Leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo

Monday – August 23, 2010

It was an interesting morning. We were supposed to be at the airport three hours before our flight which was scheduled for 1:00pm. Things didn’t work out as smoothly as we had hoped.

We began our morning by finishing packing and making sure everything was ready for our flight. We were joined by Pastor Yumba, our translator Mark, and Martin, our copy man for breakfast in the hotel. Todd and I enjoyed our final ham and cheese omelette and the Mark and Martin had various items from the buffet. We had a good visit, which we especially enjoyed since it was our last opportunity. At about 9:30am Pastor Daniel and Pastor Muzakuza arrived, but we waited for our transportation for another half an hour. We were supposed to be at the airport by this time, but we still had to stop and say goodbye to Martin Essien. We had a brief visit with him at his hotel and thanked him for all he had done, and wished him the Lord’s blessings on his remaining days here.

Pastor Yumba, Martin and Mark join Todd and I for breakfast at our hotel.

Then we were finally off to the airport. Pastor Daniel was accompanying us mainly because he works at the airport and was able to “expedite” our journey. After Todd had his checked bag screened we had to buy two $50 “go passes” that were necessary for exiting the country. By this time we had quite the entourage. There were nine men surrounding us from the ELCC and the CCLC eager to help us. It was a bit chaotic. Finally we made it to the check in desk where they checked our flight itinerary, passports, and go passes. We were given hand-written vouchers that we needed to take to a second desk behind the first. There were two men at this desk, and they were not very friendly. We handed them our passports, itineraries and the hand-written vouchers, but they couldn’t find us on the list. Finally the lady at the first desk came back and found us on the list, but they said there still was a problem and asked us to sit down and wait.

Our entourage made things even more difficult, because they wanted to help but the people at the desk were getting tired of answering all the same questions five times! Finally they called us back over and printed off our boarding passes and checked Todd’s bag. We were the last ones checking onto the flight, and as we were finishing up, the men behind the counter started collecting the dividing poles and put them on the conveyer belt which took the luggage away. They were sending them outside to reuse them for plane boarding! We must be in Africa...

When we were all finished, Pastor Daniel took us through immigration and into the waiting area. There were only three plane on the tarmac and one of them was undergoing maintenance! The working planes taxied and left and we watched our plane land and pull up outside. Passengers exited the plane and we were escorted out to board the plane. There had been no security check of our carry on luggage to this point, but we had to go through a hand security check before walking up the boarding ladder to the plane. Pastor Daniel walked us all the way up to the boarding ladder and didn’t return back to the terminal until we were aboard.

Our flight took off at just after 1:00pm. We flew southeast out of Lubumbashi down the “tail” of the DRC which is sandwiched between the two surrounding borders with Zambia and when we reached the end we headed directly east to Lilongwe, Malawi. We had a brief stop there as they let passengers off the plane and put others back on for the flight to Addis Ababa.

Waiting for liftoff at the Lilongwe Airport.

At 4:00pm we were in the air again headed straight north. The sun began to set in the west as we made our way back to Ethiopia. We landed on time, at 8:00pm and had to kill some time in the airport as we waited for our 11:00pm flight to Nairobi. In the airport, and interestingly enough, on our same flight to Nairobi, we met a young man named Powell from Cheyenne, Wyoming, of all places! It wasn’t hard to pick him out of the eclectic crowd with his WYOMING t-shirt and cowboy boots! You can find just about anything in this airport. We had a good visit with him while we sat at our boarding gate waiting for our plane to be ready.

It was only a two hour flight back to Nairobi, and there were very few people on our flight, so we had no trouble getting through customs and collecting Todd’s bag. Charles was waiting for us outside when we exited the terminal, and with the empty Nairobi streets at 1:30 in the morning, we made good time back to our hotel. We checked in to the Southern Blue once more, said goodnight to James, Jonathan, Charles and Rosa (Charles’ wife) who had come to pick us up.

We are off to bed now. We have a meeting with Charles in the morning, and then a seminar with the Nairobi area men from 10:00-3:00, so it will be a short night again, but we are looking forward to finally seeing Russ and Stephen and meeting with the men here.

In Christ,

Nathanael

"Unless the LORD builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the LORD guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.” – Psalm 127:1