KENYA!!

Well, we are finally here. After 3 months of fundraising, 3 days of orientation, and 30 hours of flight time, we have settled into our hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. (When I say we, I mean 4 interns and 2 leaders. The rest of the team, two other interns, is coming in today.) We have a sweet hotel room. The rooms are set up in a cluster. There is a common area for every four rooms. So I am sharing a room with another girl, and the boys are in the others rooms in our cluster. The common area makes for a good meeting place.

The flight was not too bad…ok, maybe it was. Out of the 30 hours of flight time, I was only able to sleep for 4 hours…but I did get to catch up on culture and watch several movies that I had yet seen, such as Slumdog Millionaire. On the first flight to Detroit, I sat next to a guy that was reading Wealth 101 by Donald Trump. The subtitle was 90 days to prosperity (or something similar). I thought that was a little ironic since our team is all about creating profits for others to benefit from. On the flight to Amsterdam, I sat next to a nice Romanian man. We chatted near the end of the flight about our various destinations. He contributed to my growing knowledge of how to stay safe in Africa. On my flight to Johannesburg, I sat next to a family who was going to visit their daughter who was living in South Africa doing an internship. After explaining more of what I was doing in Africa, the mother finally asked me if I was a believer. I said yes and she responded that she had a feeling that was the case just by the way I was talking. That was encouraging!! So I dove more into my passion for using business to participate in the Kingdom of God. At the end of the flight she said that she would pray for our trip. It’s amazing how my network is spreading around the world. Finally on the last flight from Jo-burg to Nairobi, I sat next to a man that snored the whole 4 hours…I was jealous of his ability to sleep…haha. So we arrived in Kenya, filled out paperwork to assure the government that we did not bring swine flu into the country, got our visas, which took up a whole page of my passport, and collected our luggage. Mine made it the fairly complex and roundabout way to Kenya. Such an answer to prayer for me personally.

For my first international trip, I am doing pretty well J. Nothing like going to Africa to gain travel experience. Everything else should be easy right? At one point, when we were changing planes in South Africa, we met up with the director of E.I. to drop off some extra supplies for the business there. He asked if this was anyone’s first trip overseas. I owned that one. He laughed and said, “Way to dive right in.” God is a funny, funny, ordainer.

After 30 hours of travel we got to our hotel in time to take a short 5 hour nap, then get ready for a meeting with our main contact here. We felt kinda bad because we were all so tired and slightly unable to process questions… But for the most part, the meeting went well and we set up subsequent times to meet with them again. Our business contacts here are doing everything they can to make our stay safe and enjoyable. They want us to get a good taste of Kenya. They are excited to show us their country. Tomorrow we are going on a city tour so that we can have a general overview of the potential of Kenya. We had a short meeting yesterday with our contacts to learn some about the business culture in Kenya. It was fascinating to hear about the opportunities that Africa has to offer. One man said that there is a lot of potential in Kenya, they just need people to know how to leverage it.

Well after a long journey and a little exploring, it was time to hit the sack. However, my body did not think it was time to sleep 8-10 hours, so I woke up at 3 hour intervals, despite the 3 mg of Melatonin that I took…lame. I finally woke up fully to the Muslim call to prayer this morning at 5am. My roommate was already awake as well, so we caved to inevitable morning and got up. I have never so fully awake at 5am before…not a habit I want to keep. Hopefully tonight will be better.

I am excited to experience more of Kenya over the next two weeks and I will update this with pictures regularly J (I am stoked to have internet!)

Please continue to pray that the rest of the trip goes well and we are able to develop potential business opportunities.