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oday is our last day in Kenya. We had to say goodbye to our friends and start the first leg of our journey home to the USA. Right now we are sitting in an airport lounge in Nairobi waiting for our flight to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We will stay overnight there and then start our travels back to the USA tomorrow afternoon. We first fly to Dubai and then after a long layover (about 8 hours) we fly to New York. We are missing our friends already.
I’m grateful to the Lord for many things. Our travels have been smooth throughout our stay in East Africa. I was able to complete all of the work we planned to do at both Lake Tanganyika College in Kasulu, TZ and at Bishop Okullu College in Asembo, Kenya. I was particular impressed with the I.T. knowledge of BOC’s new computer tech. Hi name is Robert Onyango. As we worked together to get the thin client network up and running again, he understood the new things that I showed him the first time through. Because he is so adept at learning new technology, we were able to get everything running in record time. That left us with time to drive to the town of Bondo to get some needed supplies (power cords and computer mice) and still had time for more Q & A on Tuesday afternoon before I left. I encouraged the leadership of BOC to do what they can do keep him employed at the college. They will benefit greatly from having him on staff.
Here are some pictures from our stay in Kisumu. The apartment building Janifer and David Kodia own is nicely laid out with the four floor reserved for their family and guests. The middle two floors are rented out and the 1 floor is setup for AirBnB stays. We enjoyed our stay there. We had fun cooking together. I showed them how to make American style mashed potatoes with caramelized onions and fire roasted two legs of lamb on the building rooftop patio.
That’s it for now. Keep us in your prayers as we travel home. We just got word that we have to get Covid tests now before we board the plane tomorrow from Dar to Dubai, per US CDC requirements. I guess things have really ramped up in the USA again. What can I say. Get vaccinated!!
Love to you all,
Bill
Hello friends. So sorry that I have not posted since 5-19. Just got so into what we were doing that by the time the end of day came all I wanted to do was hit the sack. Yes, we did make it to Kenya on last Thursday. From there Friday and Saturday were just vacation time for us. We stayed in a really nice guest apartment in a building the David and Jenifer Kodia own in Kisumu. The building was recently constructed. It has 4 floors and a roof area to use for gatherings and such. During the mornings I was able to take some beautiful photos of the sunrise from outside our room.
After those two days, were went back to work. Our first undertaking was to go to a confirmation service at a rural parish. I forget the name of the parish, but the actual service was in a church called St. Paul’s. Go figure. I was the guest preacher for the service and of course, Cathy and I sang some songs as well. With one of the songs we sang, we got the entire congregation singing with us. I was impressed by the singing in general. The church was not dependent on a big sound with loud speakers. Instead, the choirs and congregation sang without accompaniment. It was a beautiful sound.
After the service and some lunch with the church, we went back to Kisumu go relax and eventually tune in to “St. Paul’s Live – Brookfield, CT”. We watched the Sunday 10:30 AM service at our home church online with the Kodia family. Once again, Fr. Joe did a shout out to us at announcement time and the congregation waved to us. Things sure are different here in East Africa than it was 17 years ago when I first got started with visiting this part of the world. Back then, we just had enough cell coverage to make a short, expensive phone call home to check in with loved ones. Now we can do just about any type of communications with any type of social media we want at a reasonable cost and high bandwidth. Seriously, this globe we are on is getting smaller and smaller with digital technology.
On Monday, I went to Bishop Okullu College in Asembo to help get the computer network up and running again. Sometime during the past year or so, the main Windows Server got corrupted due to power outages which are frequent in this area of Kenya. To remedy that problem, a small group of us at St. Paul’s in Brookfield contributed extra funds to our annual mission budget dispersement to the college and gave a total of $2500 to pay for a solar power system for the computer lab. With the solar system in place, I could now work on the computers, get them running properly again, and hopefully keep them running for a long time with good, steady power. And work I did. With the help of Robert Onyango, a recently hired computer administrator for the college, we got all the Windows servers and workstation running well again. I was very impressed with Robert’s knowledge of computer technology and his ability to learn new things quickly. I know it would have been difficult to complete this work in two days without his help.
It’s now Tuesday evening. Cathy and I are staying at the Kodia’s Asembo home, not far from the college. I’m actually getting a bit bothered by some tenacious mosquitos, so I’m going to quit writing now and head to the bedroom and get behind the netting. Tomorrow we travel back to Kisumu from here and will spend one more night with the Kodia’s before making our flights back to Dar es Salaam and then eventually toward home.