Africa Day 2

Day 2
We headed back to the Dubai airport to leave for Nairobi. Still, I find it striking to see the security in their white kanduras and turbans, and the women in their black abayas. We see prayer rooms all over the airport, but they were “his” & “hers”. Why do they not pray together? We did not hear the call to prayer this time as we did before when arriving and waiting in customs.

The flight to Nairobi was only a little over 4 hours, but with a 1 hour time change. It took a long time in customs, even though we had our visa forms filled out and $25 cash in hand. They also had to photograph & fingerprint each of us. And they fingerprint every finger of each hand. Then we had to gather 35 bags, which took a while. Most of them were supplies from the church for the hospital in Maua, since we could only take one bag – maximum wt. 50 lbs. plus our carry on.

Next we discovered that we couldn’t stay at the Methodist Guest House even though we had reservations, so Daniel (the person in charge of arrangements and vans & will be with us the rest of the trip) arranged another place. But after our caravan of 4 vehicles loaded to the brim finally found it, it looked like an abandoned building in an insecure part of town. So we did some more checking and located the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Ecumenical Centre. It is still very modest and we have begun our showering in flip flops and definitely no singing in the shower—can’t get any water in your mouth. We also have waterless travel toothbrushes when we need them, lots of hand sanitizer and bottled water that we carry with us everywhere. We did have some hot water after letting it run about 10 minutes. And, of course, we top off every day with malerone, a malaria prevention pill.

We had a treat and went out to eat at a restaurant with good pumpkin soup, some veggies and an assortment of grilled meat—beef, chicken, ribs, sausage, lamb and crocodile. For dessert was a slice of pineapple grilled with cinnamon.