The Day That Wouldn't End

You might be thinking, “How is it you say that there could be a day that does not end? Don’t all days come to an end?” Yes all days do come to an end, but when you are awake for long stretches of time, it can seem to stand still and when you are on a bus for hours upon hours after being on an 18 hour flight only two days prior, you get the sense that the day will not end. For this day in particular, on top of not ending anything that could go wrong did go wrong. So what we ended up with was a bad day that wouldn’t end.

But it started out as a pretty good day, as most days do. I woke up early and let Taryn sleep in, made some weak coffee (because I still can’t work the little thing-a-ma-jigger that lets me make coffee) and did some reading and meditating. As I meditated, I felt strongly that I should pray for safety and security for the PACE bus that was picking us up and dropping off the Rolands (James, Heidi and 4 children) at the airport. The Rolands have been working with PACE for over 4 years, so it was a somber time though the people on the bus still found every reason to laugh and be joyous. It was eye opening to see that.

As for my early morning meditation experience, it turns out there was a very good reason for the inclination to pray for safety and security. Joanie called from onboard the PACE bus at 1:30pm and informed us that they would be an hour late due to some mechanical complications. “No problem,” we said – we were wandering around the lovely campus of a bible college and really had nothing better to do than hang out, so that was fine. When the bus arrived around 3pm, we quickly understood that there was some gravity to the mechanical failings – the bus needed a rolling start for it to start at all. As James explained, the two batteries that make up the 24-volt system on the bus had fallen out of their compartments somewhere along the highway and were lost. This meant three things: 1) We can’t start the bus if it stops, 2) we have no lights, and 3) the trip just doubled in price! We had to stop in Nairobi to buy batteries and then somehow get them installed, drop the Rolands at the airport, get Joanie to a hospital so that she could pick up some medication that isn’t available in Nyahururu AND get back to PACE before nightfall. Now this was getting interesting, since Kenya is not the place you want to be driving at night – especially without lights!

We got to Nairobi and began looking for the two 12-volt car batteries, cables and tools we needed and with no luck after the first hour our driver, Maina, took us to what is effectively “spare parts for anything with wheels” street in downtown Nairobi. But of course, we were in rush hour and things were so painfully slow that we didn’t reach the auto parts street until close to 5pm - which is when everything closes! Two men went off with cash in hand to try to beat the closing times, and just after dark, they struck gold and found exactly the batteries we needed! Great! Except that it was after dark and we still needed to get them installed. To compound our situation, traffic had gotten ridiculous since sundown. In fact, we can say with certainty that it was the most insane traffic we have experienced … ever. I can’t even begin to explain the insanity of a Nairobi traffic jam … but to give you an idea at one point, we had two of our men on the street stopping cars so that we could get into the middle lane and make an exit, but divers crossing on the perpendicular street had completely blocked traffic. So, traffic flowing in our direction had filled up all lanes of the road so that traffic flowing in the opposite direction had nowhere to go and spilled out every which way onto connecting roads. To further worsen things, a taxi had stalled in the middle of our street facing oncoming traffic and a group of five or six people were working at pushing the taxi away, except they had to push it slightly up-hill and were basically getting nowhere fast. There was also a huge coach bus in front of us trying to get through, but of course the road was completely jammed up so the driver laid on the horn continuously for about an hour. It was quite a spectacle.

We finally broke free of the traffic madness and drove to a spot where we could stop, now in complete darkness, and install the batteries. People immediately crowded around the bus … “uh oh”. Luckily Maina knew a mechanic who happened to be one of these people! The mechanic got his tools, another 2 hours passed and we were finally back in business with two working batteries! When the bus started – and the lights came on - everyone cheered! By this time, it was around 8:30pm and we were supposed to be in Nyahururu by 7pm. We made it to the airport, unloaded the Rolands, said our goodbyes and started off for home.

But, within 30 seconds of driving away we were stopped by the police – Unbelievable! Apparently the bus had been parked in a “no waiting” zone, so there were going to be some repercussions. The police told us all to get off the bus, and they got in. The deal was that they wanted to impound the bus and take away Maina’s license to drive. They also gave us the option of paying 5000 shillings (about $60 US) for the ticket, in addition to taking Maina’s license (no driver, but we could keep the bus). So there we were…12 adults and about 9 kids (the youngest of which was 6) standing at Nairobi airport wondering if we would be sleeping on the pavement. Maina and another of our men went with the officers, and as it turned out, the police decided that we would only have to pay 2000 shillings and they would let us keep the bus and our driver with his license. We’re thinking that their “generosity” in the end was because a receipt wasn’t provided and so they were able to pocket the ticket money. Oh well! It was now 10pm and we were just excited to leave.

We were on the road again and we had yet another beast to contend with: checkpoints. We have never seen so many police checkpoints in all our lives. I think in total we passed through a dozen of them – and each time, we would wonder, “Is this cop corrupt, too?” Thankfully, they were more of a nuisance than anything … we had to slow down to a crawl to make it through the maze of spikes layered across the road, but the police let us through with little to no hassle.

We (thankfully) got out of Nairobi and were on the home stretch. At least we thought we were. We traveled for about an hour, turned down a horridly bumpy dirt road, the kind that sometimes makes the bus tilt on a 30 degree incline, and then we stopped. Some of the men got out, and came back with a couch which they hoisted on top of the bus. “What in the world is going on?!” we asked each other. We found out that the man replacing James Roland was moving to the PACE compound that same day, and our bus was responsible for getting his things and picking up his wife from his old house. So, I joined the group of men and carried some chairs and boxes to try and help speed up the process. Within about half an hour they had everything tied down up top and we were on the road again. Now I should point out again that car jackings are common in Kenya at night, so every time we saw a car stopped ahead of us, Maina would stop well a head and turn on his high beams until the car took off. He kept mentioning how ‘this section’ or ‘that section’ of highway was not safe … we began to wonder if any section of the highway was safe at all! But we were safe – I truly believe after this experience that God had his hand on our bus the entire time, and every time it looked like a situation was going to be bad, something would happen to completely dissipate it.

So twelve hours after we were picked up by the PACE bus on a journey that was supposed to take four hours max, we finally arrived at the PACE compound - a little tired, but alive, safe, secure and happy.

We got to sleep in today until noon, had a relaxing day of meeting people, drinking Chai and getting settled in and we are looking forward to acquainting ourselves further with PACE tomorrow.

John 17:11 - Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one.

John 17:15 - My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.