Linda has been in her element today, she has been feeding the Giraffe at the Wildlife centre and also saw THREE tortoises. Unfortunately the Giraffe centre didn’t do take aways otherwise I would have tasted one as well. It is nice and warm here, well very hot in the mid 80’s today – so we need to take in plenty of liquids which means coffee stops.
We managed to pack all the items that people had given us, we had six bags to put in the hold, so good thing we were going business class. Three were full of pens, jumpers, books and shoes, one full of electrical items plus all the plugs you have to bring to charge everything up, as they never all use the same plug. This left two bags for clothes, one weighed 13kg and the other one 22kg – no prizes for guessing whose was the heaviest. With the computer and digital projector we had two lots of hand luggage each as well.
We had stayed in a Travelodge the night before and had to get the Hoppa bus to the airport, which was fun as I had to put all the bags on and then get them off again. We checked in and then went into the business lounge. This was good as there was plenty of free food, magazines and papers – which we could take with us. The plane was due to leave at 10.05 but it was about 10.50 before it set off. The good thing with business is they look after you and check you are ok, you get a nice meal – and then the seat is like a bed so you can go to sleep – which I did.
They had the Oscars winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ on the plane – well it was totally rubbish, there couldn’t have been much competition this year, I watched 15 mins, got bored and ending up watching Bond, which was not much better but at least some action in it. After a big dinner and a glass of Stellenbosch wine I fell asleep and snoozed for a couple of hours. Linda had the window seat but it was over a wing, so she couldn’t see much apart from I would get an early warning signal if the wing fell off. The flight was about 8 ½ hours and we landed about 9.30pm (Kenya is 3 hours ahead of UK).
We already had visas so we got through quickly and our luggage was one of the first out. We didn’t get stopped by customs which was fortunate as it might have been difficult to explain over 2000 pens in our luggage and probably saying we were going to do a lot writing might not have been believed! Ben, our driver, was there to meet us and soon we were sitting in our room at the Hilton, just in time for the football to start.
On Thursday we had a busy day, first we went to the aforementioned Giraffe centre, you could stroke the Giraffes’, feed them, talk to them – anything apart from eat them. Linda was in her element and was soon feeding the babies and adults alike. I had just sat down for a nice cup of coffee when she rushed over and said – there are some tortoises over there would you like to have a look, they are different from mine. I said ‘different, you mean they haven’t got a head, four legs and a shell.’ She said ‘no they are bigger they are African’. “ How interesting I replied.’
After this we went to see a craft shop which was in fact 8-10 small craft shops in a house. Linda had a look round in every room and soon found some things to buy. There was a gardan where you could have tea and coffee, and it had a tree in the middle with some bird on it which Linda was fascinated with. So the camera was out and several photos taken. We then went to visit Julius (old Principal of Sitotwet Bible college) at the Nairobi International School of Theology where he is doing a doctorate. We had a chat and he showed us round the establishment. After this it was back to the Hotel, as the car was making a knocking noise and needed to be checked before we went off to Nakuru and beyond tomorrow.
We had a walk around Nairobi town centre and stopped at the Thorn Tree coffee shop at the Savora, where Barak Obama ( a famous Kenyan) had previously visited. Linda had crepes as she was hungry and I had a banana cake. We had just got back to the hotel when our colleague Kibinge rang and we met him for a meeting to discuss the Christian Police Association, the International work and the joint conference in 2010. We were with him for a couple of hours and then he dropped us back at the hotel. We had some dinner before retiring to our room so I could do some emails and typing on the computer.
There are a few photos at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/simon.werrett