(Mis)Adventures in Nairobi
August 27 – September 3
Nairobi.
After several days of mass confusion and the mysterious disappearance of our Ugandan travel-partner, Zalika, Stina and I boarded a Nairobi-bound Akamba bus at 4 pm on Monday. The seats were comfortable, we had about 20 books between us, and I had brought a chocolate bar. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing much did go wrong, until we reached the Kenyan border at sunset and almost got lost trying to find our bus after it crossed the border as we waited in the immigration line. Also, we had to pee and walked far away through a dark alley to a dark courtyard with a strange man who told us the bathroom was “there” but all we could find was what seemed to be a latrine with no hole in the floor. So we peed behind a structure, only after which we realized there was a man sitting on a porch next to us as we laughingly searched for the missing bathroom. As we boarded the bus, I bantered with some young boys hassling us for money. We split some biscuits with them, and I gave one of them a hug, pretending he was asking not for money, but for physical affirmation. Maybe he needed a hug more than money, I don’t know, but I laughed and he laughed and we made a good time of it. Unfortunately, neither of us slept one minute on the 12-hour ride, and I got quite sick toward the end, when the going became unbearably bumpy. When we arrived to Nairobi at 4:30 am, we were both utterly exhausted and relieved to be in a still vehicle. A taxi-driver friend of Stina’s named Peter was coming to pick us up at 5:00, so we decided to rest on the bus until he arrived. Well, it seems we fell asleep right away, since when we woke up the entire bus was vacated and the driver was saying, “Muzungus, get off the bus or I’ll take you back to Kampala!” Peter had arrived and had come looking for us, so the driver came to evict us. We rubbed our eyes, laughed at what had just happened, and hurriedly grabbed our things. As they say, haste makes waste; I accidentally left behind my toiletrees bag, replete with malaria medicine, toothbrush, soap, and a tiny icon of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.
Peter drove us to the mansion of Dave Johnson and his Kenyan girlfriend Leah, where I vomited before we climbed into bed under three wool blankets. Nairobi is COLD, especially compared to Kampala.
We slept for a few hours, then went to the Maasai Market to buy some goodies. This was a whirlwind; from the time we stepped into the market until the time Peter picked us up, we experienced extreme sensory overload. Everything was so complicated and confusing that I can’t even think of a good way to describe it. There were two men, Isaac and his sidekick, who trailed/led us through the market, attempting to force us to buy things we didn’t want and shoving things into our bags, saying we could pay for them later. When we expressed interest in something, they would put it in our bags and when we resisted, asking the price they simply said, “We’ll talk about price later.” Thankfully I have picked up a skillful assertiveness here in Uganda, which came in handy both in bartering (though we still got bad prices) and in refusing items when we simply didn’t want them (though I still ended up purchasing items I didn’t want). People have a serious way of pressuring you into buying things. It’s unpleasant to feel like you’re being taken advantage of. I was buying not for myself but for Uganda Crafts, so I was worrying the entire time about whether or not Betty would reimburse me for any of the things I was purchasing. My mind was swirling with constant conversions from Kenyan shillings to Ugandan shillings to US dollars. Prices became a jumble of numbers and my math skills disintegrated along with my peace of mind. By the time I left the market, I was almost out of money, though this was our first day in Kenya. As soon as we were finished, it began to rain torrentially. Isaac offered to buy us tea, so we ran through the rain to a café some ways away where he treated us to warm, milky and sugary tea. We left remarking how horrible it felt to be tourists.
Naivasha.
The following morning, we rose very early and boarded a matatu bound for Lake Naivasha, about an hour and a half from Nairobi. We had a sense of adventure and were glad to get out of the city that had bombarded us so violently the afternoon before. This day turned out to be one of my best days in East Africa so far. After averting several scams and some confusion, we arrived at a quaint campsite called Fisherman’s Point. The campsite is right on Lake Naivasha, surrounded by towering hills. Since our destination—Hell’s Gate National Park—was only a few miles away, we rented mountain bikes and took off to the park. Hell’s Gate is one of only two Kenyan game reserves where one can explore without a guide, and is, to my knowledge the only one that allows hiking and biking. The landscape in and around the park is stunning; with the characteristic subtle beauty of a semi-arid desert, and incredible geological formations, the terrain alone is enough to merit a trip to Hell’s Gate. To our great surprise and delight, we saw about 20 different varieties of animals, including giraffes, many kinds of antelope and gazelle, African buffalo (by far the most dangerous animals in the park), baboons, warthog, and hundreds and hundreds of zebras.
