Dear Oprah,

     So, after a 6 hour flight to Amsterdam and then a second much longer flight, we arrived in Nairobi but had to spend the night there in a hostel before catching a plane the next morning to Mbita. We were told that the hostel was in a somewhat dangerous neighborhood and that it was best if we didn't walk back up to the main building after going to our rooms. I remember feeling as if I was at the end of the world and very, very outside of any type of feeling of control. The church had taken care of all of the arrangements and only upon arrival did it occur to me that if need be, I didn't even know geographically where I was.

My friend, Susan, figuring out the Mosquito net our first night in Africa in the hostel outside of Nairobi.

    

    

     When I say we were "catching a plane" the next morning, I don't mean the American version! We had to split up into two different puddle jumpers and it was only as I finally dared to look out the window upon descent that I realized that we were landing in a grass field. Well, duh, Katie! Did you think there would be tarmac in Mbita?? My firsthand schooling in spoiled Americanism, where we take EVERYTHING for granted and our world view is so shamefully lacking, had only just begun.  



The "pea shooter" plane.



  





The field it landed us in. Duh, Katie!





    

     After landing, we had been traveling for over 24 hours and the sketchy navigation of the rural dirt roads was still ahead. Steve Cochran, the "head missionary" (my own term - can't remember his actual title) of CGA, picked us up in his jeep with an accompanying van. I really can't do justice to the description of that ride. We were physically trying to stabilize ourselves as the car lurched back and forth and even side to side over the dusty pit-filled path it worked overtime to travail...and looking back, I remember long moments of silence while we were all just trying to get a mental grip of the scene at hand, which was just as elusive as the goal of physically steadying ourselves. It was so utterly unbelievable. Many people walked, barefoot mostly, up and down the "side" of the street...though there really wasn't one ( a "side" or a "street")...it was just that there were just enough people claiming that small strip of dust that any passing cars just treated them as if they were another pot hole to be navigated. They often came close to being hit and it was strikingly haunting, and still is when I picture it now, how none of them seemed to care. Many of their eyes were void of emotion. And yet, there were some who radiated joy despite it all. Some stopped on the side to barter with one another...a hot item seemed to be "jelly shoes" like the ones that were all the rage to wear in the 80's in the US. Once in a while, we would come across a small trickle of a stream of water...hardly a true "stream"... where women would lower the buckets from their heads down into the dribble and try in vain to collect a portion while others next to them attempted to wash items in the same small puddle. There were no buildings...just a few shacks here and there that looked like tin shanties... and some huts too.

     And then there were the children...small, teeny, tiny tots...no more than 3 that would be walking along all by themselves with no pants on, bare butt just toddling along. I didn't get it. Where were their parents?? And more importantly (coming from an American newly arrived): where were their diapers?? They were being stored somewhere along with the tarmac. I learned that some parents had no one to watch their babies while they worked in the fields or fished etc. and so they just wandered around on their own. And their pants? They weren't "potty trained" (a laughable concept in the first place since there weren't any potties either...just a hole in the ground in an out house), so pants would only become soiled whereas no pants offered the freedom to just squat.

     It was a lot to take in and exhausting in everyway exhaustion can possibly form. But when we finally arrived at the school a couple of hours later, our day was only just beginning...