Kenya

We have just returned from a 'look see' visit to Kenya. The idea being to see what we think and feel about moving to the Kenya program in the middle of this year. It was a great trip, tiring and with the usual dramas of travelling with children. Bethany threw up all over me on the way to Dar, so I had to sit in puke stained clothes all the way to Morogoro (Half way to Dar). When we got to Dar airport we discovered our flight was via Kilimanjaro so was longer than expected. This meant we arrived in Nairobi quite late and had very tired children whilst we filled out all the immigration and visa forms. We also discovered, at the airport, on closer inspection of Caleb's itchy bottom that he had worms.
We finally got the children into bed at 11pm after Caleb had taken his worming tablets and promptly thrown them all up again. Yes I do travel with worming tablets. At least Caleb's small problem gave me ample opportunity to discover Nairobi's pharmacies which turned out to be very good and well stocked with de-worming medicine.

Nairobi was much nicer than we had imagined. Caleb says he wants to move there because they have nice breakfasts! This based on the fact that both times we have stayed in Kenya we have had been in places that provided pancakes and sausages for breakfast. I did try to explain that if we lived there it would be in our own house and that mummy didn't do sausages and pancakes for breakfast, but he remains unconvinced. Overall, Nairobi seemed safer than we were expecting and we felt fine driving around in the day and night. There are police road blocks at night looking for the usual drugs, weapons and dead bodies, but as we had none of these we were quickly waved on! The traffic too was not as bad as we were expecting. What surprised us the most was all the 60's architecture in the many compounds, Grey and ugly! I am sure there are beautiful houses in Nairobi if you can afford them, but many of them look like something out of Bracknell or Milton Keynes.

A lot of the flying out of MAF Kenya is in southern Sudan, so Daniel would have to fly up their a few times each year. Daniel spent a day in the office and was reassured that the work MAF Kenya does is really worthwhile.

Now back in Dodoma, we have to think and pray about whether Kenya is the right next step. At this stage it is looking quite likely.