We biked through the homes of these wild animals, between steep cliffs, among thorny shrubs and over sharp rocks to a deep gorge about 9 kilometers from the main gate. When we arrived, we found you could not enter the gorge without a guide, so we paid a young Maasai man to take us down and through the gorge. We hid our bikes at the top, and began the steep descent. The gorge was beautiful and full of hot springs—did I mention that Hell’s Gate is an active volcanic area? Our guide was very interesting to talk to, not least because he was among the last group of Maasai warriors who went into the bush for a type of coming-of–age ritual, the culmination of which was fighting and killing a lion. They went into the bush with 20 young men, of whom only 17 returned. The following year, the Kenyan government announced that this rite of passage would no longer be allowed.
Jack, the English name of our guide, showed us things inside the gorge we never could have noticed on our own. We traced cheetah and panther tracks, as well as the trail of an enormous python.
We met several other young Maasai men in Hell’s Gate, since their village is directly on the border of the park. We talked with one of them for at least an hour, getting an interesting perspective on life. This particular boy was employed by the park to track the migration patterns of the animals, including insects and birds. He was very in tune with the rhythms of nature. He told us a story of how he saved a man who had been attacked by a buffalo, caring for him in his home before transporting him to the hospital. It smacked of the parable the Good Samaritan, except for the fact that the man this boy rescued had paid for him to travel to the US the previous year. The boy was a lay philosopher of sorts, and a poet, as well as a teacher of traditional Maasai songs and dances. He sang a song for us; all Stina and I could do was grin. It was beautiful.
That night, back at our campsite, we observed 5 large Columbus monkeys feeding on raw potatoes; I was close enough to touch them. We also saw many goofy Vervet monkeys running and climbing all over. Late in the evening, a few hours after dark, we saw what we had come to this campsite to see: hippos. About 300 hippos live in Lake Naivasha, and each evening they come to the shores to feed on grass. As you probably know, hippos are not gentle giants. In fact, they kill more people every year than any other animal. A woman had been killed by a hippo at our very campsite the previous year. Thankfully, there was a low electric fence they switched on every evening to keep the hippos away. This fence looked like it could be cut by a pair of nail clippers, so I wasn’t totally convinced of what it could do to a 4000 pound hippopotamus, but I think the idea was deterrence. In any case, we got to see the fattest animals I have ever seen lazily munching on grass for about an hour. I was satisfied.
The next day we returned to Nairobi, I was again quite sick all day in the Johnson’s house. After hours of vomiting and sleeping, I said goodbye to Stina who was leaving for the US. Thankfully, I was feeling better at that point. The next day I purchased a bus ticket to head back to Kampala that night, saw downtown Nairobi, and found my missing coworker Zalika at a failing crafts exhibition.
Punjabis and Fences.
After an adventurous day of moving around Nairobi—including the very places the tell tourists never to go—by myself, and taking the matatus—which they tell tourists never to take—I walked the several miles back to the Johnson’s house. By the time I reached the gate, it was becoming dark and I was tired and very thirsty. After knocking very loudly several times, attempting to ring the broken bell, trying to open the lock from the outside, and waiting a few minutes, I realized the guard wasn’t coming. “I’m resourceful,” I thought, “I’ll just climb the fence.” So I threw my bag over and climbed the tall, white metal fence with little difficulty. At the top, I decided I would just jump down since it wasn’t too high. That particular day, I was wearing a beautiful orange Punjabi that I had purchased in Owino market for 3000 Ugandan shillings. It had quickly become my favorite outfit and was my prized symbol of the humor of globalization. Anyway, I jumped off the fence. On my way down I heard a terrible ripping sound and instantly chided myself for being hasty and forgetting what I was wearing: I had ripped the entire back of my dress apart. As I turned my neck to assess the damage, the Johnsons’ 3 enormous dogs came and started barking loudly and jumping on me. Along with them came the guard who simply said, “Welcome, Madame,” as if nothing bizarre or humorous had just happened. I said hello to him, picked up my bag, and walked inside, orange tail trailing behind me. If he hadn’t already realized what had happened, I’m sure that was a dead giveaway. I laughed about this the rest of the evening.
Roller Coaster from Hell.
