First post from Africa
/To find what our days looked like leading up to us being here, click here. You can back track along the parts of the process we blogged about, though I will say there’s only 3 or 4 posts. This blog will be from the time we left Omaha, NE.
I’m looking at the title of this post, still in disbelief that we live in Africa. It’s super surreal. We are currently in Kenya for language training, which will officially start next week, after we’ve puttered our way through jet lag. We won’t be in Kenya long term, though, as Tanzania is Lord willing, our final destination to make a home and plant roots. We don’t know what our timeline will be there, because the Lord directs our steps and only He knows what lies ahead, but we hope to be in Africa long term.
We left Omaha about noon on Saturday, April 3rd. After saying a very teary goodbye to our dear friends, we made our way surprisingly smoothly through security and to our gate to await boarding. We had 4 carryons with us that weighed a hefty 50 pounds, as they contained the homeschool curriculum we had been told last minute that we needed to bring with us, as no support teams were scheduled to come that could bring it for us (which is the normal way). I asked the gal at the gate if they could gate check these four bags to our destination. She knew from her roster that we were flying all the way to Kenya, and gave my a smile and quietly said, “yes, I can help you with that.” This was a hoped for answer to prayer. Trying to get those bags through the Atlanta airport and 2 international airports would have been miserable. She also bumped us to the comfort plus section of the plane, because she couldn’t find enough room for us elsewhere where we could all sit together. With a much lighter carryon load, we boarded and lifted into the air. The flight was short, and about half way through it I realized my iPad, of which I use for nearly everything was not in my backpack where it belonged. I’d placed it in a bin on the security line, but somehow it never made it’s way back in. We worked through every carryon we had, and were not able to find it. My heart sank. As soon as we landed and had cell reception we were both making phone calls to figure out how to find out if it had been stolen off the security line, or was still in the airport. Long story short, after about 30 minutes of solid phone calls, one number after another after another, Josh was able to talk to the man that was standing at the security desk. He told us to call back later and he’d check the bins. We gave this number to the Padilla’s, who were already half way to the airport, they called him, he checked the bins and found my ipad nestled under a stack of them. He gave it to them, and Francey immediately made her way to Fedex to ship it to an address where one our teammates is currently en route to, to receive a covid vaccine. She’ll bring it back with her when she flies home in a few days. I was so relieved! The Lord continues to show us these tangible ways that he is, indeed, in full control over this process. It’s so reassuring to be walking the road he’s already paved for us and to see that he cares about even the little things, like lost items.
Our layover in Atlanta was 5 hours, but it went by quickly, ending with a delicious dinner of 5 Guys.
All flights were as seamless as we could have hoped for. None of the flight attendants said a word about Zeke needing to wear a mask, they were all incredibly kind and patient with the boys. Our first international flight, we gave all the boys Benadryl and Melatonin and let them spread out in all the empty seats that were available around us. They all got decent sleep, including Zeke, who is a wizard at NOT falling asleep in his carseat. We landed in Amsterdam on time and loitered for a bit before heading to our gate for our flight to Nairobi. The Nairobi flight was mostly full, so there was no spreading out for naps, which worked out ok since we were trying to keep boys awake those 8 hours so we could roll into our guest house and crash right away, even though it would feel like afternoon for us.
The flight was late taking off and we were only allowed to deplane 15 people at a time for social distancing purposes…..after being shoulder to shoulder on the same plane. Some Covid mitigation stuff just doesn’t make sense.
Getting through immigration and customs took longer than we expected and I’m certain we all looked like zombies. Our welcoming crew were not allowed to come inside the airport to help with bags, so it was up to us to figure out how to get our 25 checked bags, 7 backpacks and 5 carryons out to them to put in the cars. Out to them THROUGH customs. Josh went out and talked with our logistics guy and he found an airport employee to help out. We finally made it through customs, only being asked about the piles of homeschool books we were bringing in, and not the 150 lbs of green coffee beans we brought for roasting. We were a bit surprised and very relieved they didn’t confiscate our coffee! Why bring so much coffee to roast, you may ask? Because, believe it or not, it’s actually really difficult to find coffee in Tanzania, because it’s all exported. And it’s not legal for coffee roasters to sell us green coffee beans here in Kenya, so we brought a stock pile to last us quite a while!
With the help of airport staff and our logistics folks, we loaded our luggage into three different vehicles and made our way to our guest house on our compound here. We were given the tour of our place, explanation about the faulty water heater and “widow maker” shower heads, and then left to crash hard for the night. And well into the morning. When Josh and I finally got the boys into bed and then got ourselves into bed, we’d been on the go for nearly 40 hours. We.were.toast!
