Safari!

We arrived at the lodge after landing on the the dirt airstrip and getting into safari 4 wheel drive jeeps and driving about 15 kilometers in the Masai Mara. One individual somewhat excitedly asked, "I suppose that was only a taste of what we will be seeing". I could only nod my head in agreement. It's hard to describe going on a safari, but we will try with pictures and videos. This is beautiful country and the animals are magnificent. And to be here during the "Great Migration". There literally were thousands of zebras and wildebeasts. Enjoy what you see. We did.

Final Day at Seed of Hope

Today was the last day with children. We had fun activities for the morning and we were to leave that afternoon, but we didn't know exactly the time. The foster children left around 11:30 am in order to be able to drive them all home. One of the big activities was the craft to build a handbag out of duct tape. All ages enjoyed that. When it was time to leave, we all gathered in a circle. Terry presented a soccer ball that had been donated by the MSHAA (Missouri High School Athletic Association). Rose then introduced and thanked the Seed of Hope staff. She then personally thanked our mission team and also thanked the interns. We left knowing that these children were in good hands. We headed back to the Kitale airport and later that afternoon we were flying back to Nairobi. We made it to the Methodist Guest House for a well deserved night of rest. But more excitement awaited us. Tomorrow.... Safari!

Monday, Monday

Remember that old song by the Mama's and Papa's? They were not looking forward to that day. However, after Sunday, we were ready to go. The medical team knew it was going to be a extremely busy day especially after "free medical care" had been announced in church. It wasn't long before there enough people lined up to be seen for the day. There's nothing more difficult than to have to turn people away simply because the need is greater than the resources. Procedural changes had been made to make it a better environment for the team to be able to serve. The VBS team was busy, too, but had made adjustments to help out. We had translators (church pastor, house mom & dads, Rose, etc.) to help out with all but the older children who's English was pretty good. With communication improved, the children were better able to follow instructions. The afternoon was unstructured and a lot of fun. The kids enjoyed Naomi's safari game, having the fingernails painted (boys, too!), flying a kite (Kevin had a hard time with it, but the kids knew how to work it better.), and Sharon's Noah card matching game, not to mention some serious rope jumping. The normal sounds of children playing were great to hear, just like any children around the world. But, of course, they are like any other children.

Sunday at Ecclesia

Today being Sunday, it's appropriate to talk about the Sunday 2 weeks ago. The day before had been a very busy day for all, and now we all got up (some of us didn't get as much sleep as we wanted) and headed back to the Seed of Hope. But first we attended a church nearby the Seed of Hope, one that the children attended. It was the Ecclesia church. When we got there we were ushered to the front, to a place of prominence. We got pews that were padded and covered. The service began and the children came up front with the song leader and youth pastor and led in worship for about an hour. They sang and danced. It was tremendous. If any of us were dragging, this level of energy raised us up. Rose got up and introduced us, but let us all say our own name since a lot of ours were "too difficult to pronounce". They had a visiting pastor and he preached for quite some time. Fortunately we got to sit down for that part. He preached in English and had a translater who translated in Swahili.

After the service we gatthered about and visited while the older boys and their men leaders engaged in a volleyball game. We then headed to the Seed of Hope for lunch and then an unstructered time with the children. We had football games and relay races going on. The children really enjoyed the relay races and the interns got their level of excitement up to a high level. They all had a great time! But again, it rained in the late afternoon and everyone scooted inside. Terry and I were able to sit and talk with the visiting pastor for quite some time and found out that he had been quite the football player in his younger days. When the time came for us to leave, it was decided that the road was too muddy for our van and so we walked out of the Seed of Hope and up to the Ecclesia church in order to get to the van and back to the Kitale Club, our hotel.