Later that night, I boarded my Scandanavian Express bus to Kampala. On my bus ride back from Nairobi, I prayed I would be spared the sickness of the previous days. Unfortunately, about two hours into the 14 hour trip, my stomach got the best of me. Long story short, I ended up in the bus bathroom (thank God it had a bathroom!) vomiting and wondering what I was doing on the floor of yet another disgusting public toilet. I feel I have had more than my fair share of bad digestive experiences in unpleasant places. Let’s just say I can’t count the number of public restrooms in which I have vomited on two hands. Or three. In any case, this one might top them all. I kept looking at the words scrawled on the rattling mirror: “Short call only plese.” Apologies to those who used the bathroom after me, and to those who had to clean it, but the alternative seemed even less desirable (plastic bag). After about an hour in the bathroom, I crawled out and onto the floor in front of the bathroom door where I laid in the aisle and fell asleep. That was the only sleep I received during my 28 hours on the roller-coaster roads between Kampala and Nairobi. I swear the entire thing is potholes the size of small cars and large watermelons. I repeatedly thought about the juices and what-not in my stomach, imagining them to be explosive like a pop can shaken harshly for many hours.
When I woke up about a half-hour later, we were about to stop at the Kenya-Uganda border, where we all exited the bus and waited in the freezing (yes, freezing—there was frost on the window of a parked car I saw) air to pass through immigration. At the window, I handed the Immigration Official my passport, still reeling from my vomiting episode on the bus. He looked at it for far too long, and asked me to produce my visa. I showed him my Ugandan visa, and he said, “No, your Kenyan visa.” I replied, “I was under the impression I didn’t need a Kenyan visa since I have a Ugandan visa and the East African community has some sort of deal.” He told me that I was wrong and had to pay $50 for my Kenyan visa. To me, this seemed illogical since I was leaving the country. The people behind me were becoming impatient so he called me back into the office, where I was directed to a cramped, dark room in the back. An extremely large, bad-toothed man sat down and began to discuss the situation with me.
“Where did you enter Kenya,” he asked. I didn’t know. “Did you go through the immigration process to enter Kenya?” I thought I had, but doubts were entering my mind. After several minutes of confusion, I realized Stina and I had only passed through one of two necessary steps to enter Kenya. We had received exit stamps from Uganda, but never entry stamps into Kenya. As this dawned on me, I felt stupid for not asking anyone at the border where to go and what to do. We had just exited the bus, waited in the line with everyone else, and then walked—illegally—across the border to find a bathroom and our bus. As soon as I realized our mistake, I became extremely apologetic and the man began demanding $50 for the visa I had never purchased. It was at this point that I realized several alarming facts: 1. That I had zero dollars with me; 2. That what money I had was on the bus and, at most, it amounted to $12; 3. That I had been in that office far too long, that I had no friend on the bus to look out for me, and that any chance I had of making it back to Kampala would drive away if that bus left without me. When I asked if the bus could leave me, he responded, “Of course it can!” as if to say, “You, girl, are in a tight spot.” I’m sure a look of panic came over me as I explained my predicament to the man. Thank God he was kind-hearted. Eventually, he just told the man with the stamp that I was very confused and had made a mistake, so they gave me an exit stamp and let me go. I subsequently went outside, where the sun had risen during my time in that closet of an office, and ran the half-mile or so to Uganda, got an entry stamp this time, and collapsed into my seat on the bus. How’s that for a morning adventure?
God’s Grace.
Now that you have heard my tales of adventure, I should note that the most significant part of my time in Nairobi was not the animals, or the sickness, or any funny events, but an overriding sense of the Spirit’s presence with me. Stina needed a lot of encouragement because her summer had been so difficult, and spiritually, she had become very confused. We had many talks about her questions, during which time I received a deep burden to pray for her. We prayed together many times, and each time I felt the Spirit urging me to speak grace into her life. We were both very encouraged—the Lord was faithful to minister to us through each other. I received a wake up call of sorts in that I had been coasting through life to a certain extent. Talks with her reminded me of the importance of evangelism (something Bishop Ruchyahana spoke into my life before I came here), and instilled in me a strong desire to read the Bible. I felt the Spirit’s presence strongly during my time in Nairobi, perhaps partially because I was constantly putting myself in situations of ambiguity and potential danger—places where I was always asking for, and receiving, God’s protection. Traveling does that to people, and I am thankful for it. perhaps that’s why people are drawn back to traveling time after time. It is not for seeing famous sights that I travel; I would just as soon travel in an unknown or unloved part of the world. It is for adventure and newness, risk and grace that I travel. I sense it is so with many vagrants, though others, I know, are running like Jonah or like David.
Nairobi.
