Nairobi

Hujambo! ("Greetings"),

As some of you already know, our luggage did arrive over the last couple of days, so I don't think we're lacking anything as we leave for Kapsowar tomorrow morning (6am - booo...). We had a great day today, though, after a full day of orientation discussion yesterday. I'll give you a couple of highlights:

We went to a church a few kilometres away this morning with the four of us. We were trying to go to Nairobi Chapel since Northpark Church in London has a bit of a connection with them, but a couple that we met this morning over breakfast told us they could give us a ride there, and "there" ended up being a completely different church... Oh well! It was actually a great service, although not what you'd expect. Nairobi is fairly "westernized" so the service was in English (with some Swahili songs) and wasn't as eccentric as you might be picturing. Also, the people in the church were pretty indifferent to the fact that we were there. I've been told it's a much different experience if you go to church in the country (as in, I should be ready to preach a sermon at a moment's notice... yikes!)

Later in the afternoon we took a long walk to check out a market that we were told about. I took my camera, thinking I'd be able to "capture" a bit of Nairobi. However, I only took 2 pictures and I will explain why. There was a full herd of cattle grazing right beside this main street we were walking along, so naturally I pulled out our little (older) camera and tried to nonchalantly catch the image of the cows with the city right beside them. Two gentlemen then stopped Allie and Crystal to ask what their friend (me) was doing taking pictures of their cows! I went over there, offered to delete the pictures, but they just wanted me to pay them some money. So, one of the pictures you see below cost be 100 shillings (and they probably weren't even that guy's cows). Needless to say, I kept the camera in my pocket for the rest of the adventure for fear of looking like a serious tourist again! The market was quite something, and it's too bad I couldn't take more pictures, but I'll have to tell you more about it sometime. You could buy just about anything there if you were willing to bargain, but it turns out that white (now red) skin isn't so good of a bargaining chip, so I didn't end up buying anything. As some of you know, I start to get physically ill and the room starts spinning if I'm shopping at a mall in Canada with NOBODY hassling me, so I was doomed from the beginning!

So that was the day - it will be interesting to contrast that experience with rural Kenya, which I'm told is as different as night and day. Actually, that was the most interesting part of our orientation, learning about the differences between this culture and ours. Bottom line, it is one of relationship rather than task (like ours is). For example, if somebody asks you about yourself, they don't care what you do for a living, they want to know where you come from, what your family is like, and whether or not your goats are doing well :-) Maybe instead of getting you grade 8's to work on spelling right away in the morning (task) we should spend time just hanging out after the bell rings in the morning (relationship) :-) I'll be able to comment on this culture more when we're actually in it.

The other great part of orientation was getting a grounding for what our role as short-term "missionaries" is. It is not to come here and save the world. It is to show the people that we care, to encourage those that are already here doing God's work, and to build relationships with people. Talking about this made me really excited to get over to Kapsowar and to get started - of course the girls are going to be on the front lines a bit more doing medical work with limited resources, I get to hang out with people and keep my schedule wide open!

Anyways, this post is quite long already, so I'll wrap it up. I've included a picture that I paid the big bucks (and got knocked down a few notches in my ego) for, as well as a picture of Jackie and me in front of the Mayfield Guest House where we have been staying the last couple of nights. Again, we're leaving for our 7 hour trek upcountry to Kapsowar tomorrow at 6am, so please pray for travelling mercies for us as well as for the fact that we'll be into the community tomorrow.

Many blessings

Expensive picture of cows beside the highway!



Mayfield guest house in Nairobi