Remember that these are written in the “historical present” sense, meaning
that I am not in Kenya now, on March 26, 2020, but I arrived on the date below,
November 15, 2017. But I am writing as if it were happening now)
Journal Entry – November 15, 2017
All that I had written above in the previous post concerning my trip to
Ethiopia
took place last March and April. It is now the 15th of November, a mere seven months later. Right now however, that trip to seems like another lifetime to me.
took place last March and April. It is now the 15th of November, a mere seven months later. Right now however, that trip to seems like another lifetime to me.
I wrote yesterday while sitting under the clock of the
silent worker at the Amsterdam airport, who dutifully erased and painted the new
clock hand at each minute. But today I am in Kenya. I arrived in the middle of the
night to the airport in Nairobi. By the time I made it through immigration and
customs at the airport, it was about 1:00 AM. It was with some trepidation that
I walked outside of the airport terminal.
Would I find a taxi driver holding up a placard
with my name written on it? In preparation for the trip, I had first tried to
reserve a taxi through this hotel, but the website seemed not to work properly.
I did receive some kind of cryptic confirmation that gave me hope that I may
have a room, but none at all concerning the taxi.
It is for this reason I reserved yet another taxi
from a separate website. This gave me more confidence, but being used to some
cities to where I had flown in the past, maybe the taxi would be waiting and
maybe not. And it was 1:00 in the morning—not the time of night that I want to
start to figure out what to do in a strange city of a strange country, and after
a long and tiring trip.
I was uneasy on this huge continent, and all of
this made me a little nervous. I told myself that if I had flown to a city in
Latin America instead of Africa, I would not have felt this way.
In my previous work I had flown into several
cities in Central and South America, so I was accustomed to doing so. I knew
the language and I had previously interacted with many of the varying cultures
of that continent. I knew about what I could expect.
But never to Africa and never to Kenya. When I
arrived in Ethiopia on the previous trip, my son Levi was there to meet me and
to ease me into what to expect there. He could speak the language, and he knew
what was and what was not reasonable.
But I did not know Swahili, the national language of
Kenya, and I had no experience with the country. I assumed that at the airport
there would be English speakers, but when you do not know the national language
of a country, it immediately puts you at a disadvantage. It is especially true
if you are a first-time visitor. You are more easily manipulated by anyone who
would wish to take advantage of your inexperience.
Thankfully, I saw none of this upon my arrival
into Kenya. The airport staff was very courteous and helpful, but not
overbearing. I was not swarmed by countless hawkers trying to get me to come to
their hotel or on their safari. No one came up to me with a fist-full of bills,
asking if I wanted to exchange money at a better rate than the exchange houses
can give you.
I was surprised at the high level of English
spoken. It seemed as if everyone spoke English, even among themselves. Many of
my fears about my arrival immediately vanished.
As I stepped outside the terminal, there was not
one but two young taxi drivers holding up placards spelling out “Mr Donald
Rhody.” Apparently, the hotel had received my request for a taxi, and so did
the taxi company. Understandably, both drivers claimed they were the ones that
were hired.
I expected there to be some harsh and competitive words,
but I explained the situation to them—how I could not receive a confirmation
from the hotel, so I felt compelled to find another before my arrival.
The taxi driver hired by the hotel handed me his
phone. “Kindly talk to the hotel manager,” he said to me.
I took the phone from his hand and explained the
predicament once again to the hotel manager. Again, I expected there to be some
words of argument. After all, whether I rode in his taxi or not, the hotel
would have to pay the driver.
Again to my surprise, there was no disagreement.
The manager simply said that he understood, since they had had trouble with
that website in the past. I took the taxi that I had reserved from the
independent company, and heard no more about it.
Journal Entry – November 16, 2017
The hotel is small and quiet—a low budget one but
quite comfortable. I rested well last night. Despite the mix-up with the taxis, the manager (who turns out actually to be the owner) is a very nice fellow and quite warm towards me. The hotel is called “Bermuda Garden,” I think because the owner had spent some time in that Caribbean island country.
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| I'm sorry now that I did not take more photos, but I liked this little statue of a nursing mom and baby that stood in the outside dining area. A tribute to Motherhood |
I will be here for a couple of
days before Joel comes. I planned it this way since I wanted a little time
alone to recover from the travel, start becoming accustomed to the eight-hour
time change, and just to begin to get a feel for the country.
I can tell that God has been helping me on this
trip. I don’t think that I am a natural worrier, but several matters that I had
been uneasy about have turned out fine. Also, there have been more than a few things
along the way that have encouraged me.
Even on the plane down from Amsterdam, I found
myself sitting next to two sisters from Kenya who had immigrated to Holland.
They were returning to Kenya to visit family.
One of the sisters had apparently become somewhat
successful in her business in Amsterdam, and was also helping to fund some
children in Kenya with their education costs and with living expenses. She became
very interested when I told her about the reason for my going to Kenya, and
about the connection that I had made with Pastor Joel from Kisii.
