Kenya, Kiberra Slum Orphan school, Rift Valley

Our driver, the personable and dependable Mumias, who has become a friend during my three trips to Kenya since November, took us to visit his family in their tiny two-room apartment where old airline seats, complete with unused ashtrays, serve as a loveseat. Charity, his wife, served us tea and chapatti, and his children—Ayela, Walter, and Marcy—showed me their excellent school marks and took turns reading aloud from children's books on my IPad. The baby, Dominique, was content breastfeeding and being passed around to the siblings.

With Mumias, we made two visits to Kiberra, the largest slum in Africa. Home to a couple of million people, Kiberra is a city within a city. The slum is built along hillsides offering tremendous views of a sea of colorful tin roofs. In an effort to improve conditions, areas are being razed and families moved into concrete apartment housing. While the apartments include two bedrooms, kitchens, indoor bathrooms, and subsidized rent, the $250 per month is still higher than many can pay. Built as apartment blocks with center courtyards, no provision was made for businesses, so many residents trek back to the slum to fry and sell chapatti, style hair, sell their wares, fix machines, and attend church, which we were invited to do on Sunday.

Below steep banks runs a railroad track. A recent rain made the narrow, uneven paths even more treacherous. The mud is slippery, and the path is soft underfoot, comprised of garbage pressed solid by millions of footsteps.

We visited Little Steps Academy, a school for orphans run by one of Mumias' friends. Mary oversees four classrooms of children from nursery through primary school. Packed shoulder to shoulder in two classrooms 40 preschoolers and 50 kindergarteners entertained us with singing and pantomime. We left a donation that they used to buy flour for chapattis and a blackboard.

We finished our days in Nairobi with a drive outside the city to take in a view of the stunning Rift Valley, arriving just before the fog rolled in. Later, we enjoyed dinner with Joseph at Habesha, the wonderful Ethiopian restaurant where we ate on our first visit in 2007. Without realizing it was the same restaurant, I ate there last November with Jeremy Groce, one of our board members, who was in Nairobi on business. We arrived after dark and were seated inside at a low round table designed to hold the platter of injerra, a spongy, sourdough flatbread used in lieu of utensils, served with lentils, meats, and vegetables.

This was the end of our time with city living. In the morning, it's on to the village of Duk Payuel.

Kenya Procurement June 16 through June 19

Nairobi is a city of odors, noise, and action. The belching smoke of busses and matatus (minibuses) mixes with the acrid smells of garbage, sweat, and sewer, and the aromas of chapatti (flatbread) cooking on a roadside stand. Pedestrians dodge traffic to cross streets where vehicles ignore stoplights and force their way through roundabouts by intimidation.

Angie Ostbye, a special education teacher, and I arrived late evening June 16 with nine duffle bags of supplies for the ASAH Home for Girls. Our first few nights we stayed at the Country Lodge, a contemporary-style budget business hotel. This allowed us a comfortable transition from the US and access to the Fairview Hotel restaurants.

Then we moved to Mayfield Guest House, owned by Africa Inland Missions (AIM) and populated by missionary families and other humanitarian workers. Toilets and showers and tubs down the hall, mosquito net-draped beds, in-room sinks and wireless Internet. Meals are served family-style and dinner companions may on leave from their work translating the New Testament in South Sudan, piloting evacuees from the border areas during this difficult transition to independence, teaching pastors how to use media developed for remote areas to serve their congregations, or teaching the Gospel to isolated tribes.

We spent our time in Nairobi procuring additional supplies for our boarding facility for orphan girls in Duk Payuel, South Sudan. Joseph Akol Makeer helped Angie and me bargain for shoes at one of the markets with hundreds of stalls and shops selling every kind of goods. The transactions were lengthy, but our prices were still higher than what a local would pay. Just the presence of a couple of white women starts the bidding higher.

At Tusky's, a large department store, we purchased everything from garden tools to bed sheets, from cooking supplies, food, and toiletries to plastic tables and stools. We spent many hours over three days there, leaving our goods for them to box and transport to AIM Air the day before our flight.

2011 Travel to Southern Sudan

I'm in Nairobi. Arrived at Mayfield Guesthouse with Jef Foss, ASAH board member and architect. The trip started out a little rocky at the Fargo airport when I reached in my travel wallet money pouch and handed the agent my passport. She said this, "This isn't a passport." Incredulous, I examined it more closely. It was a small black paper Moleskin journal. It resembled my passport in size and heft, and my yellow fever vaccination certificate stuck out beyond the edges. I couldn't believe it. I'd packed it weeks ago and just that morning, peeked in the wallet to ensure myself of its presence. When Norm asked, "Do you have your passport," I lifted the wallet around my neck and said, "Got it right here!" I had peeked inside earlier and was rewarded with the frayed yellow edges I saw. Frayed because I'd traveled with it last fall.