After several days of mass confusion and the mysterious disappearance of our Ugandan travel-partner, Zalika, Stina and I boarded a Nairobi-bound Akamba bus at 4 pm on Monday. The seats were comfortable, we had about 20 books between us, and I had brought a chocolate bar. Nothing could go wrong. Nothing much did go wrong, until we reached the Kenyan border at sunset and almost got lost trying to find our bus after it crossed the border as we waited in the immigration line. Also, we had to pee and walked far away through a dark alley to a dark courtyard with a strange man who told us the bathroom was “there” but all we could find was what seemed to be a latrine with no hole in the floor. So we peed behind a structure, only after which we realized there was a man sitting on a porch next to us as we laughingly searched for the missing bathroom. As we boarded the bus, I bantered with some young boys hassling us for money. We split some biscuits with them, and I gave one of them a hug, pretending he was asking not for money, but for physical affirmation. Maybe he needed a hug more than money, I don’t know, but I laughed and he laughed and we made a good time of it. Unfortunately, neither of us slept one minute on the 12-hour ride, and I got quite sick toward the end, when the going became unbearably bumpy. When we arrived to Nairobi at 4:30 am, we were both utterly exhausted and relieved to be in a still vehicle. A taxi-driver friend of Stina’s named Peter was coming to pick us up at 5:00, so we decided to rest on the bus until he arrived. Well, it seems we fell asleep right away, since when we woke up the entire bus was vacated and the driver was saying, “Muzungus, get off the bus or I’ll take you back to Kampala!” Peter had arrived and had come looking for us, so the driver came to evict us. We rubbed our eyes, laughed at what had just happened, and hurriedly grabbed our things. As they say, haste makes waste; I accidentally left behind my toiletrees bag, replete with malaria medicine, toothbrush, soap, and a tiny icon of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.
Peter drove us to the mansion of Dave Johnson and his Kenyan girlfriend Leah, where I vomited before we climbed into bed under three wool blankets. Nairobi is COLD, especially compared to Kampala.
We slept for a few hours, then went to the Maasai Market to buy some goodies. This was a whirlwind; from the time we stepped into the market until the time Peter picked us up, we experienced extreme sensory overload. Everything was so complicated and confusing that I can’t even think of a good way to describe it. There were two men, Isaac and his sidekick, who trailed/led us through the market, attempting to force us to buy things we didn’t want and shoving things into our bags, saying we could pay for them later. When we expressed interest in something, they would put it in our bags and when we resisted, asking the price they simply said, “We’ll talk about price later.” Thankfully I have picked up a skillful assertiveness here in Uganda, which came in handy both in bartering (though we still got bad prices) and in refusing items when we simply didn’t want them (though I still ended up purchasing items I didn’t want). People have a serious way of pressuring you into buying things. It’s unpleasant to feel like you’re being taken advantage of. I was buying not for myself but for Uganda Crafts, so I was worrying the entire time about whether or not Betty would reimburse me for any of the things I was purchasing. My mind was swirling with constant conversions from Kenyan shillings to Ugandan shillings to US dollars. Prices became a jumble of numbers and my math skills disintegrated along with my peace of mind. By the time I left the market, I was almost out of money, though this was our first day in Kenya. As soon as we were finished, it began to rain torrentially. Isaac offered to buy us tea, so we ran through the rain to a café some ways away where he treated us to warm, milky and sugary tea. We left remarking how horrible it felt to be tourists.
Naivasha.
The following morning, we rose very early and boarded a matatu bound for Lake Naivasha, about an hour and a half from Nairobi. We had a sense of adventure and were glad to get out of the city that had bombarded us so violently the afternoon before. This day turned out to be one of my best days in East Africa so far. After averting several scams and some confusion, we arrived at a quaint campsite called Fisherman’s Point. The campsite is right on Lake Naivasha, surrounded by towering hills. Since our destination—Hell’s Gate National Park—was only a few miles away, we rented mountain bikes and took off to the park. Hell’s Gate is one of only two Kenyan game reserves where one can explore without a guide, and is, to my knowledge the only one that allows hiking and biking. The landscape in and around the park is stunning; with the characteristic subtle beauty of a semi-arid desert, and incredible geological formations, the terrain alone is enough to merit a trip to Hell’s Gate. To our great surprise and delight, we saw about 20 different varieties of animals, including giraffes, many kinds of antelope and gazelle, African buffalo (by far the most dangerous animals in the park), baboons, warthog, and hundreds and hundreds of zebras.
