Rachel in Africa!

Whew! As soon as I got back into Kenya I went on a whirlwind trip with my friend, Rachel Schulte, from Seattle. Rachel’s a nurse who is interested in working here in Kenya, so she came back with me to check out Kenya. She also brought over extensive materials for first aid kids for our two projects in Kisumu as well as the children’s home here in Kitale. So we took off to Kisumu after only being back in Kitale for a few days. We spent a week down there doing medical treatment for the kids at Lakeside Children’s Home and the most severe cases at Ring Road Orphan Day School. We saw 60 kids in two days at Ring Road, a feat that Rachel said was impressive even back home. I took the kids’ history & general info so that Rachel could just focus on the medical problems. We also spent quality time with Thomas and his wife Irene, as well as Schola Odhiambo (Jared’s wife) and towards the end of our visit got to meet up with James & Lauryn. Jared had not yet returned from his visit to the states. We thoroughly enjoyed traditional African meals at Thomas and Jared’s house. And Rachel was happy because we pretty much found Coke Light (diet Coke) just about everywhere we went, which is the only soda that she will drink.

After we returned from Kisumu we spent a few days here in Kitale at the Children’s Home. Rachel did first aid training for the staff at the home, which included taking all of their blood pressures. The staff each received a writing pen from Rachel when they “completed the course” for which they were very grateful. Rachel left a large tub of medical supplies, including blood pressure cuffs, stethoscopes, pain killers, ring worm treatments, bandages, and a copy of the book “Where There is No Doctor”. Which is basically a great resource for first aid for people here in Africa.

After we finished up in Kitale, Carrie & I decided to take advantage of having a guest with us to go to the coast of Kenya. We started out our journey on a bus to Nairobi. This was not the bus company that we usually take to Nairobi, and we quickly learned why. About half way through the journey we experienced a Kenyan drug bust on our bus!! So we got on another bus because they wanted to take the driver and conductor of the bus in for statements at the police station. When we finally made it to Nairobi, we caught a taxi to the train station, where we waiting for several hours. Our train was supposed to leave at 7 pm, but didn’t end up leaving until almost 10! When we finally got off and rolling, we enjoyed some Kenyan cuisine in the train’s dining car and then headed off to our cabin to spend the night on the train. I’d never slept on a train before, but it was a pretty nice experience! We woke up the next morning a couple hours outside of Mombasa, the main coastal city in Kenya. Once we were there, we toured Fort Jesus, which was built by the Portuguese at the end of the 1500’s. The next day we woke up and boarded a matatu (a Toyota 14 passenger van, the common Kenyan taxi) for Malindi, about 2 hours north of Mombasa. We enjoyed finally getting to see the beautiful Indian Ocean and finding an unexpected Italian café where we could get real cappuccinos for only one dollar! The next day we boarded another matatu and went to Watamu, about half an hour south of Malindi. It was in Watamu that we found our favorite destination of the trip. Watamu is just a small beach side village, but it has beautiful beaches and our hotel was absolutely beautiful! We hung out on the beach, watched the stars at night, and I even got to catch a sunrise over the Indian Ocean… despite the African beach bums who tried to harass us into buying their wood carvings or necklaces, be their girlfriends or get our hair braided, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves! The real adventure began though, when we tried to leave Watamu the next day to get back to Mombassa and catch our train back to Nairobi. We thought since it only took 2 hours to get to Malindi, it would take even less time to get back, since we had already driven south a bit more. But alas, we were wrong. About 3 ½ hours after we left Watamu we finally ended up in Mombasa, and we had missed our train by 15 minutes. (We figured they must not leave on time ever, since our other train left 3 hours late before! Silly us…) But our adventure did not end there! Our taxi driver thought he could get us to the first or second train stop outside of Mombasa. So we took off “speeding” (not really, but he tried) down the horrible road between Mombasa and Nairobi. As we pulled up to the first stop, the train was just leaving. On our way to the second stop, we got a flat tire! So we turned around and headed back to Mombasa for the night. We only had about 2 days before Rachel’s plane left, so we decided it would be more efficient to shell out the $120 to fly from Mombasa to Nairobi the next day, so Rachel would had adequate time to get the gifts she wanted to take back, and to spare ourselves from the 10 hour bus ride from Mombasa to Nairobi! It was totally worth it!! So we spent Rachel’s last day and a half craft shopping and hanging out at the Java House.

It was great to have Rachel here in Kenya. She definitely got a full perspective of the country, the people and the ministry opportunities here. And she was a great trooper throughout everything we did and everywhere we went. I think she will definitely fit well in Kenya, should the Lord decide to bring her here some day.

More later!
Alita

PS- I had this blog ready to be posted over a week ago! We've been having major telephone line/internet problems... I'll try to catch up over the next week from the internet cafe, which is proving to be far more trustworthy at this point! [smile]