Last Minute Visits

Just like any place that we have ever transitioned from, there are lots of visits that take place during the last few weeks. Between friends through CTM, frisbee and others that we met along the way, it was a busy time! Lots of tasty food, wonderful conversations and questions to help prepare us for our transition.

We enjoyed a trip to Banana (a small town 30 minutes outside of Nairobi) to visit Peter and his wife. Peter is doing some amazing work in his community within the matatu industry. He leads a Sunday morning church service at a gas station as the drivers fill up with gas, check the oil and get ready for a day on the road. While he may not focus on praise and worship, he provides a space to talk about areas of transformation in HIV/AIDS education, drug awareness and positive life choices. Peter’s hard work was recently recognized by USAID as he was awarded a 29 seater matatu to focus on behavior change. Check out the pics!

During our last week, we took advantage of the buy one get one free pizza offer at a local restaurant and invited several of the pastors and their spouses over from the CTM network. We had a wonderful time catching up on life, reflecting on our year together and watching people eat pizza for the first time. Luckily, we had ugali and sikuma on backup for those that didn’t like it. It was a wonderful evening in which they commissioned us to return to the US and to bless us in our future endeavors.

We couldn’t let some last minute visits with Lorraine slip away from under us. For those of you who don’t know the story with Lorraine, she is a friend that we went to school with in Tacoma at PLU. Joel graduated with Lorraine and she returned to Kenya and is currently at the University of Nairobi in Med School. When we first arrived in Kenya, we called her and found out that she lives about 3 minutes from us! It was great to have another person around familiar with our context throughout the year…as well as someone to shed some wisdom on the stomach problems that we encountered along the way! Our last day with Lorraine was appropriate as we started out at the Iranian Medical Clinic to get tested for TB and Malaria before taking off…neither of us were feeling well and would much rather be treated for these things in Kenya than in the US as they are VERY common over here. Both of our tests turned out negative!

Frisbee Folks: What can I say? We spent two evenings a week with this crew throughout the entire year. We had an amazing time with all of them and are so grateful to have found this outlet in our lives in Kenya…good exercise, good company and people that understand the challenges of living in various contexts. We are hopeful that we will get to see two of our friends this summer in Seattle as they will be out for work-related meetings! Thanks frisbee folks for many great games, tasty dinners, a rockin’ tournament with D4K and teaching us new card games!

Other last minute visits included bowling, the best Ethiopian food ever two more times, crepes, debriefing with fellow NWerners, Western food with Violet and final Nairobi impressions of wonderful Indian Food!