We biked through the homes of these wild animals, between steep cliffs, among thorny shrubs and over sharp rocks to a deep gorge about 9 kilometers from the main gate. When we arrived, we found you could not enter the gorge without a guide, so we paid a young Maasai man to take us down and through the gorge. We hid our bikes at the top, and began the steep descent. The gorge was beautiful and full of hot springs—did I mention that Hell’s Gate is an active volcanic area? Our guide was very interesting to talk to, not least because he was among the last group of Maasai warriors who went into the bush for a type of coming-of–age ritual, the culmination of which was fighting and killing a lion. They went into the bush with 20 young men, of whom only 17 returned. The following year, the Kenyan government announced that this rite of passage would no longer be allowed.
Jack, the English name of our guide, showed us things inside the gorge we never could have noticed on our own. We traced cheetah and panther tracks, as well as the trail of an enormous python.
We met several other young Maasai men in Hell’s Gate, since their village is directly on the border of the park. We talked with one of them for at least an hour, getting an interesting perspective on life. This particular boy was employed by the park to track the migration patterns of the animals, including insects and birds. He was very in tune with the rhythms of nature. He told us a story of how he saved a man who had been attacked by a buffalo, caring for him in his home before transporting him to the hospital. It smacked of the parable the Good Samaritan, except for the fact that the man this boy rescued had paid for him to travel to the US the previous year. The boy was a lay philosopher of sorts, and a poet, as well as a teacher of traditional Maasai songs and dances. He sang a song for us; all Stina and I could do was grin. It was beautiful.
That night, back at our campsite, we observed 5 large Columbus monkeys feeding on raw potatoes; I was close enough to touch them. We also saw many goofy Vervet monkeys running and climbing all over. Late in the evening, a few hours after dark, we saw what we had come to this campsite to see: hippos. About 300 hippos live in Lake Naivasha, and each evening they come to the shores to feed on grass. As you probably know, hippos are not gentle giants. In fact, they kill more people every year than any other animal. A woman had been killed by a hippo at our very campsite the previous year. Thankfully, there was a low electric fence they switched on every evening to keep the hippos away. This fence looked like it could be cut by a pair of nail clippers, so I wasn’t totally convinced of what it could do to a 4000 pound hippopotamus, but I think the idea was deterrence. In any case, we got to see the fattest animals I have ever seen lazily munching on grass for about an hour. I was satisfied.
The next day we returned to Nairobi, I was again quite sick all day in the Johnson’s house. After hours of vomiting and sleeping, I said goodbye to Stina who was leaving for the US. Thankfully, I was feeling better at that point. The next day I purchased a bus ticket to head back to Kampala that night, saw downtown Nairobi, and found my missing coworker Zalika at a failing crafts exhibition.
Punjabis and Fences.
After an adventurous day of moving around Nairobi—including the very places the tell tourists never to go—by myself, and taking the matatus—which they tell tourists never to take—I walked the several miles back to the Johnson’s house. By the time I reached the gate, it was becoming dark and I was tired and very thirsty. After knocking very loudly several times, attempting to ring the broken bell, trying to open the lock from the outside, and waiting a few minutes, I realized the guard wasn’t coming. “I’m resourceful,” I thought, “I’ll just climb the fence.” So I threw my bag over and climbed the tall, white metal fence with little difficulty. At the top, I decided I would just jump down since it wasn’t too high. That particular day, I was wearing a beautiful orange Punjabi that I had purchased in Owino market for 3000 Ugandan shillings. It had quickly become my favorite outfit and was my prized symbol of the humor of globalization. Anyway, I jumped off the fence. On my way down I heard a terrible ripping sound and instantly chided myself for being hasty and forgetting what I was wearing: I had ripped the entire back of my dress apart. As I turned my neck to assess the damage, the Johnsons’ 3 enormous dogs came and started barking loudly and jumping on me. Along with them came the guard who simply said, “Welcome, Madame,” as if nothing bizarre or humorous had just happened. I said hello to him, picked up my bag, and walked inside, orange tail trailing behind me. If he hadn’t already realized what had happened, I’m sure that was a dead giveaway. I laughed about this the rest of the evening.
Roller Coaster from Hell.