She encouraged me greatly in this, and also told
me of some experiences that she had had in her similar endeavor. It all helped
me greatly. In in many ways, what she told me was not only educational and enlightening,
but also a confirmation that I may not be such a fool in doing what I am doing.
Later, in the afternoon of
November 16
I have taken a walk around the neighborhood of the
hotel. It is mostly a residential area and there is not a great deal to see.
There is one park several blocks away where I spent some time. Again I am
surprised that I am not swarmed by people trying to get me to buy something or
to go someplace.
People seem warm, but not overbearing. I am
treated like a person and not an oddity, especially an oddity with money. In
many of my experiences in developing countries, that is how I have been at
first perceived. When people see someone from America, they seem to see me as
not having white skin, but a twenty-dollar-bill shade of green. They cannot wait
to come up to me and become my “friend.” It has not so far been that way here. How
refreshing.
And now I am back at the hotel, sitting in the
outside dining
area. I have a quiet afternoon, so I will take this opportunity
to write about another validation that I received from God about coming here.
This confirmation was given to me even before I began planning the trip. It is
something that I think not many more than Vivian and I know about…Oh, and the
Log Church of Kenya.
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| This guy came crawling up to me while I was writing this journal "Karibu Kenya" (Welcome to Kenya) |
Earlier this summer (just a few months ago), a
dark mud-colored mark quite suddenly appeared on the upper part of my forearm.
I did not at first think much of it, and when Vivian asked me about it, I told
her that it was just “an old man’s skin mark.”
But the mark very quickly grew into a bump, and
then quite a large bump. It began to bother Vivian, so I covered it with an ace
bandage.
“See, it’s all gone now,” I told her.
But I also was getting a little concerned about it
and wondering what it could be. Of course, the thought that came to both Vivian
and I was that it may be cancerous, but I was not yet ready to take it to the
doctor.
One evening I was sitting in my chair and decided
that I would try to pop it. The bump was now pretty large and seemed to be continually
spreading. I took a pin to it. It was surprisingly easy to pop, and when I did,
it emitted a strong smell of rotting flesh. This finally got my attention. The
next morning Vivian called the clinic.
“It is either MRSA (A flesh-eating bacterial
infection), or it is cancer,” was the doctor’s initial assessment when I went
to see him.
I felt I especially needed to quickly find out
which of these it was, since in a couple of weeks, we were coming up to
communion Sunday at our church. As we do it in our church, as the pastor I place a piece of
bread in each communicant’s hands when they come forward. I needed to know if
it was something contagious. MRSA is a very aggressive infection, and quite
communicable. If it was this, I of course could not serve the communion.
After I had popped the bump, it was now again a
flattish mark. It became a rather nasty looking sore on my arm that was not
showing signs of healing. The final word from the doctor was that it was not
MRSA, but cancer.
This made sense to me since it was on my left arm—the
arm whose elbow stuck out of the car window in the bright tropical sun as I
drove thousands of miles all over Venezuela when visiting our training classes.
“But it is not as bad as it could be,” the doctor
told me. “It is not melanoma, but carcinoma.”
Without going into an extensive explanation, basal
cell carcinoma can usually be healed. I don’t remember now what they do, but it
seems to me he told me that they surgically remove it, and this usually takes
care of it.
His nurse made an appointment for me with a
dermatologist. However, the earliest that they had an opening was in about two
and a half months from the time when they called it in. That would make my
appointment right about now.
In the meantime, the mark kept growing. By now it
was not a roundish spot, but was growing in length. It did not bleed and it was
not healing. It was then some two and a half to three inches long, and seemed
to get a little larger every day. I thought by the time my appointment date
would roll around, the cancer might have spread quite significantly.
I do not deny that by that time, it had me plenty
concerned. I was not so keen about telling everyone about it, however. I did
not want the attention. Still, I felt an overwhelming need for someone to pray
for it.
“Ask the brothers in Kenya to pray for it,” the
Lord seemed to say to me one day as I was thinking about it.
I wrote a text to Joel about it and asked him to
tell the church so that they could pray. The following Sunday, when they were
all together, they prayed that my arm would be healed.
My spot did not disappear like magic, like when
you see a time-lapse film of something going through a change. But the
following day, I could tell something had happened. Instead of the
raw-flesh-like appearance that it had before, the sore now looked a bit
shriveled. I was cautious about being overly hopeful, but it even looked as if
there was a healing taking place. No scab formed, it simply began to look
better.
On the following day, it looked even better—almost
healed. Within two or three days, it was completely healed. I was left with
only a tiny whitish scar on my arm, one that is not even noticeable unless I
point it out. To see it now, you would laugh at me that I was concerned at all
about it.
I canceled my dermatologist appointment. What
would she look at? There was nothing there! She would tell me to just go home.
I decided to use the money that I would
have spent visiting the dermatologist and to instead go to Kenya to tell the Log Church about
it.
In a few days, I believe I will have that
opportunity.
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