Busy Day - Big Time

Saturday was a very busy day for both the VBS and medical teams. We divided the children up into age groups, each one with an intern, gave them colored bandanas to identify the group, then had each group go to a station. We soon learned that the craft was taking a lot of time while the other groups were finishing and so we had to figure out what to do with them while they waited. The interns were wonderful with this as they were able to have fun playing with them until we were ready to switch groups. We had only gotten through 2 rotations when it was "Tea Time"! This is something they do there at the Seed of Hope no matter how busy you are. We were able to finish up before lunch. After lunch, it was a much more unstructured atmosphere and then the rains came! It rained very hard for at least an hour and the football field was unplayable. Tom and Rose were worried that if the bus came down it might get stuck in the muddy road. In the meantime, the clinic was swamped. Word had gotten out to the community that there was free medical care and so there was a crowd. Louise and Erin had a crowd in their room making it difficult to move much less work. By mid-afternoon it was apparent that they would not be able to see everyone, so tongue depressors with numbers on them were handed out to those in line saying that they would need to come back Sunday afternoon in order to be seen. By the time we made it back to the hotel ( this time the Kitale Club ) and checked in and had supper, we all were pretty tired. But we all knew adjustments needed to be made and so the different teams talked on how they might do some things different in order for it to run more smoothly.

Our First Full Day in Kenya

We left the Grace Guest House with Tom (Kenya Buckner staff) and Julie and drove to the Wilson airport to fly out to Kitale. While we were waiting, we met up with Phil Brinkmeyer (Buckner staff from Dallas) and Dickson Masindon (we've blogged about him previously). We caught our plane which held about 35 people and headed to Kitale. At the Kitale airport we were greeted by Rose (Kenya Buckner staff in charge of foster children). Around the airport we noticed how high the corn was. The Kenyan staff proudly told us that this area pretty much fed the whole country with corn from here. We headed to the hotel, but got a second surprise of the trip. For the first night we would stay at the Mid Africa Hotel instead of the Kitale Club. We unpacked, ate, and headed to the Seed of Hope. We found out why we would be eating lunch there this week as it was pretty far out of town and out dirt/mud roads. This was our first time to see Kitale, and so we soaked it all in. Many noticed how many people walked along the roads and how many rode bicycles. Martin, our driver, was good in manuevering around them. When we first got to Seed of Hope, the children noticed us immediately. It took a while for each of us to warm up to each other, but whenever Shelly went down the slide, the kids immediately followed and the ice was broken. Rose gave us a tour of the houses where the children lived and medical team soon checked out the clinic, meeting the nurse and the lab technician. They made plans on what rooms they would use and how they would work their process in seeing patients. In the meantime, the VBS team checked the houses and where they could do inside activities and the outdoor grounds for outside activities. We all had a great time, but knew that tomorrow would be a busy day for both teams. We headed back to the hotel to eat supper and for rest. It having a bar, it closed late and some of us were too close to the lobby and were awakened when people left or went to their rooms. We were able to get back to sleep knowing the morning would be here soon enough.

The Trip

I hope to describe our trip in the next few entries starting with our trip to get there. Most had been involved for more than a year, now we were ready to go. Needless to say, most were at the church a lot earlier than the posted timed to meet. We loaded the church bus and had a good number see us off. We had a circle of prayer with our pastor, Bob Webb, leading us. It was an excited group, even though the Lewis' were getting over illnesses and Shelly Dykes was not feeling too well. Our driver, John Dye, did a good job of getting us there. As we went up to the counter to check in, Laura Dye, who had come with her father, offered up a prayer that our flight go smoothly. Early on, our prayers were answered as we expected to have to pay for an overweight bag containing medicine, but learned at the counter that since we were going to be connecting with British Airways in Chicago, the limit was to be 70 pounds for checked in bags instead of 50 pounds.
Our trips to Chicago, London, and Nairobi went smoothly, but were long. We met Julie, our mission coodinator, at the gate in London. Customs at Nairobi was a lengthy process, but finally we were out and we met a Kenya Buckner staff member, Tom. Tom was to be with us practically the whole trip. More about him in a later entry. We got a first lesson in being flexible, as we found out we were staying at the Grace Guest House instead of the Methodist Guest House. Once we got to the Grace Guest House, we learned that our luggage, with the exception of what we were going to carry onto the small plane the next morning, needed to be loaded and start heading to Kitale by land. So the picture in this entry is of us rearranging our suitcases in the parking lot of the Grace Guest House.