trips.schrull.us

9AM – Monday Jan 23:  Good morning to you all.   I just got aboard the flight to Kisumu from Nairobi.   It will be a short 50 minute flight.   From there I will meet with Rev. David Kodia (and others I’m sure) for the first time.   They have a number of things planned for me to do today.   

 

It’s a beautiful day out today.  Sunny and warm, and not to hot, at least this morning in Nairobi.   I’m NOT missing the weather back in Connecticut, which I understand is cold and rainy.    I can understand why many westerners escape to African locations in the mid winter.   I sure is a whole different continent.   

 

I was happy yesterday to make the acquaintance of a driver here in Nairobi named Peter.   He drove me from the airport to the hotel and did the reverse this morning.   He is going to meet me when I get back to Nairobi on Thursday.   Since I have a very late flight out to Dubai on Friday, he is going to pick me up in the late morning on Friday and give me a tour of the Nairobi area.   I’m sure it will be interesting.    

 

Something else worked out well yesterday.   In the early evening at the hotel, I discovered that the shower water was cold in my room.   I notified the front desk and they did their best to get the problem fixed, but it got pretty late in the evening, after dinner and  the water was still cold.   I braved a cold shower and went to bed.   I was pretty tired from all the travel at that point.   This morning, when I went to check out, the hotel manager spoke with me and apologized for the problem.  I let him know that I was not upset and understood that things happen that we can’t always control.    He let me know that on my return to the hotel on Thursday that he would make sure I have a good room and then let me know that they would extend my check out time on Friday to 7 PM since I have a late flight that evening.   Wow!  That was worth the minor inconvenience.    As I often say when in Tanzani “Mungu ni mwema” which means “God is good”.   He really is.    I will admit that I was feeling annoyed at first on Sunday evening about the water situation (not at the people who really were trying their best), but I thought about it and once again realized that I was not in control of this journey.   It was the Lord who brought me here in the first place.  I understood then that everything was as it needed to be, including a cold shower.    

 

Evening – Jan 23  – Come back later.  I will post after dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 We landed at JFK Airport at 8:30 EDT this morning after 22 hours of travel.  We are surprisingly un-affected by jet-lag at the moment, thanks in part, we think, to being able to upgrade to business class for the first leg of the trip home.  At this point, our duffles are unpacked and put away.  Over two weeks’ worth of junk mail has been sorted through and the third load of laundry is currently in the washer.

 

Shortly I will be heading to the grocery store, then taking a shower and kicking back for the rest of the day.   There are still a few trip related-tasks to do:  completing the expense report (for tax purposes) and doing a final de-brief between the two of us as the prelude to next year’s trip.  These will wait for the next few days.  And there is lot’s to share with our friends at St. Paul’s.

 

And I am happy to report that after two years in a row of mis-placing some critical-to-me tech (a Kindle in the seat pocket of the plane from Kigoma to Dar two years ago, and  my iPhone at our Kigoma hotel last year), I made it home with ALL my bits and pieces this year.

 

Looking forward to seeing all of our St. Paul’s friends this Sunday….and missing all of our DWT friends….until next year!

Morning view of Lake Tanganyika, with bird on a wire.

Monday, yesterday, was basically spent getting to Dar Es Salaam.  Emmanuel picked us up from the Coast View at 9:30 and dropped us off at the Kigoma Airport.  There was a wait until the Precision Air folks arrived and we’re ready to check us in for our 11:50 am departure.  As always, we had luggage overage charges, but our charges on the way out amounted to 1/5th our charges on the way in.  Tablets with covers and chargers and household goods, as limited as they were, aren’t light!  Out of curiosity, I weighed our bags this morning.  Mine is a tad over the limit for a bag for Emeriates.  Bill’s weighs 13 pounds less than mine.  Of course, mine includes the dirty laundry, which means that half of his clothes are in my bag. 

We arrived at Dar on time and checked into our hotel, the Tanzanite Executive Suites, a little before 4:00 pm.  We saw yesterday’s version of the Emeriate’s flight that we will be on today arrive as we were leaving the airport.  Theoretically, we could have flown out yesterday, but not based on the original schedule we had for our Kigoma/Dar flight, plus it’s never a good idea to try and make in-country connections here less than a day apart.  Arriving on Sunday afternoon and flying out on Monday morning is as tight as you want to make it, especially as schedules have a habit of changing.

 

We had a late lunch snack and a relaxing evening catching up on grade “B” movies on TV, before going back down the the hotel restaurant for a late evening dinner.  The Tanzanite Executive Suites is in the Islamic Quarter, practically right next to the mosque and is run by strict Islamic rules (no alcohol allowed on the premises; no pork served in the restaurant), but it is clean, has a decent on site restaurant, has excellent wi-fi and has a reasonable in cost.  Needless to say, we were woken up at 5:00 am by the call to prayer.

 

 

Back in Dar, the view outside one of our windows.  The City continues to grow.

I actually haven’t been sleeping too well the last few nights.  I think that it was partially the light in the rooms.  Our room in Kasulu was very dark,  but a bright light right outside our door shone through the transom all night in Kigoma and in our current hotel each room has a mosquito zapper which glows bright purple neon all night.  Pretty sure there aren’t ever any mosquitos, I’ve never heard a “zap”.

 

I am hoping that this sleep deprivation will lead to a least a few hours of solid sleep on the flight home.  We will be comfortable on our flight to Dubai, but it looks like a quite full flight from Dubai to New York and I don’t really sleep when I have to sit up the whole way.  Please pray for some sort of miracle so that Bill and I can get somewhat flat for part of the 13 hour leg!

 

This time in Tanzania has been a time apart for me.  Quite frankly, a bit of a time of denial and forgetfulness.  I haven’t really mentioned it here, but we got word that my Mom had died as we were driving to the airport to come here.  It was not unexpected, and I had my Mom’s blessing to continue my plans to come here, even though we knew that her death was imminent and had visited her the previous Tuesday for what we realized would probably be our final visit.  (She had even asked me a couple of weeks before if I wanted to be notified if she passed while we were here….of course we did!)  The celebration of her life will be sometime in July when her ashes will join my Dad’s in Buzzard’s Bay, a favorite sailing spot.  I sincerely thank my siblings for taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of immediately while I was gone.

 

But the fact is that I was here, and although we did not hide the fact that my Mom had died, it wasn’t something that we broadcast far and wide, and it has been easy to ignore it while I have been here.  As we get closer to coming home, it is harder to ignore.  Mourning is starting to set in.  There will be a hole in our family each time we visit the Cape and at family holidays.  We have been planning for the “new normal” for a few years now, but actually executing it is not going to be easy.  I pray especially for my brother and sister, who have been and continue to do most of the “heavy lifting” in this new normal.  And I am sad for the conversations I won’t be able to have with my Mom…

 

We will be checking out of our hotel soon and heading for the airport.  I don’t know if I will be updating the blog again for this trip.  If  I don’t – our trip has been a blessing and I look forward to returning to Kasulu, our friends and our “Tanzanian Timeshare” next year.

 

Mungu ni mwema wakati wote!  God is good, all the time!