As I searched through every nook and cranny, Norm helping, Jef remained as calm as the Delta agent who, as have others in the past, allowed us extra free checked bags for our humanitarian work (thanks Delta). Both Jef and the agent were "confident" I'd find it. Then, my memory flashed to the file I keep marked "Travel Africa." I envisioned that faux passport with the yellow edges, saw myself selecting it and putting it in my packing pile without close examination. And searching my brain I found NO recollection of opening the safe in our storage room, the safe where we keep important infrequently-accessed things like passports. So Norm and I raced to the car as I gave thanks that we lived downtown only a short drive from the airport and that I'd told Jef to meet me at the airport a full 2 1/2 hours before flight time--never mind that he was on time and I was late.

What happens if you don't find your passport? You don't leave the country. The fact that I'm writing from Nairobi tells you I found the little book with the replacement yellow fever certificate Cass Public Health had given me last November when I couldn't find mine. Hadn't remembered I had a "Travel Africa" file from the 2007 trip.

We settled into Mayfield Guesthouse after closing hours. The security guard gave us our keys and suggested we whisper so as not to wake the other guests. Mayfield is owned Africa Inland Missions along with AIM Air, who will transport our cargo and pick us up in Bor, Sudan to take us to the village. They cater to missionaries and folks like us doing humanitarian work. The rooms are comfortable and clean, toilets and showers down the hall. Sink in the room. They serve 3 meals with the cost of the room, but you have to tell them if you'll be there to eat. And meals are prompt. When the bell rings, you move to the dining room, take a seat for the family-style service, followed by prayer and comforting homemade food. At breakfast we sat with a family who have been working as missionaries in Kenya for 17 years, their daughter now visiting from college in London. At dinner, we sat with a young woman from Madison, Wisconsin who works as a consultant for the state government, smack dab in the midst of the fiscal brouhaha. She's here for a wedding, so I'm not sure how she learned about Mayfield. There was a young English couple, but I didn't talk with them much because I sat next to an 82-year-old man who was President of World Vision in the 80's. He built the enormous Baptist church near Mayfield and all the buildings around it. And in April returns to the pulpit there for a period. He's a Scot educated at Harvard. As sharp as the cliched tack.

But, before dinner, we had intentions of hopping a flight to Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan. In fact, we'd bought our tickets before we left the airport upon arrival. When we went to check in, they wouldn't let Jef board because he didn't have a Visa. Silly me. I thought it was like to old Southern Sudan where they were almost optional. On my last trip, AIM got me my visa, and originally we were going to fly in with them, but our plans had changed, and I figured we could get the visa on arrival, the way you do in Kenya. The agent rewrote out tickets for Monday and we left.

Before we returned to Mayfield, we stopped at the local hospital because Mumias, the driver I used on my last trip, was feeling ill. Don't worry, he wasn't driving. We all rode with his friend Patrick as the day before our arrival, Mumias was rear-ended so hard his car was pushed into the car in front of him. This is a disaster for a driver, and though insured, the cost to pay the adjuster to survey the damage would equal or exceed the cost to fix the car, which he figures will be about $300, a small fortune. This body work would be thousands in the US, but we visited the car shop and the work is pretty much four guys in white coats with wrenches, crowbars, and paintbrushes.

In the morning, we'll go to Kenya National Bank to try to open an account--they have locations in Southern Sudan as well, but you're advised to count your money yourself in front of the teller before exiting. And we will deposit the cost for the GOSS visa and get a receipt--the airport agent gave Jef a contact name there. Take the receipt to the GOSS office--these are all close to Mayfield--and then return to the airport to fly to Juba. So far we don't have a hotel, but there's a chance Joseph will meet us there, along with Kenneth, Jef's Sudanese friend from Fargo, OR we'll call Jeremy Groce's colleague John who Jef sat next to all the way from Amsterdam to Nairobi. Jeremy is our board member who worked six years in Kenya and Sudan, starting Sudan Radio Services, the first station to broadcast into Southern Sudan after the war. They broadcast 10 different languages.

BTW, Mumias doesn't have malaria, his first fear, or any other bad disease. The doc thinks it may be stress, but there's no rest for the weary. Tomorrow, he has to see if our geodesic dome gets through customs, where it's been held up. Pacific Domes is helping too. It has to get to AIM to travel with the rest of our cargo on the 24th.

I've found these things tend to work out, though not always the way you expect.