It's Africa Time!

After about 33 hours of travel time, I landed in Nairobi Intl Airport last night. At my 2nd connection in Detroit, I was informed via phone that my friend had completely missed his flight, which was supposed to land 2hrs after mine in Nairobi. So there goes my guide. He will show up on Friday hopefully.

I was assured though that the friend who was going to pick us up from the airport, was still going to pick me up though. I did my best not to be too bothered by this hiccup. The friend sounded stand up, so no worries. As I pick my bag up at baggage claim, a miracle in the fact of how many connections I had, I headed out to the crowd of people holding up name cards. Did about 2 full laps back and forth to see if any variation of my name was being held up.

NOPE.
Well that's just great. A very insistent cabbie let me use his office phone to try and call the friend. This phone has been turned off.
Awesome. So I call my Kenyan buddy and his Uncle in the USA and they try and arrange a ride for me. It is starting to get late and this is not going to work out. I finally give in the cabbie, and let him help me book a room for the night and try my efforts in the morning. So I relent and we make the arrangements and leave my info at the office for me friends to get relayed where I am.

So we get into the cab, oh yeah forgot to mention, THIS GUY ONLY HAS ONE ARM! I knew driving in Africa was not going to be your garden variety commuting. Well I just checked my nerves at the door and totally trusted my coughing one armed cabbie, who seemed to be aiming for potholes to gain advantage in traffic. The potholes we hit would make some off-roading Americans think twice, but we hit them all just fine in the suspension-less Corolla. After the nice shake up we got to hotel, myself a few mosquito friends of mine locked ourselves in a mosquito net for the night. Filled with biting and sweating, I had to evict them at 3:30am.

Thankfully Bernard's friend rang my room in the AM, and I met up with him. He works down the block and is going to get me more reasonable accommodations. Sorry for the long post, might not be able to post for a few days, but upside I am safe in Nairobi and just waiting to head to the training camp area.

Take care for now!