We fly from Heathrow at 7pm tonight. Gregory
in Nairobi emailed just yesterday with a question about accommodation.
He proposed we change from the Methodist Guest House, Oloitokitok Road, to the nearby
Musmark Christian Hostel. No problem in principle, but I wasn’t sure
how to go about answering. Googling Musmark produced an American
backpacker’s 2002 blog entry. It seemed the accommodation was okay.
What made me smile was the further first impressions of Africa. So,
I’ll give you mine, since I wasn’t posting stuff this time last year.
Day
one produced a hectic overnight flight and busy schedule with our
Multiply guys. I settled down for my evening meal at the aforementioned
Methodist Guest House. A father with two small children, of fair
complexion, occupied the next table. The older one was pouring salt
onto her plate, and licking it off with her finger. Daddy’s smile
seemed to register this was normal behaviour.“Say, I hope you don’t mind me asking,” he leaned towards me. “I saw your red cross, and wondered what group you’re from?” We tried to find common ground. He was based some miles up country, in Masai territory, developing leadership training material in the local dialect. “We have a quarterly meeting here in town,” he explained,” So I decided to come a little early and give the girls a day out. Only...” he went on, “We didn’t think it was important enough to let our prayer team know. Hmm. We’ve had a miserable 24 hours - violent sickness. We missed that one, didn’t we?”
It was his matter-of-factness that I struggled to digest.
“So, we got straight in touch with them,” he was explaining, “And we’re okay now.”
I
have other recollections of steps into a new dimension. There was our
first Agape evening after having moved to Warwickshire. Pete, a
resident leader of nine months’ local experience, declared, “Welcome to
the battlefront.” C T Studd is recorded as writing home, “The spiritual
atmosphere here is so charged, you have to sleep with your eyes open.”
That was Africa, too.
What
had I come to? Preparing to do warfare with mosquitoes had absorbed
enough nervous energy. Needing a whole intercession team to ward off
gastric bugs in the course of a perfectly innocent and routine trip left
me disoriented. Suddenly, I felt very lonely. I was glad to be
pointed in some helpful direction.
Well, by this time tomorrow, Ian, Jason and Jonny will have their own stories to tell. That’ll be interesting.
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