye.
Here are some of the 18 successful cataract surgery patients from this week, waiting for our doctors to examine them for problems or infections. All were doing just fine. A modern miracle, sight to the blind!
Most of my team was able to go to the Nairobi Game Park today, right near the airport and one of the best experiences in all of Kenya. Because of all of the travel issues, most of us never got to do a safari. In fact, I just saw the team off to the airport. I am staying one more day and hiring Jeff, our driver during the week, to guide me around the park for birds tomorrow. I'll fly out Saturday night and will return to Austin Sunday afternoon if all goes well.
We were able to have a good day at the clinic without most of my team because our volunteers have been doing so well that we were around just to take care of any issues that were out of the ordinary.
It's 7:30pm here and my driver is picking me up at 6am. We will do the safari from 6:30 until maybe noon or 1pm depending on how we're doing and if rain predicted for early afternoon appears. I'll have a nice lunch with my friend Catherine and Jeff afterward, then return to my hotel to freshen up before heading to the airport. More to follow as I can. Blessings everybody!
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