The instructions were the 8am service finishes at 9.45am, you need to preach for 30 minutes. The second service in Kiswahili starts at 11am. It seemed so simple – what confused me was how I was meant to end at 09.45 when I didn’t get to start preaching till 10.15 – go back in time? But this is Africa and the first service lasted for three hours. The choir sang, the children sang, the youth sang but fortunately I didn’t have to sing.
St Peters Cathedral Nyeri is where Lord Baden-Powell is buried (him of dib, dab, dob or something similar fame). He has definitely got it sussed – he is buried facing the Mount Kenya with beautiful views and its warm here – no cold winters with snow whilst waiting for the rapture. Talking of the rapture – it would be a good place to be buried because the first thing you would see would be Mount Kenya, unless it was a cloudy day. Anyway definitely a better location than Southend cemetery – although Linda tells me there is room for her in the family plot. Suits me- she can be buried in Southend and I will take the African view.We had a wander around the cemetery and Linda spoke to the lady about Guides and was quite interested- I wasn’t.
So the first service finished about 11am. I preached on Nehemiah re-building the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days, they are building a new cathedral but its taking longer than 52 days. The challenge was what was their one priority in their life – it should be God. In the interval you get a cup of tea, before round two. It is the same service but this time in Kiswahili. The church is Anglican so they use the prayer books, although as it wasn’t in English it was difficult to follow. They sing the same hymns, the same Bible reading- but the sermon was different. It was a bit longer and I chose a different subject – The Good Samaritan – ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life’. The children has stayed in for both services – so I wanted to do something different. This service finished just after 1pm. They were slightly confused when I didn’t have a bible but used the Ipad. Then it was time for a cup of tea and we got invited out for dinner – but it wasn’t ready yet so we had to go somewhere with James and family for a few hours.
We went to the Outspan Hotel, where the Baden-Powell lived and you could have a look around his small house – so guess what Linda wanted to have a look round, sit on the same furniture he would have sat on, really interesting!
We stopped for another cup of tea there as Linda was thirsty. James and family were playing with the Ipad (mark2 out 25th March) and having great fun. About 4pm we received the call to go to the house, they lived next door to the President’s wife, but she didn’t come. There was plenty of meat on offer – and rice, so Linda had rice. The men sat in one area while the wives were dispatched to the other side – so it was quiet our side but rather noisy over the other side. There was a church council meeting going on and we couldn’t leave till the vicar had arrived, so we were there some hours chatting to people. Then he arrived and we still couldn’t leave as there was a small program followed by cake. Eventually we left about 7pm – having been out since the early hours – so we were tired.
On Monday we had a lie in but this meant we missed breakfast so we had to make do with rolls and marmite. At 10am we went to the Provincial Police headquarters to meet the Provincial Police Officer for Central Province, probably our equivalent of a Chief Constable as he controls an area bigger than Essex with an establishment of 5500 (although it should be around 8000). We had a nice chat, but as he was very busy we left and had a tour of the Police station and met some of the other commanders. We went to James office although they do have many computers.
After this we went to the Aberdare National Park as Linda wanted to see some animals. Well she may have wanted to see some – but she didn’t see many. We drove around for 5 hours and all she saw where warthogs, monkeys, buffalo, baboons and a leopard. It was very hot and there was no Starbucks to stop at in the park – definitely third world here! We saw Treetops where Queen Elizabeth found out she was Queen, its not the exact place as the old one burned down in the Mau Mau rebellion. You can stay there – but its expensive and the rooms are not ensuite.
There are 2000 elephants in the park – and they must have all packed their trunks and gone on holiday. We saw plenty of spoor but nothing dropping it.
We gave up and came back to town for a late dinner. We went to the Safari hotel. There was a vegetarian menu for Linda, it was quite interesting as you could have spaghetti bolognaise with meat. Linda asked about vegetarian spaghetti neapolitan and was told it was spaghetti – with meat. She was well confused by now and asked for spaghetti without meat.
They had mixed grill Eland style – now I like a bit of game and I had seen an Eland in the park. I soon found it didn’t consist of Eland at all and in fact it wasn’t a mixed grill as they had run out of lamb so it was just beef and chicken – but it tasted nice and I was hungry by now.
We did some shopping and then came back to the apartment by 6pm to relax, well we would have relaxed but we found out today we are going to the regional training centre tomorrow afternoon and I have to speak to them for the whole afternoon – so am still working at 11pm