This was actually written on the airplane on Dec. 3, too, but I thought it best to continue this on a new blog page because I don’t want to bore my “audience” too much all at once. It would have taken too long to read it all.
…Okay, now for the rest of Kenya…
Friday, Nov. 18 – We went to Funzi Island on a little motorized canoe that held 8 people. Everything started out okay, but it wasn’t long before it started raining. At first, we just tolerated it, but pretty soon, we had our umbrellas out trying to keep from being pelted to death by the rain. They finally stopped at some little island so we could go stand under a pavilion until the rain let up.
Unfortunately, not long after we got back in the boat, the rain came so strongly that they gave us a long black plastic to hold over all of our heads. Diane and I were at the front of the boat. It was really quite comical at first. We started by pulling the plastic down over our eyes, but soon it was so bad that we had to put our umbrellas over our legs and pulled the plastic clear down to reach the umbrellas. We didn’t realize it, but at one point, we had to straighten out the plastic and saw that we were out on the ocean and the waves were quite high. That was a bit disconcerting. By the time we got to Funzi Island, everyone was drenched. We totally missed the village tour and something else they had planned. They DID have a fire waiting for us under the cover where we later ate lunch. We all stood around trying to dry out. The fire felt wonderful! I was really cold. I never did totally dry out the rest of the day.
It finally stopped raining, and we had a very nice lunch with crab and lobster.
After lunch, we rode in the boat up a river to view some crocodiles, however, we didn’t see even one! That day certainly didn’t go as planned! Nonetheless, we had a good time for the most part and saw some beautiful scenery and a sand bar.
Saturday, Nov. 19 – I had been invited to go back to school for their final Day of Celebration when the students were promoted to next year’s classes. It went from 9:00 – 3:00 and was a really fun day. I was flattered when I walked through the front gate and a whole bunch of kids from different grades came running up to me and hugged me. I couldn’t even move. They acted like they were very happy to see me again, as I was to see them. I was glad that I went.
I wasn’t expecting this at all, but near the end of the celebration, all of the teachers were called up and introduced by Ester, the Head Mistress. Then, she called me out of the audience, said some very nice things about me, and gave me more credit than I deserved on how well the Class 5 students did on their exams. Peter handed me a present from the school which turned out to be a kikoi with the saying “God’s Word is Love” written in Swahili on it. I thought how appropriate that saying was, especially coming from the Word of Life Christian Academy. If I had been in Kenya longer, I would have had it made into a dress or something. I felt very loved that day by the teachers, head mistress, and students.
Monday, Nov. 21 – We started doing laundry on Sunday because we knew it would take two days for everything to get washed and dried on the clothesline. We didn’t want to pack wet clothes. It took us most of Sunday afternoon and all of Monday to do 4 batches of laundry because some of it got rained on and smelled sour by Monday, so we had to do it all over again.
By the time we hung the last batch on the line, it was getting late into the afternoon. We just barely had time to run a couple of errands before Peter was planning on coming over to say goodbye to me at 4:30. Also, we were planning on having Samuel’s family over for dinner around 7:00.
In my haste and worry about getting home before Peter arrived, I somehow managed to lose my house keys (that is VERY uncharacteristic of me). I had taken them out of my pocket when we were on the matatu, but when we arrived home, they were nowhere to be found! We called a friend of Pauline’s, who is the only other person to have spare keys to my house, and he was going to send someone over with the keys. Diane and I went clear back out to the street and stopped every single matatu on both sides of the street that drove by until we finally found the one we had ridden in. Unfortunately, the keys weren’t there. They had just plain vanished. Luckily, Peter ended up staying at school until 6:30, so he didn’t come over until the next day. We got dinner ready, but Samuel had problems with his ride home from work – the car he was riding in broke down, so he didn’t get home until 9:00 PM. We finally had dinner at almost 10:00. It was a late night, but we had fun with the kids and visiting with Samuel and Grace.
Tuesday, Nov. 22 – We spent most of the day packing. Peter stopped by for a couple of hours in the morning, We gave most of my food and household items to Grace.
I was having a hard time getting packed because so many people kept texting or calling me. I really wanted to talk to each of them to say goodbye, but it didn’t help my efforts in packing. Thankfully, Diane took over in the kitchen and got the food ready to give to Grace. I got a bit teary with Grace and Samuel when I finally had a chance to think about the fact I was about to leave with no plans, at this point, to ever return. I have made so many wonderful friends that all want me to come back. It was hard to say goodbye to all of them!
I had planned on taking Kenneth and Caroline out to Leonardo’s for a nice dinner to say goodbye to them. It was Caroline’s birthday on Tuesday and Kenneth’s on Wednesday, so it was also kind of a birthday celebration. We were originally planning on 6:00, but by the time Kenneth was finally able to pick us up and put all of our things in the car, along with the water cooler/purifier that I was going to give him for all he had done for me, we didn’t get to the restaurant until almost 9:00. It was so late that he had a taxi pick Caroline and their two youngest daughters up and we met at the restaurant. Dinner was good and I enjoyed visiting with them, but by the end of the night, the girls were practically asleep by the time we left the restaurant. Kenneth took us over to Louis’ to stay the night, and we left early the next morning for the Ukunda Airstrip to fly to Nairobi.
Wednesday, Nov. 23 – We arrived in Nairobi around 11:30 AM. We had our taxi driver take us to a few places in Nairobi and we spent the day together. We went to the Karen Blixen Museum. She is the person that wrote the book, “Out of Africa” that the movie was based upon. We were actually in her home and on the grounds where she had lived. I love that movie, so it was really fun for me to go there. We also had an awesome lunch at Tamambo Restaurant, then went to the Kazuri Bead Factory. We got there just a minute or two before 4:00, but the women had put all their paint, clay beads, etc. away ready to go home. We were still given a tour of the whole facility, but it would have been more fun to watch them actually make the beads. I have bought a few Kazuri Beads in Diani Beach. They are far more expensive than most of the other beads you can buy, but they are very unique and beautiful because they are all individually handmade, painted, and fired. We went back to the hotel for the night and got ready for out flight out to Johannesburg in the morning.
See you soon for the continuing saga,
Kadi
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