This is Joe Myers, Jessica's husband.
Over the next week or so I will be posting my journal of our trip to Nairobi Kenya. Quick background: We partnered with AIM Air for my college internship for Mission Aviation.
We want to thank you all for sharing in our endeavors, for your support and prayers. God really has shown us amazing things this year, and you have all been a great encouragement to us.
May 12: We arrived late Thursday night in Nairobi Kenya. We were met by Jim, and Randy from AIM Air, who took us to the Mayfield house, an enroot complex owned by AIM who offer housing and three meals a day for missionary travelers. We were scared that Ben (our 6 month old) would not sleep but he ended up sleeping better than any of us. Friday morning we woke up in time for 7:30 breakfast. It's hard to miss, due to the man who walks the halls clanging his triangle.
May 13: After breakfast we met with Cammy (an AIM wife) to review the weeks itinerary she had put together to help us get started, and some culture need to knows for our success. We have been going through AIM Air’s orientation and meeting many missionary families. We are staying at Mayfield, a transit guesthouse owned by AIM. There are people coming and going for short and long periods of time. We have met many remote missionaries, in town for a break or for supplies. Gregg (my good friend from school, also doing his internship) and I took public transportation (Matatu) to find the hanger. A Kenyan named James who works at Mayfield guided us. The public transportation is mini-vans outfitted with as many seats as possible, and loaded to the max with people. Many times there were not enough seats, but that didn’t deter the doorman from cramming more people in.
The doorman is a partner with the driver. His job is money exchange and to communicate to the driver that he needs to pull over and let someone out or in by tapping a coin on the window. He is very aware of everything going on, a woman behind me reached over me and touched him with one finder, not a poke or even a scratch, a simple light touch. Instantly the man tapped rapidly on the window and the driver barreled through three lanes of traffic to reach the next stop. When you hear of a city without traffic law enforcement Nairobi Kenya must be at the top of the list. Police men are posted at busy roundabouts on foot, armed with a small club. If they choose to stop someone and ticket them, they get in that car and ride with that person to the police station. On they way their goal is to talk the driver into paying them off so that the police officer can pocket the money and the driver gets away without a ticket. The highway, now under construction, has no lanes, and often drivers will take the off road rout to get one more car ahead. Defensive drivers have a life expectance of about 30 minutes. After that drivers are in one of three places: heaven, hell, or born again into offensive driving.
James also took us to the slums, where over one million people live in tin built shacks, with filthy living conditions, in a lower than poverty environment. Every house is connected to the next following a narrow dirt path usually washed out by the rain. Small shops are set along the walkway, to sell daily supplies of food and other things. Also they have radio, and shoe repairs, and people sell used cloths that have been shipped in from other countries. I have not reached a caliber in my writing or language that can describe this area. Pictures would be useless in trying to bring justice to the slums of Nairobi, and I felt ashamed at the depths of my being for simply walking through and knowing I did not have to stay. After 20 minutes of walking we had arrived at a gate. A door opened and we walked through to see children running and playing. James had taken us to his Church that is also a school. I don’t have pictures, because James instructed me to leave the camera back at the guesthouse. A small wooden building and multiple smaller tin buildings, and boxcar building surrounded a dirt yard with only 2 slides to play on. To the right of the yard is the cement framework of a new building that has been in work for the last five years. Though the slums look and sound like a horrific place, some people take full advantage of its convenience. Yes, I said convenience. The slums were started from people who traveled from out of town to work in the city for the week and return to their family for the weekend. Often these were people who owned farms and had family or employees to work their land during the week. To them the slums are rent free housing, with everything they need at the very reasonably rate. After a while people who lived in the city moved into the slums because there is not many who can loose a job and financially recover. Just over the last five years Kenya has discovered payment plans for things like cars and houses. They don’t have recovery plans like bankruptcy, so if you loose a job or something drastic happens in life, you just move to the slums in order to stay alive.
This is Mayfield where we stayed.
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