Kenya Blog 5

It’s early on Sunday morning. Rather than having a little down time before traveling back into Nairobi for a football tournament, we have had an extra added to the itinerary, which is already overcrowded. This always seems to happen no matter how hard we try to plan and organize. There are times when over optimism can run you into the ground.

So here I am rushing to type this with no certainty it can be published today. We are to visit Life Reformation Centre. This is the church of the SCI-Kenya director, Obongita Osore, (Fred). I anticipate being called to the stage at some point to give a brief word and greetings from the UK.

Yesterday was a slow start, but the rugby tournament at Mang’u High School attracted eight teams from seven schools. Start time was supposed to be 10:00. The first pool matches began by 11:25. There was some excellent rugby, especially the courage in the tackle and the strong individual running. However, areas such as ruck and maul, and scrummaging were a little naïve. Perhaps the most frustrating was the amount of poor kicking. After a very hot few hours the weather turned to thunderand lighting and heavy rain. Nevertheless, it proved to be a great day. We had a rapper who sang and various speeches during an extended presentation in the school library. (The downstairs was a hall, the books were upstairs). It is hoped that this will become a regular fixture in the Kenyan rugby calendar.

We had planned to have our evening meal with friends back in Nairobi. We were stuck in another traffic jam due to a road accident. These are all too regular. Local buses and Kenyan drivers as a whole simply disregard all and any road safety or consideration. Matthew earned his stripes dodging and weaving, often forced to by other road users. Of course, since, as usual, we arrived much later than anticipated, we left later. No sooner we left Umoja we encountered another traffic jam and another accident. No one seemed badly hurt thankfully.

We arrived at our guesthouse after 11:00. A long, tiring, rewarding day. I wonder if the cyber café is open today. We fly to Kisumu from Kenyatta airport at 07:45 tomorrow so we probably start the day at around 04:15, to be at the airport in time.