Later that night, I boarded my Scandanavian Express bus to Kampala. On my bus ride back from Nairobi, I prayed I would be spared the sickness of the previous days. Unfortunately, about two hours into the 14 hour trip, my stomach got the best of me. Long story short, I ended up in the bus bathroom (thank God it had a bathroom!) vomiting and wondering what I was doing on the floor of yet another disgusting public toilet. I feel I have had more than my fair share of bad digestive experiences in unpleasant places. Let’s just say I can’t count the number of public restrooms in which I have vomited on two hands. Or three. In any case, this one might top them all. I kept looking at the words scrawled on the rattling mirror: “Short call only plese.” Apologies to those who used the bathroom after me, and to those who had to clean it, but the alternative seemed even less desirable (plastic bag). After about an hour in the bathroom, I crawled out and onto the floor in front of the bathroom door where I laid in the aisle and fell asleep. That was the only sleep I received during my 28 hours on the roller-coaster roads between Kampala and Nairobi. I swear the entire thing is potholes the size of small cars and large watermelons. I repeatedly thought about the juices and what-not in my stomach, imagining them to be explosive like a pop can shaken harshly for many hours.
When I woke up about a half-hour later, we were about to stop at the Kenya-Uganda border, where we all exited the bus and waited in the freezing (yes, freezing—there was frost on the window of a parked car I saw) air to pass through immigration. At the window, I handed the Immigration Official my passport, still reeling from my vomiting episode on the bus. He looked at it for far too long, and asked me to produce my visa. I showed him my Ugandan visa, and he said, “No, your Kenyan visa.” I replied, “I was under the impression I didn’t need a Kenyan visa since I have a Ugandan visa and the East African community has some sort of deal.” He told me that I was wrong and had to pay $50 for my Kenyan visa. To me, this seemed illogical since I was leaving the country. The people behind me were becoming impatient so he called me back into the office, where I was directed to a cramped, dark room in the back. An extremely large, bad-toothed man sat down and began to discuss the situation with me.
“Where did you enter Kenya,” he asked. I didn’t know. “Did you go through the immigration process to enter Kenya?” I thought I had, but doubts were entering my mind. After several minutes of confusion, I realized Stina and I had only passed through one of two necessary steps to enter Kenya. We had received exit stamps from Uganda, but never entry stamps into Kenya. As this dawned on me, I felt stupid for not asking anyone at the border where to go and what to do. We had just exited the bus, waited in the line with everyone else, and then walked—illegally—across the border to find a bathroom and our bus. As soon as I realized our mistake, I became extremely apologetic and the man began demanding $50 for the visa I had never purchased. It was at this point that I realized several alarming facts: 1. That I had zero dollars with me; 2. That what money I had was on the bus and, at most, it amounted to $12; 3. That I had been in that office far too long, that I had no friend on the bus to look out for me, and that any chance I had of making it back to Kampala would drive away if that bus left without me. When I asked if the bus could leave me, he responded, “Of course it can!” as if to say, “You, girl, are in a tight spot.” I’m sure a look of panic came over me as I explained my predicament to the man. Thank God he was kind-hearted. Eventually, he just told the man with the stamp that I was very confused and had made a mistake, so they gave me an exit stamp and let me go. I subsequently went outside, where the sun had risen during my time in that closet of an office, and ran the half-mile or so to Uganda, got an entry stamp this time, and collapsed into my seat on the bus. How’s that for a morning adventure?
God’s Grace.
Now that you have heard my tales of adventure, I should note that the most significant part of my time in Nairobi was not the animals, or the sickness, or any funny events, but an overriding sense of the Spirit’s presence with me. Stina needed a lot of encouragement because her summer had been so difficult, and spiritually, she had become very confused. We had many talks about her questions, during which time I received a deep burden to pray for her. We prayed together many times, and each time I felt the Spirit urging me to speak grace into her life. We were both very encouraged—the Lord was faithful to minister to us through each other. I received a wake up call of sorts in that I had been coasting through life to a certain extent. Talks with her reminded me of the importance of evangelism (something Bishop Ruchyahana spoke into my life before I came here), and instilled in me a strong desire to read the Bible. I felt the Spirit’s presence strongly during my time in Nairobi, perhaps partially because I was constantly putting myself in situations of ambiguity and potential danger—places where I was always asking for, and receiving, God’s protection. Traveling does that to people, and I am thankful for it. perhaps that’s why people are drawn back to traveling time after time. It is not for seeing famous sights that I travel; I would just as soon travel in an unknown or unloved part of the world. It is for adventure and newness, risk and grace that I travel. I sense it is so with many vagrants, though others, I know, are running like Jonah or like David.
posted by emily "nalubwama" cool at 10:31 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home