Day One

We have safely arrived in Kenya! After 26 hours of travel (4 plane rides), we flew into Nairobi at midnight and were warmly greeted by the principal of Lena’s school and some of his family. This was done to help ensure that the 12 computers donated by TCAPS (our school district) would make it past customs.  We then went to our inn and crashed. Just a side note: we traveled with 13 pieces of luggage and five backpacks (don’t worry- over half are donations!).

Today we met Pascaline, the sister of one our family friends in Traverse City. She spent the morning with us, helping us navigate this new country. We also got to meet her two sons, ages 10 and 13. From this brief encounter, we started to understand the similarities between our lives. For example, when we asked her sons their favorite food, the 10 year old immediately responded KFC. To our questioning about what they like to do outside of school- their responses were electronic games, soccer, violin, and rugby.

After meeting with Pascaline, we began our 3 hour drive north to Chogoria, where we are staying for the next month. David, Lena’s principal, came with us and began by praying for a safe trip, which we quickly came to appreciate despite our atheism. There do not seem to be any speed limits here and people drive on the other side of the road. On the drive up, we saw cows on trucks, many people nearly hit, magnificent scenery and roadside markets around nearly every corner.

Signing off with some amusing tales…

Being the only white people in town, someone we had only communicated with on the internet came up to us and asked Roger if he was Marjie (they can’t make sense of our names)- but more amusing was that he knew exactly who we were, having never seen us!

In an attempt to minimize stomach ailments, we are going on a largely vegetarian diet.  So when we asked the waiter at dinner tonight what they offer without meat, he replied after a long pause “…chips!”.  We ate omelettes! Roger ate chicken.