Jess and Anna Take a vacation

So there we were in city center Kampala. The street I chose for us to take was the one that all the taxi busses used to get back in the massive taxi park. On the two lane road there were three lanes of taxis bumper to bumper, exhaust blowing into our open windows. It reminded me of a scene from the old movie Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation. In which Jimmy Stewart stars as Mr. Hobbs. There is a scene just before the Hobbs take their family vacation to the beach, Mr. Hobbs is driving home from work (definitely ready for a vacation) but things aren’t starting too well for him as he is in bumper to bumper traffic with semi trucks in front, back, and either side. I don’t remember all the details but there were a lot of other obstacles that he had to overcome before and during his “vacation”.

World Harvest Mission was having an East Africa teams retreat in Mombassa Kenya. Jess and I similarly were headed to Kampala to begin our vacation, and have had our own set of hurdles to jump before vacation.

Hours prior to our matatu sandwich situation we got a flat tire. Fortunately, my brother and sister were visiting (more on their visit later) and Randy was willing to help out with changing the tire, as Jess and I with all our heaving could not manage to even loosen the lug-nuts on the spare tire. The jack did not raise high enough to be able to get the flat tire actually off the axel. But Randy soon had a team of African men to supervise in the tire changing endeavor. After a few boards under the jack and only one time of slipping off onto the support rocks below, an hour later the spare was on. We paid a small fee for “shoap” (soap) so that our helpers could wash their close after helping us.

The day that Jess and I were to leave to head to Kenya for the East Africa retreat we left the guest house in Kampala at 5:30 am (not my favorite hour). Arriving at the airport our taxi driver dropped us in the pickup/ drop off parking lot where we had to carry our luggage (with some help of strong men in jumpsuits whose sole job is to carry peoples luggage up to the departure gates). We went to the Fly 540 desk to get our boarding passes which the attendant actually hand wrote. A little sketchy for an international airport, I know! I began to wonder just what kind of air line we had chosen to fly with. I started to picture all of us passengers peddling the plane down the runway like the Flintstone's car. Jess and I started to come up with things that 540 could stand for, like 540 days that they go before inspecting their planes. We were to leave from Gate 1 (one of about 6) at the Entebbe International airport (the only one in the entire country of Uganda). About 5 minutes before our plane was scheduled to leave, in African fashion, they finally started to board. In not so African fashion, the attendant hurried us onto the plane. Despite my misgivings the flight was quite nice and I also enjoyed a second breakfast of a cucumber sandwich, which is more than I can say for any 1 hour flight that I ever took in America.

We landed in Nairobi and hurried to catch our next flight. We ended up in some mass general seating area for anyone flying anywhere with Fly 540. There were no speakers so when one of the planes was getting ready to leave, someone would walk around and kind of mumble the destination. About the time our plane was supposed to start boarding we heard some mumbling we went to the gate (just a doorway that lead out onto the plane parking area) But it was not the right flight. Jess and I really anxious to get this vacation started continued this pattern of getting up at the mumbling, one time the guy even took our ticket and we almost got onto a plane headed to a place in Kenya that I have never heard of. Finally we picked a seat that was right by the door. The Fly 540 attendants then could personally speak to us about what was going on with the planes... turns out ours was delayed an hour or so. We did finally board and land in Mombassa and were so happy to see taxi driver waving us down among the throngs of pushy drivers trying to get a fare. He was very helpful pointing out to us interesting land marks like the prison, and train station, and giving us other tid-bits like, “and those trees on the left and right... those are palm trees.”

So we made it and I waved excitedly to see the Myhres and give them big hugs as I hadn’t seen them in months. More East Africa World Harvest Reunions to come. Let the vacation begin.