If there is one thing that I have learned over the years of coming to East Africa, it is that plans are fluid. We think that we will be one place at one time, and either we didn’t fully understand WHAT was planned, it wasn’t adequately communicated to us…or things JUST PLAIN CHANGE, maybe due to an unexpected holiday or weather or…..
This can lead to marvelous adventures such as the day several years ago that I thought we were traveling directly to a lakeside village, but instead we stopped for the the night at the Gombe Chimpanzee reserve. I found my self hiking in flip-flops and a skirt in the reserve and got “dissed” by an adolescent male who took exception to my skirt.
This year an unexpected Holiday in Kenya had Bishop Kodia picking us up earlier in the day on Thursday than we had originally expected. While this shortened Bill’s time to work with Beatrice, it did allow us to spend more time with Bishop Kodia’s family, experience a marvelous fish lunch by the side of Lake Victoria and get in some much needed naps at our hotel. We are both fighting minor colds and, perhaps because of our “health adventures” over the last two years, have not bounced back from the jet lag as fast as we have in the past.
Yesterday, on Friday, we had the minor inconvenience of having our flight from Nairobi to Dar es Salaam delayed by a couple of hours. Thanks to the wonders of modern communications (text messages!) we were able to communicate the delays to our driver and Joe Bernardo, and both were waiting for us when we came out of customs at arrivals at Dar.
The plan for today was to fly to Kigoma and drive to Kasulu, where we could finally settle in. I have really been looking forward to this. I was wise enough to pack my bag in layers so that the things I would not need before we got to Kasulu are on the bottom, but I would love to be able to thoroughly unpack! (By the way, if you have never heard of packing cubes or have never tried them, I thoroughly recommend them. I got some for this trip and they have made managing my clothes for the various sections of this trip so much easier than just using space bags!)
It has been raining here in Tanzania, not just in the Kigoma area but here is Dar as well: FLOOD the streets raining. Bill checked his email this morning to find a rather cryptic email from Air Tanzania stating that our flight was now confirmed for tomorrow morning at 8:00 am. It didn’t state the flight number so we wanted to confirm, which Bill did by going to the Air Tanzania office in downtown Dar; they are impossible to get on the phone.
So we a spending a second night at the Four Points Sheraton (aka the New Africa Hotel.) Disappointing, because we were really looking forward to enjoying the Sunday worship in Kasulu, and now we will be taking someone away from that worship so that they can come and meet us. But there are blessings as well: a quiet day to continue to recover from our colds. A chance to catch up on blogging and paper work (I’m trying to keep track of our expenses DURING the trip rather than waiting until we get back and then trying to reconstruct them just before tax season.) Adequate internet so that I can do the reading I need to do in preparation for the ECCT annual convention which occurs the Saturday after we get back.
Today is not what we expected, but it will be well spent. Man proposes, God laughs. Plans change.
This morning we departed from Bishop Okullu College. I completed the work I had to do there and will be looking over their setup remotely from the USA from time to time to see that things are running well.
Beatrice, the young lady who manages the computer systems has been trained in trouble shooting connection problems that can occur, especially if a student does something to the thin client settings, so hopefully she will be able to keep all of the stations running well over the next year.
The new printer is also working out well, since it does not require a direct connection to the server computers, but works over the network. That should insure that it keeps printing for them for a long time.
Overall, I’m pleased that I could get back here to BOC and help maintain there computer systems. Many of the students mentioned how much they appreciate having this resource for study and communications with the outside world. (Below is a picture of Professor George the principal of BOC and Lillian, their administrator.)
Right now we are in downtown Kisumu at a hotel called the Jumuia Resort. It’s a very nice establishment that is owned and run by the Council of Churches in the Kisumu area. We had dinner tonight with the Kodia family, which included some traditional East African dishes with some extra spices that really brought out some great flavors. And Annette, their oldest daughter made home made ice cream. It was very good!
Tomorrow morning we will get ready to fly from here to Dar Es Salaam. This involves a flight to first to Nairobi and then on to another fight from there to Dar. Our plan is to meet Joe Bernardo, our friend from St. Paul’s Church, in Dar Es Salaam at the airport. His flight from Dubai gets in about 30 minutes before our flight from Nairobi. From there we will take a taxi into the city to a hotel and stay for one night before we travel on to Kigoma to meet up with our friends from the Kasulu. I’ll be glad to get to Kisulu and settle down for a week without travel, I have to admit.
Blessing to you all and keep coming back. There is much more to come.
Bill