Well, God answered my prayers, and I miraculously made the Virgin Atlantic flight to Nairobi. I was flying on low priority standby, and the flight was oversold by 40 seats, which, if you know anything about standby travel, is beyond hopeless. So, like I said, it was a miracle. Praise the Lord!
It was also amazing that I ended up on the same flight as one of the leaders of the internship, and that we both ended up right behind four of the other people in our group in the customs line at Nairobi Airport.
Speaking of our group, here's the team:
Katharina - Leader
Chris - Leader
Connor - Azusa Pacific University
Jason - Azusa Pacific University
Julie - Vanguard University
Amanda - Biola University
Me - Biola University
After customs, we found our driver and went to our hotel. It’s called Gracehouse Resort, it’s about 15 minutes southwest of downtown Nairobi. It is an amazing hotel, all the staff are so friendly and helpful, and there is a beautiful courtyard in the center filled with amazing flowers where you can relax and drink tea. The breakfast here is incredible, you can get a made-to-order omelet, pancakes, potatoes, sausage, beans, cereal, fresh juice, fruit, pastries, coffee, and tea… awesome.
The first day was mostly just resting and recovering from travel. We had a meeting with a bunch of business people in the afternoon where we met a lot of the people we’ll be working with during our time in Kenya. It was a pretty general meeting where we explained our goals for our two weeks in Nairobi, and we set up meetings with each of them for later in the week. After the meeting, the pastor of the church that our primary Kenyan contact attends came to the hotel with his wife to meet us and to loan us a guitar. They are amazing people, they walked us to the market to buy water, and gave us a short tour of the neighborhood. We ate dinner with them at the hotel, then called it a day.
Thursday was mostly another recovery day. One of the two remaining group members, Connor, arrived in the morning, and we had our first team meeting to discuss our plans and goals for the following week. We walked around the neighborhood a bit to get a feel for where things are. Our last team member, Dwight, had two flights cancelled, and got stuck in Dubai for over 30 hours.
Friday was fun. We had a meeting with a man named Wanjau in the morning. He is a manager for Navigators, which is an organization that disciples Christian business leaders and helps Christians start businesses. We asked him a lot of general questions about what the business climate is like in Kenya, and what it’s like for Christians to do business here. I learned a lot about the role of business in the mission of the Church last year in my Business as Missions class, but it was so encouraging to meet someone who is really doing it. He was such a kind and humble guy, it was really a blessing to meet him. After the meeting we got to tour around Nairobi in what they call a Matatu. It’s basically an old minibus that they use for safaris. The roof opened up, so we could stand up and see all around us. It was radical.
On Saturday we went to a place called Bomas of Kenya. It’s a cultural center where they have replicas of the traditional huts of all the different Kenyan tribes. They even have a replica of a village of the tribe that Barrack Obama is from, which is where we filmed a mock episode of MTV Cribs. They also have a huge auditorium where they perform all the traditional songs and dances of the Kenyan tribes, it was really cool to watch.
Well, I’m still not caught up, but I’ll leave it at that for now. Bye!
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