17 September 2017
The National elections are going to have a Do-Over on 17th October. We will keep praying for continued peaceful election process and for integrity in leadership…and politics too! Marybeth wrote me about all of the election violence she heard about but truthfully, we only heard about a couple of incidents up country and here in Mombasa, and more specifically Likoni, things were very quiet.
Well, next week…yikes! THIS week, starting tomorrow evening, is the YWAM Kenya National Staff Conference and the venue this time around is our base here in Mombasa.
Much scrambling has been done to organize the facility we have to provide on base accommodation for 5 families with kids as well as 6 single men, 5 single women and 3 conference speakers coming from all over the country. We had to do some serious mason repair and plastering/painting on one of the dorms and on the dining room; buy another double bed (ready-made this time—I learned my lesson) and mosquito nets for several of the couple’s beds.
At the end of the day we were still short of space & bed so the 2 female speakers will be staying at my house. I don’t even want to think about the scrambling at my house to get ready to host 2 people I barely know!! The main speaker, Mary Kamanzi, from Rwanda, came 2 days early in order to attend a wedding here at one of the posh south coast beach hotels.
Her flight was due to arrive Saturday at 1:50a.m.; which meant I had to leave my house at midnight to get on the ferry queue and across the island in time. Things went well and there was not as much traffic as expected so we actually arrived at the airport an hour early, then the flight was 30minutes late and immigration seemed to take forever. Fortunately, when we got back across the island and to the ferry there was one docked and boarding so we were able to go right on and we got back to my house at 4:30a. After showing Mary around the house (how to work the toilet & shower etc.) I crashed at 4:45a and died…until my cat Izzy woke me up at 6:30a to have me turn on the bathtub tap so he could get a drink (he will not drink from a bowl; he MUST have fresh running water on demand). A VERY short night.
People who have families, or live with other people in some configuration, may not be able to understand this. I however, having lived alone for the last 16 years, am finding that having another person staying in my house requires more of an adjustment than it used to and this is highlighting to me just how set in my slightly ODC ways and routine I have become.
The other female speaker, Cindy Aden (an American living/working in Nairobi), will be arriving at the base tomorrow evening and we will all come back here to my place after the dinner and 7-9pm opening meeting at the base. Fortunately, it has worked out so that each of us will have a bedroom and will only have to share the single bathroom. They will be leaving on Friday mid-morning; which isn’t really much time so we will all survive and still be friends… maybe even better friends? 😊
The theme of the Staff Conference is “New Beginnings.” I had a mental picture of what I wanted the conference theme banner to look like but I ask for input from some of the staff (I am trying to remember to do that more often instead of being a take-charge-lone-ranger) They suggested a different photo and so I adjusted my thinking to a point midway between all of our ideas and took the result to a graphic artist I know. It is a photo of hot air balloons rising over a body of water. I am very happy with it. I also had a bookmark like the banner made for each attendee and welcome cards in the same format for each attendee’s room. I love doing this kind of thing!
