Arrival!

Friday, October 10, 2008

On Friday night Debra, Julia and Mark dropped me off at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport at about 7:30p.m. I met up with Russ Schmitt (from Mankato, Minnesota) who has made a couple of previous Mission helper trips to East Africa and will be traveling with me again this year. We were able to get checked it right away. In addition to my two carry on bags, I packed two boxes to check and have brought over to Africa. These boxes contained the many theological books and several laptops that were donated by CLC members since my trip last year. As you can imagine, they were very heavy, especially since I packed them so they were just under the weight limit of 50 pounds for checked bags. After getting our boarding passes and checking our extra items, we made our way through security. Although not as difficult as security in Atlanta, this was quite a process. The security procedure is to take any laptops out of your bag and place in a separate container so they can be scanned separately. When I went through security I received quite a few chuckles and comments as I pulled out not one, not two, but three laptops out of my bag! Some of the security people must have wondered if I had gotten my laptop bag from Mary Poppins’ while others made various friendly comments about the three laptops I pulled out and sent through. My other bag caused some trouble too. They pulled me to the side and asked me to open it up because there were a few things they couldn’t make out on the scanner. I was carrying the two battery chargers for the extra two laptops and four electric voltage converters (one for my electronics and one for each of the three laptops I was transporting over for the churches and seminary here). So they went through my bag, but I didn’t have any other trouble.

From there we made our way to our gate where we sat and watched (what we hoped would be) the last of the American news media’s spin on the current presidential campaigning. Since we won’t be back before the election in November, Russ and I both voted before we left. Yet we both agreed that we weren’t going to miss all the political bickering that goes on between now and then. We will look forward to hearing about the outcome of the election in November, and will keep the situation there in our prayers.

At about 9:00p.m. we began boarding our Airbus 330 for the trip to London. By 10:00p.m. we were off the ground and looking down at the lights of the Minnesota cities below. Since it was an over night flight there was very little to see on the eight hour flight. The first thing we were able to see after the sun came up was the beautiful Irish countryside as we began to decrease altitude over Ireland. Then it was a quick trip across England and to the Heathrow airport. We went ahead six hours on the flight and arrived at around 11:30a.m.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

In London we had to change airlines, from NWA to Kenya Air, so we had to exit the terminal, collect our checked bags and check them again. We had an eight hour layover in London. We had discussed going out and seeing some of London while we were there, but we were both tired and it was very expensive to have our bags stored, so we decided to kill time at the airport. We tried to catch a little shut-eye in a quiet part of the airport and ate lunch at “Wetherspoons”. At around 3:00p.m. we returned to re-check our bags, and went back through security with our carry-ons. Although I did get a few comments about the laptops, I didn’t have any problems with the items in my other bag. Since our gate hadn’t been set yet, we found a British Airways gate that was empty and where we could get electricity. Russ tried to catch up on some sleep while I worked on preparing for our pastoral conference. After a while people started filling up the area, waiting for a plane headed back to Seattle in the US. I met a couple of men who were from Spokane, and had been in Sudan doing mission work for another organization. They had to leave early because of an uprising of the rebel army in southern Sudan.

Not long after they left, the gate for our flight was announced. We made our way to the opposite end of the terminal to wait for our boarding call. Once at our gate, we found an open area and I laid down to rest while Russ kept watch on our things. At a little after 7:00p.m. they began boarding and we were in the air by 8:30p.m. This time we were on a brand new Boeing 777. The seats were much thinner and were very uncomfortable compared to the Airbus 330. This was another over night flight, and so there was very little to see. I was able to see the lights of London and the lights of Paris, but not much else. This was another flight over eight hours, and here we “lost” or went ahead another two hours in time, arriving at about 6:00a.m. Kenya time on Sunday morning.

I had already purchased my Kenya visa, but Russ had not, so we were in two different lines. My line, although slow, went much faster than the line Russ was in. I was through by 7:00am, collected all our checked bags and waited another hour before Russ came trotting down the stairs to the baggage claim and customs area. He was able to get a visa without any trouble, but the process was much slower. When I went through customs they wanted to know what was in the boxes. I told them that they were books, but the lady who was running the lane wanted to see for herself. She asked me to open one, but didn’t have anything to cut the tape I had used to wrap the box. After struggling for a while with the tip of her ink pen – and only opening the top of the box a very little – she finally told me to go on through!