Coming Home – Cali

Hello all, this is Cali.  I am, along with the rest of the team, sitting in Heathrow airport on our layover, and if my       calculations are right (no guarantees – I’ve been awake for too long), we will be landing in Chicago …ok I can’t calculate it but I heard it’s around 2 PM Central time.  Continue reading

Safari!

Hey everyone! This is Stephanie. We are currently sitting in the London airport for a 5 hour layover waiting to come home! It’s a bittersweet feeling. We had such an amazing time on this trip but we are excited to see family and friends again. Continue reading

Teacher Lectures – Saturday (Return from Machakos)

Hey Peeps! Todd here – I will leave you a brief instruction and clarification on my last post.  The Loitoktok day 1 is first, Loitoktok is (I believe) second but the continuation is in the reply/comments.

Sorry, novice blogger at work!

Yes,  M&J, I too will look forward to dinner with you all as well – thanks for the note.

Yes, we are a bit disappointed with our ability to keep you all up to the latest happening and events. If we were blogging while we were riding on the bus. . . . there would be reams of blog pages to review!  But this is East Africa, things are a different pace, smell, connection – and the nature of these sorts of things is adaptation and adjustment and flexibility.  Some of us are better, all of us are learning.   🙂

We pray for Linda(we miss her and know she misses being here), for the connected debrief of our team over this weekend, for the passage of info from our teachers to the BOH teachers, continued health, for management of our expectations on return trip and after.

We are thankful for the cohesiveness of the team, the sharing of tasks, for our health (even with little coughs, gut stuff, headaches – nothing appears to be lasting) for our understanding of these people, for the blessed light that BOH is in so many ways right here (number of people touched, consistent approach by the teachers and health workers, effectiveness of the triad of managing and teaching health, vocational training, education of their children – to start the list).  We are thankful and blessed for All the people who bless us and enable us to be here.

I understand as well that this afternoon and evening (Nairobi time) that there will be a nice down load of pics – but I wish we could just sit and tell you about the context of each of those pics! The People in those pics! Our collective impressions/perspective of those stories.  ( I reserve the right to be wrong about that tidbit if the pics somehow don’t materialize – aka read “failed wifi!” ) Note to self “is there a solution for next year’s team?”

Yesterday’s clinic was slow to come together. Bumping up the mountain in the district of Machakos – it was dusty.  God blessed us with an amazing driver – we had taken a wrong turn . . . does one ever plan to take a wrong turn? . .  .   .    .     the ‘road’ narrowed perceptively and with it the steepness of the mountain was many hundreds of feet down with just peering out the window.  Quite disconcerting, but Anthony (our driver) was right on it – took the next opportunity to turn around – Think for a moment – the road is Just wide enough for the tires, the Body  of the bus is hanging Over huge washout on the uphill side (read ‘hole’) and Over the edge of the washed out road on the Downhill side . . . Whew.  A little y-turn and we get to go back up that road. The y-turn involved a fully loaded bus spinning dual rear tires backing up a considerable hill! Go Anthony!  Btw, he got to do that again to get on to the correct road once we had traversed the one lane washed out road with cliff sides . . . . We made it.  4:30 pm Lunch.  Still have to set up the clinic . . .   🙂   . . . flexibility . . . bending our western thinking and priority of lists and a time schedule to work . . . here.  We are working together.  PTL.

– Todd

A Few Days In

“If you leave here having learned only how deep your ignorance is you’ve probably had a good trip”

This was a comment that I (Tyler) heard in our group today, and after only 2 and a half days here I have to say that I agree.  I’m not sure what American assumptions have been hiding in my mind, but I am sure that most if not all of them been defied in our short time here. Continue reading