Journey to Africa
Follow the blog entries of a Church of God missionary couple.
By Susan Anniskette
My Dad told me I needed to journal what I see while traveling around the world. This blog is about our mission’s trip to Africa in June 2011.
On Friday, June 3 I finished teaching my COMM211 – Public Speaking class at Lee University and our daughter, Melanie, took us to the Atlanta airport. It took almost 24 hours of flying to get to Africa. The flights were long, but comfortable as possible. We were able to sleep some. The only mishap was when I got locked in one of the airplane restrooms. I had to beat on the door and yell for help. Thank the Lord a couple of men heard me and helped me out. Glen thought he heard a lady yelling, but didn’t recognize it as me! I guess we haven’t been married long enough. 🙂
The last leg of our last flight was Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Saturday, June 4. I think we lost a day somewhere. It’s a beautiful airport with a hotel built inside of it. We shopped around some and ate at the McDonalds. They weighed our carry-on luggage and found that all but Glen were overweight. They decided to let us all on and just charge poor Erick, our armor bearer, who was carrying my laptop. He had to pay $60. We were exhausted and wanted to sleep, but some very loud passengers wanted to laugh, talk and clap their hands. I didn’t feel too much like a missionary that night. To be perfectly honest, It made me mad. Also, while on the flight, they turned on the lights every two hours to give us drink and snacks. I think they’re afraid we’ll dehydrate or something.
We arrived around 7 am on Sunday, June 5. We went through customs. We each had to pay $25 and get fingerprinted to buy our visas for Kenya. Bishop Denis Pamba met us at the airport after rushing around to borrow a car to carry us to our hotel. The ride from the airport to our lodging was hair raising. I’ve never seen so many people and bikes on a road. Some of the bikes had a little pad on the back and people sat on the bike sideways and were taken to their destinations for a fee. I even saw ladies all dressed up sitting on them. I’m afraid I’d fall off. Looks like it’s every man for himself and we were on the left side of the road (that is when we weren’t dodging potholes, speed bumps, people, motorcycles and bikes) and he drove FAST! I thought for sure we were gonna nail a few people, but I guess they’re all used to it. I began to see cows on the side of the road and then goats. I saw so many of them I didn’t get excited and point at them anymore.
Another thing I’ve noticed that’s different than America is the security I see everywhere. It looks like no one can be trusted. Everything had a fence around it and a security guard standing there. It makes you feel unsafe and like you better not trust anyone.
The city transportation system is a bunch of little beat up vans that drive like maniacs. Glen said he was on a bigger bus once and said he’d never get on another one. One person had an open container of gasoline next to him, while the person in back had a goat and the person in front had a chicken and finally the other lady next to him begin to throw up. He found a different mode of transportation after that.
We stayed in a Catholic Compound called Rosa Mystica Spiritual Center. It’s a Catholic compound. There are nuns running around praying. We’re not quite sure what the mystica thing is all about. Anyway, it was a comfortable place with private restrooms and showers. We only had time to throw our suitcases in the room and change clothes. Glen and I couldn’t figure out the showers in order to get hot water. We should have paid attention, because all we had to do was flip a switch on the wall and turn the water on. Brrrrrrrr…….at least it woke us up because we had to quickly dress and go to the Railway Technical Institute for two services. There were about 350 students there. This is not a Christian college, but we found out that 80% of Kenya ns are Christians. There were 3,000 students at the college, but only about 300 showed up for the service.
Just outside the fence of the college is a city slum area. It was my first time to see such poverty. Little shops made of sticks lined the bumpy, littered road. Teems of people walked on the road and it was difficult to weave the car through them. One man was relieving himself on the side of the road. Glen said, “look,” and then wished he hadn’t. I quickly turned my head and slapped Glen. 🙂
